PLEC
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Light-emitting fabrics could reinvent your '90s wardrobe
Researchers who must be Saved by the Bell fans have developed clothing fibers that could turn you into a walking neon sign. Rather than OLED or LCD tech, the team exploited polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells (PLECs) that are rugged enough to be used in fabrics. They created a millimeter-sized fiber that's an alphabet soup of tech -- it consists of a thin steel wire coated with nanoparticles and an electroluminescent polymer, topped by see-through carbon nanotubes. The prototype fabric only glowed for a couple of hours, and so far, the light colors are limited to blue and yellow. However, PLEC tech has a theoretical life span of thousands of hours, and far more hues are possible.
