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The World's First Flexible Organic Microprocessor

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-wait-for-free-range-cpus dept.

An anonymous reader writes "European researchers at Imec recently announced the development of the world's first flexible organic microprocessor at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco CA. 'The 4000-transistor, 8-bit logic circuit has the processing power of only a 1970s-era silicon model, but it has a key advantage—it can bend. The device’s designers say the chip could lead the way to cheaper flexible displays and sensors. Wrapped around pipes, for example, sheets of sensors with these processors could record average water pressure, and wrapped around food and pharmaceuticals, they might indicate that your tuna is rancid or that you forgot to take your pills.'"

9 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. What about my tuna? by binaryseraph · · Score: 2

    ..they might indicate that your tuna is rancid...

    My god, man, where are you getting your tuna from?

    1. Re:What about my tuna? by rvw · · Score: 2

      ..they might indicate that your tuna is rancid...

      My god, man, where are you getting your tuna from?

      Don't mind him. He forgot to take his pills!

    2. Re:What about my tuna? by shadowrat · · Score: 2

      It's a truly lazy person who needs a microprocessor to detect rancid tuna.

    3. Re:What about my tuna? by mangu · · Score: 2

      It's a truly lazy person who needs a microprocessor to detect rancid tuna.

      Do they let you open each can in a supermarket shelf to find out which ones are rancid?

  2. Nice, but it's not properly "organic" by lixee · · Score: 2

    I haven't seen the device, but this is not an all-organic device. From TFA, at least part of the electrodes are made of gold. Moreover, they use pentacene as a semiconductor, which is probably deposited with CVD. The IEEE article is tagged with "printed electronics" and I seriously doubt they managed to make this using the soluble form of pentacene (i.e. TIPS-pentacene). Still, this is not to poop on the achevement. It's a nifty feat and congrats to the team that managed to make this.

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    1. Re:Nice, but it's not properly "organic" by Dragonslicer · · Score: 2

      Last I checked, gold was naturally-occurring - and therefore organic.

      I don't think they're trying to say it has 0 chemical or carbon footprint for manufacture, but that all the materials it is made of are natural/organic.

      I don't think they're using the "organic food" definition of organic, but the chemistry definition of organic.

  3. Applications? by Spykk · · Score: 2

    Microprocessors have become small enough that flexibility isn't necessary for the applications cited in the summary. I can't really think of any situations where a flexible microprocessor would be more appropriate than a suitably small one...

  4. Organic? No pesticides? by thomasdz · · Score: 2

    I like my semiconductors happy, free-run, pesticide free, and grown on certified hobby farms. I'm glad the official organic label has finally been applied.
    and no, I didn't RTFA

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  5. Sweet! by sv_libertarian · · Score: 2

    I've always wanted a can of tuna that can run CP/M