Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created a new kind of full-color display that's a fraction of the width of a human hair and just as flexible. Debashis Chanda and his team have worked in ultra-thin, nano-sculpted materials for years, but this technology is perhaps the most impressive — and marketable — result yet, NBC News reports.

"All man-made displays — LCD, LED, CRT — are rigid, brittle and bulky," said Chanda in a news release. "But you look at an octopus, they can create color on the skin itself covering a complex body contour, and it's stretchable and flexible. That was the motivation: Can we take some inspiration from biology and create a skin-like display?"

It's still very much in the early stages, but the display's thinness and range of color are well ahead of competing technologies — traditional LCDs, OLEDs and e-paper displays are hundreds of times thicker, and can't pack nearly as many pixels into a given area.

The technology won't replace your smartphone display or TV, but it might lead to a new standard for color-changing clothing, camouflage, or other applications where flexibility and color are highly valued. Chanda's research appeared in the June issue of Nature Communications.