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Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough

Posted by samzenpus on from the shocker-approved dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Xerox announced a new silver ink that it's calling a breakthrough in printable electronics, a leading-edge concept that's generated a lot of discussion but few actual products to date. Why? Precisely because of the issues that Xerox claims to have addressed. In concept, printable electronics is just what it sounds like: using a printer, basically an inkjet, to print electronic circuits. If this can be done reliably, electronic devices can be printed for far less than current methods cost. One can also print the devices on a variety of new materials. The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic, to paper and cardboard, to fabric."

11 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting by Paradyme · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, how long till people start downloading designs to print them out at home?

    1. Re:Interesting by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well that would be a great system, especially for DIY and prototype circuits. No more etch and hassling with masks. The FA is pretty light on details (which appears to be official Slashdot policy these days) and so I don't understand where the 'components' come from. Do you just glue your IC down to the paper / plastic / textile base or does this create the components de novo (rather unlikely for complicated things like an IC, but conceivable for resistors, caps, etc.)?

      Might change the definition of an 'underwire bra' significantly.

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    2. Re:Interesting by Bakkster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The article only mentions a reduction in silver ink printing temperature allowing for printing on plastics and cardboard, as well as functioning well in open air without being a clean room environment. That tells me it's primarily a PWB printer, no mention of semiconductors for ICs. Of course, it's possible, with enough resolution, to print a resistor or capacitor. However, I believe this technology will just produce the conductors, allowing you to solder any components (hopefully it is able to be soldered to) needed.

      My question is if they can make multiple layer circuits. This should be pretty easy, just print a layer of insulator on top, with holes for any connections between layers. Also curious what their resolution and tolerances are. Obviously this isn't going to go into high-performance industrial applications any time soon, but if it's possible to make reasonable reliable circuits with tolerances to the mil (0.001"), DIYers will be able to make (and pay for!) circuits they never dreamed of doing before.

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    3. Re:Interesting by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm guessing it will be a while; most new tech is pretty expensive. The original IBM PC was four or five thousand dollars, laser printers likewise were very high priced. I doubt these things will be affordable to normal people at first. It sounds more complex than a simple inkjet -- it has to melt silver, and somehow does it so you can print melted silver on plastic without melting the plastic. And previous printers needed a clean room to do it, this new tech doesn't.

      But I could be wrong. TFA says the main use will be printing RFID tags, and that it will bring the price of RFID tags down from a dollar each to a penny each.

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    4. Re:Interesting by Bat+Country · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Speed and turnaround. If this was cheaply available to a home user or at least enthusiastic hobbyist (less cheap, more involved) you could still roll out a prototype and test with a turnaround of a few dozen a day. Further, you could continue reducing the design until you found the smallest space necessary without risking as much money. By its nature, it's most likely quite a bit cheaper once broadly available than PCB services given the difference in the quantity and toxicity of materials. No toxic waste disposal, no huge waste of copper, no supply chain for PCB stock, just some card stock or plastic and some magic xerox ink.

      Also, these circuits are flexible. What's the value of flexibility? It increases the durability and portability of your finished product. The deal with printed circuits as well is not to make a PCB where you solder parts onto it. The idea is to actually print the entire circuit onto the material and offload anything which requires soldered components onto the portion of the product which is not required to be flexible. That being said, anything you can lay into silicon which doesn't require exotic materials or nanoscale electromechanical properties can be printed onto any slightly heat-tolerant substrate with this technology. This could include printing a transistor radio into cotton, printing RFID tags directly onto luggage tags (imagine if the airline couldn't misplace your luggage because the luggage cart itself knew what it was supposed to be carrying), a home hobbyist printing out addon chips for their retro hardware (NES in mixed stereo anyone?), printing out a better antenna for your laptop's wifi, printing new control wires onto the back of an e-ink display (say, from Esquire)...

      All of this is a way off of course, as they're still talking about printing a molten silver compound onto materials, which doesn't strike me as being the sort of task a home laser printer would be up for, not the least of which would be that it'd completely screw up the duplexer and probably the developer drum. Of course, Xerox developing this ink with a low melting point and reliable crystallization patterns (from TFA) may result in some other breakthroughs whereby this comes home a lot faster. All they need is to find a low-resistance nonmagnetic alloy or conductive polymer which melts at laser printing temperatures and won't gunk up a developer unit. (which may be unobtainium.) Either that or a working material which can be applied by inkjet printers.

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  2. Digital Signatures and e-Commerce by simoncpu+was+here · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think it would be great if we can attach an electronic version of a printed document so that we can verify its authenticity using digital signatures.

  3. The death of photography makes it possible by Kupfernigk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Until the end of the 20th century, a major market for silver was photography. The digital camera and the inkjet printer have slowly destroyed that market and replaced it with digital imaging. Now there's a new use for the silver which, presumably, had digital imaging not come along would have been much more expensive. (Although color photography ends up more or less silver free and there was considerable recycling, there was still a steady consumption of silver, and as the photography market democratised, the amount of silver in use at a given time was steadily increasing.)

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    1. Re:The death of photography makes it possible by MrMr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Investing in silver? Why does that ring a bell?

  4. Not too much hype in summary by wisebabo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I saw the sentence starting "The possibilities..." I mentally filled it in with "are endless".

    I was surprised (and a little gratified) to see the summary actually enumerating some of the possibilities instead of hyping it as is normally done. That's good!

  5. Re:Finally by zippthorne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Lots of stuff costs 70x more than crude oil. What was surprising about that link was that HP ink costs twice as much as human blood.

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  6. Re:Good for prototypes, good for tech by pclminion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know a guy who used to work at HP. He was an ink chemist, although not personally responsible for the prices you pay ;-) He's a diehard electronics hobbyist, and he's been printing his own boards this way for several years now. I've seen some of his boards, and they seem to be very durable. And this was with an inkjet printer he hacked himself, with home-made ink (he won't tell me what's in it)