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Electronics As Plastics
WillSeattle writes: "Well, what goes around comes around. According to a New York Times article (free registration required), 21st century electronics may be based on plastic and other carbon-based molecules, or organic chemicals.
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I also heard about a light-crystal RAM solution that was pretty impressive. It used multiple layers to push up to a terrabyte into a piece of crystal. Very nice.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
A Nobel Prize is being awarded to a Physicist for his work (in the 70's) in plastic electronics. Evidently, most of his work is just now coming into use and shows great potential for future applications.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
This is mentioned every time a NYT article comes up, but there *IS* a no-registration-required site. Instead of www.nytimes... use partners.nytimes...
HERE'S THE ARTICLE without registration crap.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Eventually we will run out of petroleum and so the future of these circut designs could be in doubt. Also do we really want fluctuating oil prices effecting computer prices as well (at least directly)?
Respond to s
some bits of information: polyacetylene which is basically the material the nobel prize was won for has a conductivity of about 10^4... while gold/sliver copper is only 100 times that... pretty good the polyparaphenylenes and doped polyparapheynylenes (sulfide/vinylene) have a reflective appearance which means their band gap is in the infra red which means they absorb the particular electro magnetic radiation which radar uses - this was used as a coating for the B2
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"Well, what goes around comes around. According to a New York Times article (free registration required), 21st century electronics may be based on plastic and other carbon-based molecules, or Organic Chemicals."
Scientists have been moving in this direction for a long time. This is not really news. The problem with creating things out of organics, is that organic things either decay or die or whatever. Granted, plastic, metal, glass and ceramic wear down in some fashion or another, but can be much more durable than organic material (for machinery). How do they intend to solve this problem? I don't see ordering replacement parts every few months, unless they're going to sell these parts like disposable contacts, where we get a year's supply at a time.
They are bigger and slower than Si- or Ge-based semiconductors. Indeed, their most appealing attribute-flexibility-is totally irrelevant to the giants of silicon. At present, organic semiconductors have no market (judging by sales... the potential is huge), but will very likely establish a new market, and flourish within it.
For all the reasons so eloquently explained in "Dilemna", the established semiconductor companies will have difficulty entering such a small, new market. This leaves the field open for new entrants to dominate the market for organic semiconductors. If they can establish a steep improvement trajectory, then they might be able to move upmarket in only a few years.
This should be interesting to watch. The real test of a descriptive model, such as "Dilemna", comes when you use it predictively. Otherwise, you can only explain situations post hoc.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
Plastic eh.....
I wonder how long before Apple comes out with the iResistor and the iC Circuit, the chips you can see through.
run out of silicon? before carbon? You really think so? I thought it was one of the most abundant elements on earth(or at least the crust).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
- You can make the case for some pretty interesting display technologies if the plastic were flexible enough. For example, I could use a 15" flat display that folded into my Palm.
- Wearable computing would benefit greatly if manufacturers were able to sew plastic "chipsets" directly into your clothing.
- I would imagine that some flexibility will be required if any progress is going to be made towards embedded cybernetics. Consider ligaments and cartiledge, for example, which bear a great deal of resemblence to plastics in their behaviors.
Anyway, I personally excited about the first one. it would really fantastic to be able to pull down a 38" screen a la old movie projector screens.Free music from Jack Merlot.
According to NY Times' linking page: Since the 'partners' site doesn't show up on their search engine, this probably means they don't want links to it.
Then again it doesn't specify their search engine, so if you can find a link on Google (search for sites related to partners.nytimes.com and you get a link right to the partners home page... I'd copy the link but Slashdot keeps mangling it) or whatever, maybe that makes it alright
The legalese doesn't seem to properly cover it either.
What it boils down to is Slashdot don't want to be sued.
As a professor of mine used to say, "gallium arsenide has been The Technology of The Future for the last 30 years ...". And this guy knew what he was talking about : he gave the courses on GaAs process ...
