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Silver Pen Allows For Hand-Written Circuits

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the pen-is-mighter-than-the-soldering-gun dept.

Zothecula writes "People have been using pens to jot down their thoughts for thousands of years but now engineers at the University of Illinois have developed a silver-inked rollerball pen that allows users to jot down electrical circuits and interconnects on paper, wood and other surfaces. Looking just like a regular ballpoint pen, the pen's ink consists of a solution of real silver that dries to leave electrically conductive silver pathways. These pathways maintain their conductivity through multiple bends and folds of the paper, enabling users to personally fabricate low-cost, flexible and disposable electronic devices."

13 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Not slashdot too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These things have been around for decades, fuck knows why this is suddenly news.

    1. Re:Not slashdot too! by Anon-Admin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No kidding! Heck, 25 years ago My self and a friend used a felt tip one to draw a set of lines on a wooden fence. A set of nails and alligator clip wires and a little hacker engineering and we had the neighbors phone line on the window sill. Worked ok for about 2 weeks, provided it was not raining. Then it broke down enough that it did not work.

    2. Re:Not slashdot too! by Tx · · Score: 5, Informative

      The article fails to explain what's new here, a major failing since most every slashdotter will have heard of circuit repair pens. These guys apparently used silver nano-particles and hydroxyethyl cellulose to create a flexible conductor, presumably much more so than the circuit repair pens that have been around forever. I must admit I've never tried using a repair pen on something flexible, but I'm guessing it dries pretty rigid.

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    3. Re:Not slashdot too! by xded · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Original article here (sorry, no free version available). I find ridiculous that they provide (mostly self) references to existing art, but they fail to mention commercial felt-tip silver pens.

      By a quick look at the paper, their ink has a resistivity of 2*10^(-4) Ohm*cm (25 C print temperature) which is not so lower than the 5*10^(-4) Ohm*cm commercially available ink. They do reach lower resistivity, but with high temperature annealing, so it cannot be compared directly (and they fail to).

      Maybe their ink is more flexible, but again they fail to provide comparison with existing ink.

      Their ink has probably lower viscosity due to the use of nanoparticles (they are working between 1 and 10 Pa*s) and this probably allows for the use of rollerball pens, but if felt-tip pens are working fine with a most likely cheaper ink, why should I care?

      However they do manage to master the acronyms creation art, providing the catchy PoP shorthening for their groundbreaking pen-on-paper circuit drawing approach...

  2. Life immiates art once again. by chinton · · Score: 4, Informative

    It comes in handy when your man-animal may be spying to steal your teleportation secrets...

  3. Amazing!!!! by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

    They invented a product that has been available for over 20 years....

    http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/pens.html

    What's next from these ingenious companies?

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Amazing!!!! by chinton · · Score: 5, Funny

      Next week, graphite in a wooden cylinder that can make marks on pressed and dried wood pulp.

    2. Re:Amazing!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      And it gets better - graphite is an electrical conductor! Now we've gone full circle.

  4. What's next? I'll tell you what's next... by h1q · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's next from these ingenious companies?

    A patent of course.

  5. I am surprised by Osgeld · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They didn't claim to invent the fucking paper too

    as others have pointed out this has been around for decades, and you can make your own ghetto version using copper radiator repair solution

  6. Conductive tattoo ink by jdastrup · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's what I would like to see, let's have someone put that metal jewelry and ink to use, attach a battery to your nose ring, embed an LED in your face, other cool stuff.

  7. Prototyping with a resist pen by drussell · · Score: 3, Informative

    Prototyping wouldn't normally be done using using conductive pens. The hand drawn stuff was usually a resist pen on the actual copper-clad board, then etched.

  8. Re:But it's a Ball Point by bws111 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Which is probably why the article doesn't mention PCBs - it mentions paper, wood etc. The current felt pens work poorly on those surfaces, particularly if you flex them.