Slashdot Mirror
Liquid Metal Capsules Used To Make Self-Healing Electronics
MrSeb writes "A crack team of engineers at the University of Illinois has developed an electronic circuit that autonomously self-heals when its metal wires are broken. This self-healing system restores conductivity within 'mere microseconds,' which is apparently fast enough that operation can continue without interruption. The self-healing mechanism is delightfully simple: The engineers place a bunch of 10-micron (0.01mm) microcapsules along the length of a circuit. The microcapsules are full of liquid metal, a gallium-indium alloy, and if the circuit underneath cracks, so do the microcapsules (90% of the time, anyway — the tech isn't perfect yet!). The liquid metal oozes into the circuit board, restoring up to 99% conductivity, and everything continues as normal. This even works with multi-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs), such the motherboard in your computer, too. There's no word on whether this same technology could one day be used by Terminators to self-heal shotgun blasts to the face, but it certainly sounds quite similar. The immediate use-cases are in extreme environments (aerospace), and batteries (which can't be taken apart to fix), but long term we might one day buy motherboards with these self-healing microcapsules built in."
I don't know if I'd want to be on a crack team. I'm more of a coke team kind of guy.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
A crack engineering unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If your circuits have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.
Does not sound cheap.
Great, so we just need metric tons of gallium and indium, facilities to make it into a special alloy, then redesign all the circuit boards out there to be self-healing. Brilliant!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Dearest Jake,
Are you even trying any more? I know there haven't been a lot of stories that are easy to troll, but this one is kind of stretching it.
Sincerely,
The Department of Evolutionary Biology
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
hear come the T-1000's
I know it would be an alloy... but Gallium isn't such a great thing to be shipping around in airplanes, etc..watch this youtube video of gallium eating an aluminum can for an idea why.
The liquid metal oozes
Sounds a lot like gravity is the main mechanism for deploying the liquid, in which case any circuit that is not facing "Up" cannot utilize this technology otherwise the liquid will just pour whichever direction is down, which is not always toward the circuit... Or am I just understanding this concept incorrectly?
Ah yes, yet another ingenious solution to the wrong problem.
The main problem these days with PC boards is the exact opposite-- tin whiskers growing BETWEEN the traces, not with traces breaking down.
I once worked for a company that tried to get something like this to work. Wetting was a major problem. PCB traces are prone to oxidation anyway, and if they are in buried layers then they are prone to surface contamination from the epoxy. Although in theory cracks should be clean surfaces, the GaIn has to get there in the first place, and in doing so its own surface may be contaminated. Even a very thin layer of oxide or an organic monolayer may well be enough to prevent wetting. I suspect that this will succeed up to the point they try to make it work successfully in real circuit boards.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And the formulary used will cause our capacitors to expand and leak self-healing fluid all over the motherboard.
What happens when it breaks a second time? Then it's just as broken.
This kind of thing may help resist a sudden, one-time shock, but it won't do a thing to protect electronics from ongoing wear. Perhaps if there were a way of notifying the device that it had been broken so that it could quickly inform the user and void its own warranty then it would be more useful.
I wonder if this would provide protection against an EMP attack.
How do they prevent this from creating short circuits under stress?
Subject says it all. nuff said.
Any way to make this work to counter EMP (electromagnetic pulse) damage? Seems like having a heat activated repair mechanism triggered by the electon pulse would be easier to control than a mechanical one... but I'm only guessing. Would be a nice cheap way to help protect against a "lights out" attack without going back to using vacuum tubes...
While this has a certain cool factor it is pretty impractical. The chances of a copper trace failing due to shock or vibration are much smaller then the chances of the components that are soldered down failing. Copper is quite malleable. By the time you have deformed a PCB enough to destroy a trace you have probably cracked every surface mount part on the board.
I guess we'll be stuck with "PC Load Letter" forever now
Having this "failsafe" technology won't make any difference in most motherboard markets for one simple reason: it will cost more. A good parallel example: we all know the effect cheap capacitors have had on circuit failures. I have two LCD monitors at the school I administer fail in the last three months due to bad caps. There are plenty of good quality capacitors out there, but manufacturers don't use them when they cost $.05 or $.10 cents more a pop. Multiply that by the hundreds-of-thousands that are made yearly, and you save yourself tens of thousands of dollars.
Even if "self-healing" motherboards were made, and made effectively, the only market that would be willing to invest in the extra costs is the server market, where $100 more invested in redundance has the potential to save $10,000+ from lost business due to downtime.
The article states this technology is intended to automatically repair integrated circuits via "microcapsules, as small as 10 microns in diameter". Being charitable and going with 90 nm geometries (which we still used in our company last year - we are a bit slow) that's too large by a factor of 100. Interesting for PCBs, but not for integrated circuits.
The article also states that the technology would fix things "so fast that the user never knew there was a problem" and then explains that "a failure interrupts current for mere microseconds".
The summary corrupts that somewhat into the claim that "operation can continue without interruption". It's far too slow for that. Let's assume a rather slow 33 MHz bus - that gives us a clock period of 30 ns - so we'd miss at least 33 clock cycles in this scenario. This interruption might not be noticed by the user, if an error correcting protocol is used on the bus and the system retransmits. Otherwise you would get wrong data, and you have to assume that will be noticed sooner or later.
