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Better Displays With New Nanowire Film
Roland Piquepaille writes "A Harvard University team has successfully applied a film of nanowires on glass and plastic. This might lead to better and flexible displays or wearable computers, says the American Chemical Society, in "Nanowire film brings cheaper, faster electronics a step closer." "By using a 'bottom-up' approach pioneered by our group, which involves assembly of pre-formed nanoscale building blocks into functional devices, we can apply a film of nanowires to glass or plastics long after growth, and do so at room temperature," says Charles M. Lieber, professor of chemistry at Harvard. The researchers think that the first applications will be improved smart cards or LCD displays. But they also have a vision for the next decade. "One could imagine, for instance, contact lenses with displays and miniature computers on them, so that you can experience a virtual tour of a new city as you walk around." This overview contains more details and references. It also includes a picture of a high-density crossbar nanostructure, whose geometry can serve as the basis for many applications, like bio-sensor arrays or high-density data storage."
Can you actually focus on something which is that close to your eye?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Hype.
Anything with 'nano' or 'cyber' in the name is hype. Yeah, we will see smaller cheaper electronics, but that's hardly news.
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"One could imagine, for instance, contact lenses with displays and miniature computers on them, so that you can experience a virtual tour of a new city as you walk around."
So while you are walking around in the city, you get to see what it looks like. Hmm... Pity you can't do that now.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
One could imagine, for instance, contact lenses with displays and miniature computers on them, so that you can experience a virtual tour of a new city as you walk around.
Considering we are geeks, going to a new city doesn't involve walking around, more like visiting conventions and getting the latest cool funny-phrase-sysadmin-tshirts.
Take away the walking part mister, and you have yourself a deal.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Anyone notice what appears to be a broken nanowire towards the bottom left of the picture? I wonder what kind of fault-tolerance these sturctures have for that sort of thing.
How long do you think it will take untill somone decides it would be funny to hijack someones vission and hack their contacts? It could be someone trying to be funny, just make the person think their seeing things... Or it could be someone trying to blind them... Just imagine waking up, putting on your contacts and being tourtured by avertisments, IN YOUR EYES. Thats a future that I am terrified of!
"One could imagine, for instance, contact lenses with displays and miniature computers on them"
my eyesight is bad enough as it is, the last thing I need are electronics short-circuiting in my eyeball.
This might lead to better and flexible displays or wearable computers Could this be used to further "invisibility" research? For example, wear a suit of these displays and have a camera record a panoramic video around you and display the appropriate camera displays around the body?
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
The real question is how long until I can get some nice Adware to pop up on my contacts?
The mention of the contatct lenses made me think of Zaphod Beebelbrox and his glasses (or was it someone else) that helped him to never be scared. The glasses went black when danger was imminent.
That could be really cool when driving.
"One could imagine, for instance, contact lenses with displays and miniature computers on them, so that you can experience a virtual tour of a new city as you walk around."
Until the spamming starts!
=Smidge=
I don't know about anyone else but I certainly wouldn't stand for having to wear contacts when I don't need them simply to get "bonus material". Glasses, sure, but having watched people try to put in/manipulate/not drop the things it is certainly an activity I wouldn't want to participate in. YMMV though...
If this contact thingy works out, think about the fun you could have with it. The ultimate in interactive experience since you only see what it lets you. You could have a personal movie theater with incredible resolution at yours hands... i mean eyes.
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Score:5, Troll
Displays embedded in contact lenses would be orders of magnitude less clumsy than even lightweight VR helmets. At that scale they could probably be powered by eye motion (as some watches are powered by wrist motion), or you could embed miniature solar panels where the contact lense covers the iris, with the LCD just covering the pupil.
What I'd like to see is contacts that implement both a display and an ccd or the equivilant, so that we can zoom in on objects that are in the distance....would be so wicked.....imagine being able to use them like a microscope as well....would be good.
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
hi everybody.
umm, gosh, don't know if i missed this news elsewhere in western media but last week on ABC (Asahi Broadcast Corp.) Japan there was a review of recent nanotechnology advances here in Japan and they reported that:
1) A Yamagata University research team has managed to make flexible millimeter thick screens (roll up your TV and stick it in a tube, into your backback, pocket, whatever and away you go..!) ALREADY so I don't understand what the big deal is with these nanowires. Plus the Yamagata people figured out how to use a kind of "nano-dye" for multiple applications like:
a) flexible thin solar cells (your tent is a battery charger!) or
b) a blue "lens" to increase the data storage on those recently reknown expensive blue laser cd's that store gigs of date. (20 times more (?))
Sorry for the lack of net based info but it looked pretty amazing - heck, I saw it on TV so come on,
it must be bran' spankin' new!
