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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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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)
- 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.
And who says Plastics has to be based on petro?
Plants as plastic producer
Plants projected as fuel replacement
In short:Chemists have known for decades how to alter the hydrocarbon chains in petroleum through processes known as cracking and reforming. Shortened hydrocarbon chains are used as solvent bases for paints and chemicals. Longer chains - as many as 200 hydrocarbons - are known as plastics. But these products also can be made from plants.
What is more responsible, from an enviromental POV? A process where you take a slice of copper, remove what you do not want with chemicals and use other chemicals to clean it, and have a product of metal, glass fibers, and epoxies, or a product based on a plastic that is broken down over time with common soil bacteria?
The push is on in the EU to make electronics re-cycable by forcing the manufactors to take back their items and re-use/re-cycle them.
Plant based plastics just might allow a 'compostable VCR', instead of the 'throwaway VCR'.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
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