Stretchable Fiber-Based Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Display Enabled by Robust, Conductive, and Deformable Via

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED)-based fiber displays emerge as promising candidates for next-generation fiber display technologies, owing to their excellent optical performance and strong potential, as OLEDs are the mainstream technology in the display industry. However, despite these advantages, achieving stretchability-an intrinsic characteristic of textiles and an essential requirement for wearability-has remained a significant challenge. This limitation stems from the lack of strategies to resolve the inherently conflicting challenge of sustaining stable electrical interconnections between data and scan lines under mechanical deformation, such as stretching, within an x-y matrix architecture. Here, the first stretchable fiber-based OLED display is reported, enabled by a robust, conductive, and deformable vertical interconnect access (via) that ensures stable operation under stretching-induced mechanical strain. The novel via, fabricated from a conductive elastomer, simultaneously exhibits electrical conductivity, flexibility, and strong chemical bonds with interconnect lines. Furthermore, the pillar-like structure is specifically designed to relieve mechanical stress, thereby achieving optimal deformability and improved structural robustness, resulting in only a ≈2.5% increase in resistance and a ≈7.1% decrease in luminance under 60° rotational strain. System-level evaluations demonstrate reliable operation under ≈22.5% stretching, representing a critical breakthrough toward the practical realization of truly wearable fiber OLED displays.