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Technology Science

Silicon Circuits That Bend and Stretch 73

Posted by Soulskill from the one-size-fits-all dept.
Matty the Monkey brings us a story from the BBC about silicon chips which can bend, flex, and even stretch. Researchers have developed a method to create circuits just 1.5 microns thick, which can then be bonded to a type of rubber to allow a great degree of flexibility. Scientists and companies see uses for these circuits in products ranging from "electronic paper" to form-fitting sensor devices to advanced brain implants. From BBC News: "To create the foldable chips, these circuit layers are deposited on a polymer substrate which is bonded in turn to a temporary silicon base. Following the deposition of the circuits, the silicon base is discarded to reveal delicate slivers of circuitry held in plastic. These are then bonded to a piece of pre-strained rubber. When the strain is removed, the rubber snaps back into shape, causing the circuits on the surface to wrinkle accordingly."
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Silicon Circuits That Bend and Stretch More

Silicon Circuits That Bend and Stretch

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  • Finally! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Keen Anthony ( 762006 )
    This coupled with a flexible LCD screen, and I'll finally be able to have the line of t-shirts with animated graphics and slideshows I've been wanting.

    • Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ForestGrump ( 644805 ) on Friday March 28, 2008 @02:38AM (#22890918) Homepage Journal
      Just give them away for free and you'll have an army of walking billboards.

      Yep. That's right! People wear free shirts and give away free advertisement space. Imagine the annoyance/positive marketing impact with animated shirts!

      Grump

      Note: I am not responsible if people choose to boycott your company instead.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dedtr9 ( 1069932 )
        Great! People already wear shirts with huge logos all over them, and they seem to have a strange attraction to animated pictures. Can you imagine the consequences of having these in our clothing? Walking billboards, suggestive animated pictures, and several combinations of them. I'll make sure to charge for my add space.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nullav ( 1053766 )

        Note: I am not responsible if people choose to boycott your company instead.
        You could always give them primarily to homeless people and mask it as an act of charity. ...Though then there's the problem of having everyone associate your product/service with homeless people.
        • And also the problem of all the homeless people that get electrocuted from wearing your t-shirts. I don't think flexible batteries can provide enough power for this kind of stuff yet either, and you need to have a battery pack somewhere..

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dannkape ( 1195229 )
        Why give away free shirts? Seems to work plenty fine to charge people for the privilege of walking around with advertisment. At least it works for sporting equipment companies...

      • Note: I am not responsible if people choose to boycott your company instead.

        Boycott!? LMAO! A thing of the past. People nowadays are as complacent as if they were dead, but luckily for all the big corporations (and government), they're still able to spend money, and there's a funeral and death tax still ahead! Yay!

        Unless life gets really bad for everyone, as in SUVs and big screen TVs being luxury items for the super-rich, apart from small boycotts from special interest groups, there will never be another big boycott on anything. Ever. Mark my words.

      • If/when shirts like that come out, you know the first thing someone will do is hack it to run Linux.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by moderatorrater ( 1095745 )
      Yea, but airport security [schneier.com] might not like it.
      • Well, clearly in a case like that, you would wear a t-shirt that flashes "I am not a terrorist" in big letters.
    • Screw that. I want my flexible girl robot [myspace.com] already.
    • Forget the T-shirts, this product looks ready for....

      Digital Condoms!!!

      Express your adoration for your partner by putting his or her name, likeness or motto on one of our custom condoms... Think its as large as a Coke can? We can make those designs too! Make it do light shows, or resemble the vegas strip!! With a little Condom Magic(TM) you can make your Man-Cannon resemble a Howitzer!!

      Coming soon to a boutique near you!

  • Oblig (Score:2, Funny)

    by calebt3 ( 1098475 )
    I, for one, welcome back our (5.25") floppy overlords!

  • Waterproof? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by EdIII ( 1114411 ) *
    Rubber implies the possibility of being waterproof, or more likely, water resistant.

