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

For every day purposes

[WindowlessView]

Does this make it less likely that my headphone wires won't automatically seek to form the most complex DNA strands in the universe?

Re:For every day purposes

[dov_0]

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

At last!

[jcr]

Just what I've been needing for my wi-fi enabled slinky.

-jcr

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.