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Nokia Developing Diamond-Like Gadget Casing
space_pingu writes "In the future, all gadgets could be coated with tough, diamond-like material. A patent from Nokia — featured in the latest patent round-up from New Scientist — describes a way of infusing plastic cases with a material, structurally similar to diamond, made from coal. Not only is it more scratch and grime-resistant, but it's also cheap and biodegradable. Apparently it also shines like a metal. The article also touches on a technique for welding with 'ice bullets', and an airport scanner that protects the dignity of travelers."
you already own a gadget made with DLCs.
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
Call me when I can get a skull gun.
Or leverage my dry wit, stiff upper lip, and giant mustache to join the Vickies.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
If it's so tough, it will scratch everything else.
I could be Austin Powers with a Diamondmember, hell yeah!
and an airport scanner that protects the dignity of travelers
Traveler dignity is not good for security theater.
Not only is it more scratch and grime-resistant, but it's also cheap and biodegradable.
Isn't strong and biodegradable mutually exclusive?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
diamond really would be the hardest metal!
Now they can do a remake of Goldfinger - have the bad guy with the diamond fetish, cover an unfortunate young woman with it...
Locksmith
Glock has been using a coating called "Tenifer" for nearly 20 years. Can be given a nice finish, very durable in my experience, and quite hard. Obviously that technology is mature by now, if scuff-proof metal things in your pocket is important I wonder if that would be suitable. Anyone have the low-down on Glock's Tenifer coating, what it is, and how it is or isn't like this stuff?
Welcome to the future. Everything is shiny here.
I can understand that at this point they are probably just filing patents "just in case." However, taking radiographs of every air passenger is not what I would call a responsible use of ionizing radiation.
Before anyone starts quoting dose limits at me, I'm going to say right now that exposure to ionizing radiation should be kept as low as is feasible to do. This means that you _avoid_ unnecessary radiographs and similar procedures, not throw them up for every air passenger--not at the doses imparted by modern radiographs. I also can't understand how they can support such a system when some folks fly dozens of times a year or many more and will have no practical way to track the number of radiographs they've had taken so far this year etc. etc. Can you imagine a very frequent flyer being turned away from security because he'd been put through the scanner too many times this year? Of course you can't--that would never happen because nobody is keeping track.
Unless backscatter x-ray requires far, far less entrance exposure than standard radiography (which I suppose it would since it doesn't need to penetrate the body) to the point where it's into background or only somewhat above, it's very hard to not be a little worried by this. Of course, if they plan on visualizing both sides of the body at once, then naturally they will have to penetrate the body. Then you have the issues of people being told to "go through again" because of machine glitches, because someone was looking at the bag scanner instead, etc.
What really worries me is that nobody seems to even be talking about this. That either means that the doses from these radiographs really are that much lower (and I just don't know it), or that nobody is really concerned by it (which is a scary thought, meaning as it does that our "security" obsession is starting to physically do harm to people).
I would say wood, which is the most widely used construction materal in temperate climates, is both strong and biodegradable.
Why bother.
It's common for people to confuse hardness with toughness. Diamonds are hard - yet fragile. Plastic is soft - yet tough.
Technology products today are being designed for very short lives, with flimsy, cheap, fragile, unrepairable designs. This is not a good thing.
On the other hand, if you know a way to make cheap diamonds a metre long by 10cm square as one perfect crystal, at a price under $100, I'd like to be your European sales agent.
Pining for the fjords
Doh! My phone melted again!
Infusing plastic with a diamond-like carbon cladding to make it more scratch resistant? Oh for Christ's sake, they'll let you patent any old obvious thing, nowadays! Why not a fork and spoon while they're at it. Stupid patent office! >:-(
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
BS. People protect or take away dignity. Machines are props for dignity games.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
to welcome our diamond-coated durable overlords
who have no problems welding in the arctic
and can see up everybody's underpants!
iPhone may leapfrog the competition, but Nokia's moving at Ludacris speed: "Watch out for the medallion my diamonds are reckless Feels like a MIDGET is hanging from my necklace!"
The actual New Scientist article mentions x-rays specifically. The attached patent application--which is what the article summarizes--deals with backscatter x-ray technology but then mentions millimeter wave later on in I guess "section" 0030. The patent, however, appears to be dealing with a backscatter x-ray device since x-ray devices are mentioned literally constantly throughout, whereas millimeter is mentioned only once. Their first link is to their writeup on millimeter-wave. I don't have a clue why millimeter-wave keeps popping up. In fact, the Wikipedia entry on Backscatter x-ray has the same problem--the first link leads to a millimeter-wave article that has nothing to do with backscatter x-ray technology.
If x-rays are directed onto the human body, then there is some energy deposited and thus a radiation dose. If they aren't x-ray machines and are instead some other scanning modality, they damn well better stop calling them x-ray machines.
iPods, here we come.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Don't misunderstand me, chummers - Dikote is cool - but who in their right mind would put it on their mobile? What do they expect from that, a phone with +1 ballistic armor?
No, wait, they want to use the phone as a blunt weapon, so they raise the power level by one. Nokia: For when you really need to do (STR-1)L stun damage. I'll wait for the Motorola CHNSW.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I disagree. If you can make a gadget more durable without adding too much to the price, that's a win-win situation. Even if you only want to use the item for a year or two before upgrading to something else, you're probably going to either resell it, or hand it down to somebody else who can make use of it, right? That is, unless it's so beat up that nobody wants it anymore, or it quit working completely and became trash.
Instead of your purchase becoming garbage just because the casing is all cracked/damaged, you'll have a much better chance of recouping a little resale value out of it if it's built more durably.
