New Connections For Stretchable, Twistable Electronics

tugfoigel writes "Jizhou Song, a professor in the University of Miami College of Engineering and his collaborators Professor John Rogers, at the University of Illinois and Professor Yonggang Huang, at Northwestern University have developed a new design for stretchable electronics that can be wrapped around complex shapes, without a reduction in electronic function. The new mechanical design strategy is based on semiconductor nanomaterials that can offer high stretchability (e.g., 140%) and large twistability such as corkscrew twists with tight pitch (e.g., 90 degrees in 1 cm). Potential uses for the new design include electronic devices for eye cameras, smart surgical gloves, body parts, airplane wings, back planes for liquid crystal displays and biomedical devices."

Comments

How many...

[masshuu]

How many of these have come out in the past month? it seems like were being flooded with flexible chips and displays and electronics. at this point i don't care. all i want is an mp3 player thats as thin as a credit card and i can role up.

Re:How many...

[philspear]

In other words you want them to skip all the intermediate stages of development and go right to the end. Hmm... that actually does sound pretty good.

Attention everyone: notify me when they've cured cancer, figured out if global warming is real or a hoax (and if real have solved it), and they have MP3s that are thin as a card and rollable. Until then, I'm going to be pouting in my room.

Re:For every day purposes

[MikeUW]

Serously - why did the above get modded as a troll?

Why this is important research

[w0mprat]

Rolled up circuitry will allow for very dense electronics, which may turn out to be more practical than 3d-chips and other such advances. I've often wondered about finding a way to fold semi-conductors up like origami. If we are ever to have a nanotech revolution with smart machines tiny enough to float around our blood stream and other such applications for nanomachines, it's going to be necessary to package alot of processing power in to a small volume.

Consider that it is somewhat easier to print your circuitry in two dimensions, then to fold it up very small.

This is also helpful for making of smart materials, for example it'd be no use having a smart skin for a aircraft if fatigue and deformation destroys the circuitry within it.