    That's pretty cool. For anybody that has ever had coffee spilled on a laptop this could be huge :)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by evanbd ( 210358 )

      The chips are already waterproof, as are the PCBs. The problem is the connections from chip to PCB, and to things off the PCB -- power connectors, memory sockets, etc. Keyboards and such are also a problem, not to mention CD drives or anything else with exposed moving parts.

      A waterproof laptop would be very nice, but this isn't all that relevant. Besides, I doubt we're talking about high-performance chips here anyway.

    • You'd still want to get rust-proofing. These Colecos'll rust up on ya' like =that= [snpp.com]
  • Imagine what we would be able to do with this...the possibilities are limitless!! Flexible pc's everywhere!!
    • you know where my brain went first...people seeking floppy frisbees lol. Then you'd need an imaging device though I suppose but at least it could process it lol.

  • Dry Rot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ScottBob ( 244972 ) on Friday March 28, 2008 @02:36AM (#22890904)
    Yeah, when that rubber dry-rots, then what are you going to do?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evanbd ( 210358 )

      Throw it away and buy a new one, like with any cheap plastic product, why?

      Besides, if it's expensive enough for that to be a bad option, there are things like silicone rubbers that don't dry rot. I have no idea if this technique works on those, but I'm guessing it will.

  • And the envious non-enhanced smaller brained nerds say, "Those brains are so fake".

    • And the envious non-enhanced smaller brained nerds say, "Those brains are so fake".

      Your argument is flawed, please come in for a repair so we can update your firmware, there is a known bug in the logical processing unit.

      You don't want to know about the conclusions it has generated and the blind following because of the inability to grasp the concepts of the "enchanted, superiour" brain.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dgun ( 1056422 )

        Your argument is flawed, please come in for a repair so we can update your firmware, there is a known bug in the logical processing unit.

        Sure, flop and bounce your fake brains around. When you get older and the rest of your body is fat and flabby, you don't think you'll look strange with big nice full and firm brains?

  • how durable is it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wizardforce ( 1005805 ) on Friday March 28, 2008 @02:48AM (#22890978) Journal
    How does it do under varying thermal conditions? chemicals? prolonged use? is it stretchable? how do the interconnects do being bent back on forth hundreds or even thousands of times?
  • Now we can finally fix that pesky Xbox 360 problem!

  • to advanced brain implants
    Stroggification?

  • Something I Keep Thinking About (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Whuffo ( 1043790 ) on Friday March 28, 2008 @03:28AM (#22891118) Homepage Journal
    Many of the developments in display technology and "printed" electronics are leading to a future that I've been thinking about. It's almost a certainty, actually.

    Imagine a world where every flat surface (that's not a window) is a electronic display. Probably not in homes right away; amusement parks / Las Vegas would be the first to implement it, followed by malls and other areas where large numbers of people visit.

    Over time, the displays would spread to cover almost every surface. It's tempting to imagine being able to change the wallpaper in your living room as easily as you can change the wallpaper on your computer desktop.

    But what it'll more likely be is advertising everywhere you look. Like Minority Report, but much more so. With low power displays and cheaply printed electronics - it'll be a quite different world.

    The very first applications will be ones where small display size and high cost are justified. Like the labels on packages facing retail consumers. Minority Report got this one wrong; the package would put on it's "song and dance" for potential customers. Once it was purchased and taken home it'd probably quiet down via programming (or dead batteries).

    Think about a classroom where the "blackboard" is an electronic display; not just the instructor's scribblings but video, too. How about a large screen TV you unroll and stick to your living room wall?

    The future will be made of inventions like this one. How that future evolves will be determined by who wants to spend the money to develop / implement it. I can hardly wait until I can chuck Nerf balls at the guys running around on my walls...

