Scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle have developed the thinnest LED known that can be used as a light energy.

Most modern electronics, including flat-screen televisions, smartphones, computer monitors and wearable technologies, use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, crafted from semiconductors that emit light instead of heat with the movement of electrons.

The newly developed LED is based off of two-dimensional, flexible semiconductors, making it possible to stack or use in much smaller and more diverse applications than current technology allows.

"We are able to make the thinnest-possible LEDs, only three atoms thick, yet mechanically strong. Such thin and foldable LEDs are critical for future portable and integrated electronic devices," Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor in materials science and engineering and in physics, said in the release.

Xu and Jason Ross, a UW materials science and engineering graduate student, co-authored a paper about the their LED technology that appeared online March 9 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

A majority of the consumer electronics on the market use three-dimensional LEDs that are 10 to 20 times thicker than the those being developed by the UW.

The UW team's LEDs "are 10,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, yet the light they emit can be seen by standard measurement equipment," Ross said in the release. "This is a huge leap of miniaturization of technology, and because it's a semiconductor, you can do almost everything with it that is possible with existing, three-dimensional silicon technologies."

The new LED is made from flat sheets of the molecular semiconductor known as tungsten diselenide, a member of a group of two-dimensional materials recently determined to be the thinnest-ever semiconductors developed.

In addition to emitting light, the technology may also be used to run nano-scale computer chips --- unlike standard devices, which operate off the movement of electrons, or electricity.

"A promising solution is to replace the electrical interconnect with optical ones, which will maintain the high bandwidth but consume less energy," Xu said. "Our work makes it possible to make highly integrated and energy-efficient devices in areas such as lighting, optical communication and nano lasers."