Yes, most people will not pay more for more resistant mp3 players, but they will pay for the shiny version!
ooh! no-scratch Shiny!
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
I mean, really!
According to IBM and other players nanotubes are the designated successor of silicon based electronics. They already know how to mass manufacture it and they've made transistors that are 1 nm in diameter and can use a single electron for state switching. And as a bonus, if you wish to smack somebody on the head, a stick made out of nanotubes is hard to beat.
You take a swing at me with the biggest diamond you can find, and I'll hit you with the biggest piece of oak I can find, and we'll see who comes off best?
Handing it down to a person who then won't be buying the lower end product from the same manufacturer? Doesn't sound like a win to the person building/selling the products...
If you can make a gadget more durable without adding too much to the price
Sure, if durability is free then there's no reason to not include it. But those "free" improvements have for the most part already been made. Switching from, say, plastic to aluminum or ceramic is definitely not free. Making a hermetically sealed gadget is far from free. Even certain designs that increase durability come at an aesthetic price and often, consumers reject them outright because they want something lighter/smaller/cuter for their dollar.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
To a physicist, an X-ray is any photon emitted from an energetic electron. X-rays span a large range of wavelengths that many might call millimeter (infrared/microwave), centimeter (microwave). To a physicist, X-ray does not imply ionizing.
Backscatter X-ray frequently uses terahertz frequency (~10 millimeter wavelength) which is infrared. It doesn't penetrate water (read: skin).
Sure, it resisted dirt and scratches. But it rotted in my pocket.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hope it doesn't degrade while it's sitting in my pocket. There's more oxygen in my pants than in a landfill.
-Peter
Is't crystalline carbon after all.
...rotary press holograms...TiO2 using crystal growth...anhydrous methanol solutionDiamonex, of Allentown, PA, has been doing these diamond-like coatings for years. It's not a new technology, and Nokia isn't claiming it as such. The most common application is the glass cover on supermarket POS scanners. Diamonex offers a lifetime warranty on their scanner glass; it doesn't scratch even after a few million canned goods have been dragged across it. It's probably in a supermarket near you.
Diamond-like coatings haven't typically been used in consumer products because they were too expensive. The Nokia approach, a very thin coating on plastic, is probably the first consumer application.
Oh I get it, I can only water my lawn on Tuesday & Saturday so theese guys can play with high-powered bbguns. It's all so clear to me now.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
You can get the PATENT APPLICATION TO ISSUE & then make a viable product out of your claims.
In this case it is a patent application that may never issue.
The hardest part of all for Nokia is to get a succeessful form of plasma coating to work well enough for production parts, with a long enough life time, and a low enough cost (usually the killer in plasma coatings).
Hormesis is currently controversial among health scientists--I'm fairly certain most agree that it can occur, but nobody is quite sure of the mechanism for it yet. Personally, I would call it akin to relying upon the placebo effect in order to cure a patient: it's not something we're able to control well enough at this point to try using it as a medical tool, and suggesting that it be done is bad professional practice. It's akin to suggesting that regulations on radiation workers be relaxed because the constant low-level dose protects them from accidental higher doses. While I will allow that MAY, in the future, be something that is actually considered, at this point we simply don't know enough about hormesis to rely upon it in any way. Furthermore, any dose is extra dose, whether protective or not.
This is a widely-held consequence of our current model for radiation response in tissue. The current "best" model for radiation response is a "linear no-threshold" model--the "no-threshold" part means that no dose of radiation is completely without risk, although the "linear" parts do say that the risk _can_ be vanishingly small. It is still prudent to avoid all doses _that have no clear and present benefit._ I don't call a "security" measure of questionable value (not to mention the many privacy issues) a justification for giving the entire public extra radiation doses. This is especially true since, unlike in medicine, there's no radiation professional around (assumedly) to explain to them the risks and the benefits from their procedure. I continue to be shocked that anti-radiation groups aren't stepping in to complain about this project or at least bring it into public light.
A diamond-like material, made from coal. What an invention!
^^
I'd say now's the time to invest in Nokia stock.
Just look at the quality of Nokia phones over the past few years. They have been getting worse with each iteration. My Nokia from 1997 was a cheap low end model, but was built like a tank and has taken all kinds of abuse. A mid range nokia model today feels so flimsy, it's designed to break in a year or two tops.
Whatever stuff they come up with, you can be sure it will only appear in military grade models or $1000+ phones.
Most hard disks have for some years had a thin layer of similar material as the top layer above the magnetically active layer(s). In this application the diamond-like carbon's usefulness comes from a combination of several properties, primarily that it is very hard but at the same time presents a very low-friction surface. Diamond-like carbon comes in many different forms, but can inherit properties from both diamond (hardest material, high refractive index, high electrical resistance, massive thermal conductivity, etc) and graphite (very soft, good lubricant, metallic, non-transparent).
r bon.html
Dimanond like carbon covers a wide range of materials. Most have a disordered or "amorphous" structure in which the carbon atoms do not form - even locally - regular arrays (analogies are usually made to 'frozen liquid' or glass, neither of which are quite right but you get the flavour). These materials become more 'diamond like' as the proportion of carbon atoms which bond tetrahedrally to 4 other carbons (as in diamond) increases compared to the number of carbons that bond to 3 carbons (as in graphite). This is further complicated by the presence of hydrogen which encourages tetrahedral bonding but in other ways can make the material less diamond like (eg softer).
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/edm/research/carbon/ca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond-like_carbon
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
100 microns are biodegradable; what about the rest of the mostly plastic device?
---k--
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