- Jeff -
this would be helpfull in bars at least..
if these things could tell me a chick has VD, i mean
Seriously, for people who aren't soldiers are able-bodied, what is the point of wearable computers? This reminds me of the "toaster that's on the internet... for some reason" hype.
"One could imagine, for instance, contact lenses with displays and miniature computers on them, so that you can experience a virtual tour of a new city as you walk around."
Someone did imagine this sort of technology. I particularly like "Fast Times at Fairmont High" by Vernor Vinge for it's description of wearable computers/contacts use for visual 'enhancement'.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/13/ 0016221&mode=thread&tid=127&tid=146&tid=186&tid=99 and we'll really have something.
Be able to manipulate the interface in your eye with only your mind.
Technoli
Techniques to make thinner wires will probably be useful for improving the efficiency a whole range of optoelectronic devices:
For LEDs, some light that might escape the device is reflected or absorbed by the tiny wires carrying the current into the junction. Thinner wires would mean an improvement (though perhaps small at this point) in the amount of light you get out of the device.
With light going in the other direction, photovoltaics (solar panels) and various detectors are all about getting as much light into a junction as possible, so thinner wires would help make better devices here too.
-------------------- the list is long. dirac angestung gesept
This sounds like a fantastic new technology. Being able to shrink high resolution to a usable size for photo-realistic displays would be great. But I think the idea of contact-lense screens or glasses with inbuilt displays particularly exciting as it could/would revolutionise computers.
Wearable computers are a much discussed idea but I feel that without a feedback display there are pretty useless. Now we have the possibility of it getting much closer...\
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
I'd just be happy with contacts that could sense the amount of ambient light and adjust their opacity to compensate. UV protection would be good too.
Or, more nefariously, if you want to get rid of someone, you can project a nice roadway scene onto his eyeballs even as he drives off a cliff...
Anybody heard whether there has been any progress on getting LEPs from Cambridge Display Technologies into mass production?
Could just see it...
...
"honestly officer, my contacts turned totally black when I hit I-285. I couldn't see a thing, but I could still talk on my cell phone so I did."
...that you've been reading Diamond Age (Phil K Dick) again?
... about this a few weeks ago. "Nanowires make flexible circuits" TRN Oct. 22/29
Eric Smalley
I want a few thousand nanomachines wired right on to the rods and cones of my retinas, telling them when to fire and when not to.
Technoli
Anytime stories like this pop-up, everyone always discusses how neat it would be to overlay information about a city and the like.
Forget contacts the zoom, forget contacts that shoot freakin' laser beams. How about contacts that make my vision 20/20? My corrected vision is 20/35 and my contacts can only be worn for 7-8 hours a day then I have to wear coke bottle glasses because there isn't anything better.
My brother-in-law has Retinitis-Pigmentosa which is a degenerative disease of the retina. He was diagnosed 7 years ago and is down to 10% of his vision which is stricly peripheral. Imagine a spoon in front of your eye and you can only see off to the sides.
A better use of this technology would be contacts that can adjust his line of sight to the best position on his eye.
Or to assist the vision of the elderly who often times can be helped with glasses or contacts.
Instead of coming up with "new" "cool" ways to use this, why don't we use the technology to help the people that need it? The people that surround us everyday?
So - did anyone else out there see 'nanowire' and think that this might be one step toward the development of shigawire?
I'm still waiting for "Thin CRTs" to come to market...
Seastead this.
How about if a company made night vision, zoom contacts? Rather than destroying stuff with the new tech, it could be used to make stuff. The military is a really bad jobs/tech development system; it's necessary only as the foreign policy enforcer of last resort. Unless you're a nationalist/socialist - in which case, the military is your be all / end all.
--
make install -not war
Wearable computing is the virtual reality of our times. Remember VR? Remember how it was going to Change Everything?
Remember Lawnmower Man?
Acme(TM) Bridge?
Beep-beep!
Wasn't there a scene in Total Recall where they could simply hit a button and switch the "windows" between various scenery and info-displays? To me this is incredibly useful as we start packing more and more people into high-rises around the world and eliminating our access to nature.
Not that I like eliminating access to nature, just saying that would probably sell... Replace your window that looks at the neighboring building and alley with a nano-wire device that can display mountains, skyline, sunset, desert, or just the latest news.
Come play Moral Decay!
Dr. Lieber has long been publishing in the area of nanowires, I have read plenty of his and his peers' papers. The importance of this work has nothing to do with contact lenses or futuristic devices that Spielberg loves to put on Tom.
:)
The problem that the semiconductor industry is facing right now is the ever more-expensive optical lithography systems. As the device features shrink down, we are getting more and more to the point where wavelengths will approach the X-ray spectrum. This is a whole new world of lithography, and people are looking like crazy for another way of doing it.
