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Electrically Conductive Cement
zero_offset writes "The Tokyo Institute of Technology has announced a process for creating an inexpensive, nearly transparent, electrically conductive alumina cement. The conductivity is comparable to metal, and the transparency should be adequate for use in display panels. The process relies upon commonplace and inexpensive metals compared to the rare metals such as iridium currently used in display panels."
I see they're finally getting around to using that formula Scotty provided.
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Hazards of sans-serif fonts at small pitches, I guess.
Soon there may be some real repercussions when I'm lounging on the concrete wall outside the library and the security guard comes around to say,"Hey! You can't be sleeping here!" *bzzt* OUCH!
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Use it to build RF-proof houses. No more problems with Wifi security!
Don't be fooled, this technology was given to them by the Enterprise crew, who traded their knowledge of transparent aluminum for present day currency.
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Does anybody else remember the conductive LEGOs introduced with the 9V system? It just seems to me that this, if cheap enough, might be useful in construction environments where wire is difficult or impractical to route.
Depending on its conductivity, it might even be useful for home and industrial high-current applications.
Granted, electrical wiring is a pretty mature field, but I'm sure that something like this opens up possibilities.
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A stadium where the entire surface of the building blinks and scrolls ads at you.
That, or extra-heavy monitors.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
RTFA, the rare metal in LCDs is Indium, not Iridium.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Cement = anything used to glue things together
Concrete = a building material composed of aggregates and cement
Concrete is used for buildings, roads, sidewalks, etc. The aggregate in that case is usually rocks. The cement is usually Portland cement. It's not correct to call it "cement", though people will usually understand what you mean.
But judging from the comments so far, not in this case. This isn't a replacement for Portland cement, and they're not talking about building materials. This is the kind of cement used to glue bits of LCD screens to each other.
The conductivity is comparable to metal
...compared to the rare metals such as iridium
'metal' is pretty generic, and 'metals' conduct at varying levels (understatement). TFA actually states 'manganese'. Why distort the original posting in the summary?
WTF? TFA states 'indium'.
Methinks the poster should rely on the copy/paste strategy more often than 'transcribe it manually'.
Anyway, cool stuff. Anyone know enough about display panel construction to give an off-the-cuff estimate of whether this new stuff will take more energy to produce?
eskwayrd = m^2c^4
When I read this, I was thinking of Fab@Home with the idea that perhaps you could use this process to help build crude home-built ICs out of simple and cheap materials.
Unfortunately, it seems as though the process is a bit more complicated, and I don't know how you can get a nozzle heated to 1100 degrees C in a reduced oxygen environment (presumably why it is in a sealed glass tube to work) that would also be something you would want on your kitchen table.
While of interest to a materials science guy, this really isn't that spectacular of a deal here. It does have the potential of improving LCD screen luminance values, reducing power requirements for laptops (the screen sucks quite a bit of power in the overall system), and helping in other ways. But it isn't something that simply can be poured out of a nozzle.
From TFA: "the cement would make an environmentally-friendly alternative because its ingredients are more readily available". That doesn't make it environmentally friendly, it just makes it less environmentally damaging. There's a BIG difference.
Also, is 30kg grip strength pretty low for an adult male? I'm pretty sure it is...
What they won't tell you is that it was really developed as a deterent to public urination in the streets.
Las Vegas couldn't get more annoying. Everywhere from sidewalks to bathrooms blaring logos at you. Even worse would be the saturation subliminal advetising. "No really honey, the floors and walls told me to gamble more".
It could have some interesting applications as a road surface. traffic alerts and stop lights being part of the road itself.
We are all just people.
Forgive my ignorance, but most of the comments only refer to large/heavy structures using this material. But, the article seems like it's saying that this could be used to replace Indium in televisions. Can this not possibly lead to cheaper and more efficient televisions or am I missing something? Can this also not be useful in making cheaper displays in general?
The author of the actual paper is Hideo Hosono, not "Hideo Hono". The paper, available here, was not published in the April 11 issue of Nano Letters. Rather, it was published on-line on March 22.
The acronym is TiTech. These kids design pico-satellites and put them into low earth orbit, among other things.
actually that sounds like a pretty brilliant way of printing simple "wires" on things.
I did a college engineering report on this... in 2004.
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