Interesting technology on PCBs or communication wires, I could see it being used in safety-critical applications. On integrated circuits it doesn't seem feasible. Basically you make the transistors and wires on ICs already as small as you can. To repair the wires on the IC you now need to insert capsules into the wires to do the automatic repair - so they would be way smaller than the wires. If you could manufacture these structures you'd make the wires smaller though and then you'd lose your ability to insert the microcapsules ... there is no way to win that race.
Finally has the technology to build the terminator from Terminator III (the "evil" one) .
44 comments already and no stupid T1000 jokes?
really? I thought he was going for a +5 funny myself. please tell me he wasn't trying to be serious.
Anything that adds cost to PCBs is bit of a no-no - I can't see how the "self-healing" benefit can factor into any PCB design (especially motherboards, which have the least layers possible to reduce cost) unless it is for some specialist application, where using such tech would warrant the extra cost involved.
Cool, but, lets face it - not going to be every day.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
The SI unit that equals 1000kg is a tonne. But the United States, in a fit of parochialism, has decided to rename it a "metric ton". To quote:
So, my little joke was in fact directed at the parent poster, who commented adversely on USA-centricism but used an Americanism for his unit of mass. Personally, I stick to the original SI.
Perhaps you should rename them "freedom tons".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Well, yes, but it's still a mind-numbingly lazy troll. We can't just fork out funny points for just anything!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
DoctorBob was better. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Basically, this is a technology where, if a short develops and a circuit is broken, it will immediately repair the circuit?
Are we sure that is a good thing? If there is a power problem, for example, couldn't that just cause a new short to happen somewhere more expensive to repair?
expandfairuse.org
When you have something like a telecommunications satellite that costs $250 million and has to last 15+ years without maintenance, you aren't looking at the cost of materials for making micro capsules.
You are paying upwards of $100 million / ton for the whole thing anyhow.
It might be useful but in my 30 years of dealing with electronic equipment; I have encountered way, way more faulty components than a burnt or "faulty" run. Of the times I have found a toasted run, there was always a toasted component to go along with it.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
My computer is so overclocked, I have a pipeline feeding this stuff in to keep repairing the motherboard!
Self healing tracks are intended to increase manufacturing yields. Reducing the amount of unusable PCBs makes the extra cost worthwhile.
Add liquid metal to a crack - what could possibly go wrong?
If you can't answer that and call yourself an engineer then you don't deserve the title.
Kristopeit still shows up occasionally.
Isn't it better to focus on margins and making sure the worst case scenario is not capable of degrading circuits? If margins are a problem or electron migration is a potential issue be more careful and size your components accordingly.
Even if the capsuls do their job they change the capacitance of the circut upon release right? 10-microns is hundreds of times the feature size of a modern process. So you don't know exactly what percent of the circut is restored you don't really have the capability to model the effect of worst case cap change when the "liquid metal" is arbitrarily released in one or more areas... and you expect the circut to keep functioning as it would normally with no sideffects? Maybe 15 years ago..but really on current and future processes?? Really?
I would rather a system fail outright then become dangerously unreliable. If you need component redundancy do it at the systems level or don't be lazy with your margins.
Improve the lithography and your algorithms if you want more reliability.
If they ever perfect this technology, it still won't make it into consumer products.
2 reasons:
First being that it would increase the cost of the product, which cuts into profit.
Second, they want you stuff to break and be unfixable, so you HAVE to buy a new one.
Best use of this idea: Headphones.
Be seeing you...
just a heavier crash, and the main board of the drone has problems. No idea what exactly breaks.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Shirley you jest.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
ur mum's face still shows up occasionally. cower in my shadow, feeb, etc. etc. etc.
kristopeit is a fucking boring troll, if a troll. so much so to the point that a brain-dead idiot could easily impersonate him. what a loser.
I am not the real Michael Kristopeit.
http://www.aliexpress.com/fm-store/708019/other-products.html
Welcome to Christmas, I'll gift! !
Christmas arrived, and to support my friends and my friends love to say thank you walked into my life, I will do my best to give you unlimited fun!
Christmas season, shop specially prepared small gifts, as long as the consumer in the shop, you can receive a small gift in Figure random sent, welcome all to buy.
Even if there is no snow Christmas can also be romantic, with the blessing even feel warm winter, Christmas Eve I wish: May the happiness and your life accompanied! Wish you a gift mountains!
http://www.aliexpress.com/fm-store/408333
Alibaba International Station ID: CN1002276145
Mobile: 13676944403 0371-55901796
About US
Q: Why are your prices so low, are these quality items and brand new?
A: YES, you pay the FACTORY PRICE!
We sell brand new items directly from factory in Asia. That is why our prices are so competitive.
To maintain quality control we do personally inspect for each item prior to shipment. All items are 100% new and inspected.
1.We guarantee 100% customer satisfaction. If your item is not as described or faulty when you receive it we will replace it for you with no additional charge.
2. Many sellers supply grey market, We guarantee that our products are brand new, official and first-class quality.
We want to thank you for your interest in our products. We are a new seller in this market, and it is true that you may have suspicions of our creditability, as with any new seller. However, we have the capacity to accept 10 orders per day at the moment and we can show you evidence of previous orders. If you need more proof, our suggestion is that you buy a sample product first, because the best way to verify the quality is when you get the product and are able to test it first-hand.
We hope to develop a strong, long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with you. To simplify things, you can buy the product from us and sell it directly to your customers - we are happy to ship the product to them directly.
If you think we can meet your requirements, please send us your order soon.