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Ink-Jet Printing Custom-Designed Micro Circuits
Nerval's Lobster writes "Researchers have demonstrated a technique that produces inexpensive, functional electrical circuits that can be printed using about $300 worth of materials and equipment, including generic inkjet printers. The technique, developed by researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo and Microsoft Research, allows circuits to be printed onto irregularly-shaped materials or almost anything able to go through the paper feed on a printer designed for consumers. The chief advantage of the technique is the ability to print circuits using silver nanoparticle ink rather than relying on the thermal-bonding technique called sintering, which is time-consuming and can destroy delicate base materials. Researchers were able to print new circuits in about 60 seconds on almost any material that could go through the printer, though resin-covered paper, PET film and glossy photo paper worked best, while sheets of canvas cloth and anything magnetic were ineffective. Once printed using silver ink on flexible base material, the circuits can be attached to existing hardware by simply laying or taping them in place and making connections using conductive tape or conductive glue. (Soldering would destroy the underlying material.)"
flexible, odd shapes that are resin encased. Hell think about scaling the units up. You could print a god damn PCB layers instead of the current etching methods. Less Polution and hazardous chemicals needed.
Other possibilities are as they said, flexible plastics (shit used for most cheap keyboards/game controllers) and don't forget OLED displays. Same technique can be used to print them (already being tested).
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
So they managed to make a flexible printed circuit that can't stand soldering. Not too useful.
There are lots of ways to make printed circuits. Etching them photographically is cheap, simple, and produces consistent quality, so that's how it's done commercially. The iron-on transfer thing some hobbyists use isn't that reliable; a substantial number of boards will be defective. There are little desktop milling machines for making circuit boards.
Nobody does that much any more. Commercial board making services take in a file on line and send back a board by FedEx. Prototype board prices today start at $28, so there's not much incentive to do it yourself. You get good quality and plated-through holes to connect traces on opposite sides of the board. The plating-through process is a mess to do on a small-scale basis, but cheap in bulk.
Rapid prototyping IS a real application. And from there, extremely low runs of custom parts. This would have been useful to me before I sent for 10 PCBs that had two wires crossed, because the normal ink printed tests didn't show the problem, as I couldn't run electricity through them. All I could do was test mechanical compatibility.