Here is the point where a distinction between parallel lithography and serial lithography should be made. For a long time people could pattern sub 10-nm features with AFM and STM (Atomic Force and Scanning-Tunneling microscopes). But those have only a tip (or several tips in parallel in a couple of cases). This would never be a fast and reliable method for patterning the interconnect on a chip, as it is done is series. Dr. Lieber's work is the first one to show some control of nanowire-based interconnect done in parallel. There were tons of studies of chemical self-assembly of nanowires before, but no one had control of the nanowire spacing (design rules for the IC guys).
Now we have to see if this technology goes somewhere. Another technology for parallel lithography that recently emerged is imprint lithography, where basically you stamp the pattern on the substrate. Dr. Stephen Chou over at Princeton invented that and several companies are already shipping imprint nanolithography systems. Hopefully I'll play on one next year
Now can you please convince my advisor to get me a laptop?
If your contacts are running windows (whether in focus or not) and you're driving, gives a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.
Letter To Iran
EPSON already released something far better...b t/news/275239
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asa
for instance, contact lenses with displays
"Yes, is this tech support? I think I have a virus in my contact. Everywhere I go, everyone's face is being replaced by banner ads.... Yes, I see it. Yea, it says gator. What I'm screwed?......"
There is already a "standard" way to move nanowires from a substrate to glass or plastic.
This may be difficult for some of you to believe, but the standard technique is to use scotch tape. It's quite amazing, but you can pick up an array of wires on scotch tape (a similar array to that in the article). Then you simpliy place the tape wherever you want your wires and dissolve it away.
Of course you're still left with the same problem as on the substrate which is that no one understands how or why these arrays do whatever they may do (which is generally NOT reproducible). Everyone has been shouting molecular electronics for so long that they havn't stopped to actually check that it IS molecular electronics. A timely article in Science last month basicaly served as a retraction for the last 5 years of research in this field.
It's fine for them to report that they found a new way to move nanowires onto glass or plastic, but the days of saying these types of networks are only a few years away from market are over.
Isn't the virtual tour buzzword the kiss of death for new technology? Look what happened to VRML.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I know I have (somewhere) kicking around in my files a drawing I drew up as an "invention" of contact lens VR devices. Now, I know some of you are thinking "yeah, right" - but it is the truth. I was originally imagining the devices to use hard contacts, with a grid on the contacts driving LCD type elements. I also thought that the electronics would be on the edges of the contacts (which would be mainly driver electronics, pickup "coils" for power supply and datacomms, and position sensors to tell which way the eye was pointed in) and the contacts would have to be larger than normal (to allow for changing pupil size). I also gave thought to using that chemical that widens the pupil to the widest size (which they put into your eyes when you go to get contacts). Finally, I thought about "back-light" shades that you could wear when you wanted full immersion (otherwise it would only be augmented reality - AR). I should have gotten that drawing notarized or something, as it is I only signed and dated it. I didn't think much of it, because I figured others have had similar thoughts before me, and I didn't have the money to patent the idea (I could have easily made a mock up of blown-up scale, or a virtual representation in 3D or something - which would be accepted by the PTO as a model) - plus I figured something like it was already patented. I know I have also posted both here and on k5 about the idea (maybe on Fark, too). I am just glad to see others thinking along this line. I have my doubts on how well it would work (or whether the res would be high enough), but the thing I like most about the idea is that it has the ultimate field-of-view (FOV) possible, by covering your entire pupil, so that you can get true *full* immersion, with peripheral vision and all. If such devices are ever built, they will be amazing to use!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
everything I expect from wearable technologies and intelligent clothes is that my socks find their pair after laundry :)
Nano acrobatics!
X-Ray contact lenses!!
Great. Now we can drive and get a virtual analysis of our insurance rates skyrocketing appearing before our eyes as we crash into that ferrari that we missed because we were getting a virtual tour of the city that we were driving through. Hmmmm, I'm sold.
Pretty much the biggest problems with current VR glasses is that you can get motion sickness, because the display lags.
With contacts, you would have to not only track head movement, but also eyeball movement and compensate it without perceptible lag.
Contacts with displays? Just imagine the test taking possibilities. Put all your notes in your eyes and then take the test. Same with speeches. Who needs a teleprompter when you have it in your eyes. Or Imagine Karaoke. That would be pretty cool as well. Or attach a gps and you can get interactive directions to anywhere in your contacts. Or truly realistic porn. I mean the possibilites are endless! Screw Virtual Tours.
Okay, can it give me a full red color flood with various data graphs and numbers floating around and a cursor? I want to experience walking around with Terminator eyes for a few days.
~ Old Warriors Society
It is a picture from the Heath group at Caltech, and the wires are made in a so-called SNAP process. Read about it in the Science article (PDF)