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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."
not devises.
Does this make it less likely that my headphone wires won't automatically seek to form the most complex DNA strands in the universe?
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Those homonyms are a bitch aren't they?
pornographic fetishware rejoiced
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Shouldn't this be used for every type of cables? During the last couple of weeks, coiled USB cables have given me lots of grief. USB connected camera stands (used for passport pictures) keep being disconnected, but as soon as the cable has been straightened (5 meters), everything's fine.
Recently I had the same problem with a Cat5e cable at some other place; 5 meters, half of that from the IP phone to the wall; as soon as I straightened it up, the phone was able to connect.
-- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
I thought one of the deals holding up the big wheel spinning in space for artificial gravity - like the station in 2001 A Space Odyssey was connections between the core and the spinning part. Maybe somehow this will help.
This is my sig.
Just what I've been needing for my wi-fi enabled slinky.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Oddly enough, I was watching Spiderman 2 at the dentist's office today and thinking, "What I wouldn't give for the stretchable electronics and semiconductor nanomaterials that would allow me to have sweet electromechanical appendages like Dr. Octopus..." And then I go on Slashdot a few hours later, and find that my dream will soon be a reality!
...a character has a pocket-sized screen that he enlarges by _stretching_ it. I think of this when browsing the Web on a mobile, especially iPhone-like devices with their stretching fingers-metaphor.
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.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The length of a wire is limited by the wavelength of the signal it must pass. The rule of thumb is that any conductor longer than 1% of that wavelength must be treated as a transmission line. A transmission line depends on its physical properties. If any of those properties changes then the characteristic impedance of the cable changes. When that happens, signals no longer pass as they should, they distort and reflect and generally provide misery.
With the above in mind, my WAG is that the clock rate of stretchable electronics will be limited to the low MHz.
I hope it prevents cell phones from breaking when dropped. Think of the effect that will have on landfills! Currently if you drop your cell phone, chances are some connection comes loose. Then the phone shuts down or malfunctions intermittently. What we need are electronic connections that don't break when a shock is received.
I don't know about you, but my MP3's are already microscopically thin (the width of the bits on the platter)
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I don't know about you, but my MP3's are already microscopically thin (the width of the bits on the platter)
Well, make it able to be rolled, cure cancer, and that global warming thing, and I might come out.
I did mean MP3 player I think...
fits all...now goes electronic!
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
I know this is extremely grammar nazi-ish, but the article uses "e.g" where "i.e." is more appropriate. "e.g" stands for the Latin "exempli gratia", meaning "for example. "i.e.", on the other hand, stands for "id est", meaning "that is". Because the article gives the specific maximum values for stretchability and corkscrewing, rather than examples from a range of values, "i.e." should be used.
Blend this with the flexible display technology and you'll have something I'll be willing to have embedded subcutaneously. (But please don't add any 'enhancements' like GPS, ID verification, or anything which would allow the government to monitor my whereabouts.)
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
Take a flexible OLED, back it with this flexible circuitry, add a flexible battery and you've got an electronic material which could really give paper a run for it's money. Is there flexible memory or storage yet?
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
What cell phone do you use? I have a cheap Nokia GSM phone - it's got a black & white screen,
no camera, no radio, no music player.
It's 2 years old - fallen on hard ground multiple times.
It's even fallen into a bucket of water ones.
It's working fine. Doesn't shutdown or malfunction.