The point is that, each time a new technology has threatened silicon's hegemony with a slight increase of performance, convenience, etc, it has been beaten flat dead in a matter of months. Each time a GaAs buff announced a new milestone for transistor speed, some guy in Japan came 3 month later with a Si transistor 30% faster.
It's just that the investement and know-how in silicon process is so huge, so enormous. There's a huge incentive and a huge abitlity to push this process farther each time a contender shows up. Even more, not only silicon wins all the time, but even analog functions that used to require special process increasingly move towards standard digital process. Even the hotest new new thing in town, silicon-germanium, kowtows to this truth. Its most important asset is that it is 100% compatible with silicon process.
So well, yeah, may be, one of those days.
News of the death of silicon have always been greatly exagerated...
Doesn't this title remind you of the classic film, and the time that inspired it, "The Graduate"? "Plastics, kid, that's where all the money is; I'm telling you!"
In a similar way, electronics are the plastics of today. They've been the holy grail of investors for the past decade as well as the dream job of many of today's youth. Perhaps a similar conclusion will be drawn about electronics, thirty years from now. Today if an 18 year old told their parents they weren't going to college but would instead start off at $20 an hour at a start up many, but not all, parents would be happy. And yet in 30 years, when a large portion of the American economy will probably be dedicated to creating 'virtual' products (Be it through actual coding or through content generation) will it be the same 'glamour job' that it is today? One of my History Profs continually reminds us that at the beginning of the century Auto-mechanics were looked upon as 'glamour jobs.' Perhaps a similar effect will occur with computers.
Sorry if this drifted off topic...I just liked the graduate reference and kept going!
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"organic" chemicals are not chemicals made by mother nature & sold in your health food store. they're not bacteria or any other biological system, including proteins. organic chemicals are exactly what the topic said : carbon based molecules. anything made of solely carbon, nitrogen, oxygen & hydrogen is generally considered organic. this would be as opposed to inorganic chemicals which contain metals, non-metals (like silicon) or either of the lanthanides or actinides.
when this article refers to organic chemicals it means stuff made in a lab by chemists & includes, as was mentioned previously, polymers, plastics etc.
the reason these systems are so interesting is their versatility. bell labs, uh sorry, lucent scientists recently showed some really neat behaviour in the anthracene/tetracene family (as in mothballs) including lasing (albeit at low temperatures, but you've got to cool most lasers anyways) & superconductivity. they've managed to build field-effect transistors out of single crystals of pentacene. all very cool stuff & some of it came out recently in either PRL or nature, ok now i can tell you it's science. if you do an authour search for batlogg you'll get a chronological list of what they've been up to. i will attempt to link the search results here (fingers crossed). you should be able to read the abstracts at least.
hope this clears up why organic chemicals have nothing to do with the organic world & why the NY times is so excited about organics.
chris
Can I have LED paint? It would be nifty to dip a brush in a bucket of goo, paint a stroke, apply a voltage across it, and have the paint emit light a la an LED. I have no idea if this is possible (I think I get a C in electronics, generally), but from all that talk of using inkjets to paint on circuits, why not? The only problem I can envisage is polarity, but then I'm not even sure whether these things are fussy about that. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
What an urban legend. Bush was shooting crack and barely getting a straight C all through Yale. His father had to get him out of expulsion a couple of times.
I read the title "Electronics as Plastics" and thought of something completely different.
Now, instead of "Son... Here's a point of advice. If you want to be successful, get into plastics!" we have, "If you want to be successful, learn computers."
Apparently these guys sell some tape that does that. The RX7 spy car guy detailed his car with the stuff. Looks freaky cool.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Am I the only one who saw the title of this article and instantly thought of the substance imipolex, from Rudy Rucker's books "Software"/"Wetware"/"Freeware"? (all excellent reads by the way). How long will it be until I can have a Happy Cloak?
Or will we at least see kids talking about trading the latest Tupperwarez?
Damn...so we will be able to just bring up our favorite image viewer and print off reams of cpus? That rocks!
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