In recent years, the rapid development of flexible electronics makes new concepts of electronic products possible, such as flexible and bendable mobile phones and wearable electronics. Because of the unique foldability, transparency, low cost, and environmentally friendly manufacturing process, thin film transistors based on metal oxide semiconductors are already replacing silicon in display back driver circuits. However, due to the limitation of response frequency, their potential in the field of microwave communications which is a key for flexible electronics has not been realized.

Profs. Zhang, Xin, and Song at Center of Nanoelectronics of Shandong University and the University of Manchester worked together to successfully develop an ultra-thin flexible Schottky diode at room temperature. Its operating frequency is up to 6.3 GHz, and this is the fastest flexible electronic device so far. It can fully meet the requirements of RFID (13.56 MHz), GPS (~1.5 GHz), 4G LTE (~3.8 GHz), Bluetooth (2.45 GHz) and WiFi (2.45 GHz5 GHz) communication. The related paper "Flexible indium–gallium–zinc–oxide Schottky diode operating beyond 2.45 GHz" was published online on July 3 2015 in Nature Communications (doi: 10.1038/ncomms8561).