(Credit: Kostenko Maxim/Shutterstock) As smartphones get smaller, cheaper and faster, one essential component remains costly: the screen. Almost 90 percent of smartphone touchscreens utilize a rare and expensive compound called indium tin oxide, which has kept the price of such screens high. Now, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a new material, called strontium vanadate, that shares the transparent and conductive properties of indium tin oxide at a fraction of the cost. The researchers detailed their findings in an article published earlier this month in the journal Nature Materials. They crafted a transparent metal composed of strontium and vanadium with an unusual configuration of electrons that allows light to pass through while retaining the electrically conductive properties of metals.
The researchers see smartphone screens, which need to be electrically conductive and transparent, as the most immediate application of their discovery. Indium tin oxide possesses those integral properties but its ...
