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."

Comments

On contacts?

[3.5 stripes]

Can you actually focus on something which is that close to your eye?

Re:On contacts?

[squiggleslash]

I don't know about the technology, so I may be talking out of my arse, but I would think it's possible to have the nanowires "focus for you". They're going to be emitting light. If they can emit light in a specific direction, like a laser, then they'll be able to make sure the light hits the correct point on the photo-receptors in your eyeball.

Now, obviously, if they can't have the light emitted go in a particular direction, then a different solution will have to be found...

Fault Tolerance?

[supersmike]

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.

Contacts

[maxdamage]

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!

Re:Useful

[squiggleslash]

Thinking about it, this could be used for good, and for evil:

Good: The contacts overlay useful captions where there currently isn't one, giving you street signs, direction signs, making it obvious from a distance where to get food, where the ATMs are, etc. Enter details of where you want to go, and the bus that'll take you there can be highlighted when it comes towards you.

Bad: It's sold as that, but funded by advertising. Everywhere you look there's an ad for X10.

Invisibility?

[cableshaft]

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?

eye zooming

[dew-genen-ny]

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.

Re:eye zooming

[Anonymous Coward]

It would probably be easier to use a clear polymer that can be shaped electrically. Create an adjustable lense to zoom in and out, rather than try to cram more electronics onto your eyeballs.

meanwhile, in Japan

[Grummet]

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 -

Combine it with this technology....

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

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.

This has been done to death already

[Goldsmith]

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.