Slashdot Mirror


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."

15 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. For every day purposes by WindowlessView · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:For every day purposes by dov_0 · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, but it will be possible to get the twists even tighter...

      --
      sudo mount --milk --sugar /cup/tea /mouth /etc/init.d/relax start
    2. Re:For every day purposes by MikeUW · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    3. Re:For every day purposes by philspear · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, but there's a simple solution to that: stop wrapping your headphone wires around histones.

  2. Re:How many... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Those homonyms are a bitch aren't they?

  3. and the makers of by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Funny

    pornographic fetishware rejoiced

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  4. This'll fix coiled cables? by BagOCrap · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!
  5. Makes the space station wheel more likely. by tjstork · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  6. Re:Devices by ATMD · · Score: 2, Funny

    No, Devizes. A small English town well-known for its high population of bioscientists :)

    --
    Nobody else has this sig.
  7. At last! by jcr · · Score: 3, Funny

    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."
  8. Re:How many... by philspear · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  9. So this means I can finally be Dr. Octopus by kbrasee · · Score: 2, Funny

    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!

  10. In Ken Macleod's "Newton's Wake"... by John+Guilt · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...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.

  11. Why this is important research by w0mprat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  12. Grammar Nazi by Trebawa · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.