    • Just so long as you keep it out of universities [slashdot.org] ;-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MORB ( 793798 )
      As a corollary to your prediction, I see a future of those ubiquitous ad displays being targeted by hackers and goatse getting displayed all over the place.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hcdejong ( 561314 )
      Such a world would be bloody annoying, to the point where I'd invest in a portable EMP generator so I could scramble/fry any nearby screens. I'm getting information overload as it is.
      Also, covering everything in displays would come at a huge cost. Even if the displays are cheap, they'll inevitably use electricity. I don't look forward to having a power bill for my wallpaper.
      • Not neccessarily... perhaps by the time they figure this rubbery circuitry out, they will have some sort of substrate that derives its energy from various gases in the air, or some other way of harvesting the naturally, and man-made electrical fields around the earth/home... that unto itself would be interesting enough (if/when possible) it would be like having a mood-wallpaper... for your home...

        "i'll watch TV until that area of the wall turns red"

        would also be able to see where the powerlines are in your

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bkr1_2k ( 237627 )
      Why would packaging quiet down once it's purchased? If it gets to that point, it will have some cheap sensor that determines how much is left and notify you that you need to go out and purchase more of the product. Hell, your house will have a built in computer that builds a shopping list for you and prints it out, or sends it to your mobile device so you can shop. Better yet, it will (upon your request) send it directly to the store, and someone will deliver the goods to your home.

      I don't see that happe

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by TheBAFH ( 68624 )

      But what it'll more likely be is advertising everywhere you look. Like Minority Report, but much more so. With low power displays and cheaply printed electronics - it'll be a quite different world.
      ... full of mentally ill people. Information overload [wikipedia.org] anyone?

  • This is great for miniaturisation... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ed_1024 ( 744566 ) on Friday March 28, 2008 @04:40AM (#22891360)
    ...because you can stretch your rubber wafer out, put a 45nm circuit on it, let go and there you have a 20nm one at no extra cost!

    *checks for patents*

  • Silicon processes (Score:2, Interesting)

    by problemchild ( 143094 )
    I understand that many of the enhancements made by using new processes are actually mute until they get stupid thin since they are actually making flexible chips using merely normal proceses with the back etched as well and getting very good results with it. Maybe a whole new section of flexible MEMS like sensors will be released based on convention etching as well ?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpZLOCNfrI [youtube.com]

  • silicon chips which can bend, flex, and even stretch, and can then be bonded to a type of rubber... and are just just 1.5 microns thick
    ... and no-one has mentioned fitting them to condoms yet? Seriously, the potential is unlimited!!

    • ... and no-one has mentioned fitting them to condoms yet? Seriously, the potential is unlimited!!

      Everyone knows that a man has a binary cerebral-setup where the lower brain locks out the other in certain situations.

      Now you want to "enhance" that lower brain with silicon chips, and give it an actual intelligence?
      That's worse then zombies; men, with massive erections wandering around with an empty void drooling expressing with penisses taking control over the world.

      I suspect you have a very dark agency,

  • Does it mean that Uri Geller found a new job ?

  • The United States Treasury will implement this into our denominations quickly. This will allow the dollar to stretch to cover any government spending; and include digital signatures in every bill to thwart counterfeiting. Also, this will make the cash more versatile. Authorized agents of the Treasury, say banks with financial issues, could reconfigure the denomination of the dollars on deposit in their institution -- save all that hassle of having the government bail them out. Keep track of the latest actio

  • nuf said.
    • Complete with animations of your choice! Make mine the Enteprise D firing a photon torpedo! Ensign, take us into the Verticle Smile Nebula, full impulse! Okay, I'm good. Had to get that out of my system.
  • ...but do they lift and separate?

  • Squish (Score:2, Funny)

    by antikaos ( 1166401 )
    Does that mean I'll be able to buy a new PCI-E video card and just squish it into my PCMCIA slot? Will there be drivers for that?
  • This is too little too late. Just look a few articles above and you'll see that silicon will be dead in 4 years, having reached its limits. This isn't going to save it.
  • So first we hear about the chips bending and stretching, next we hear that silicon chips have died ... coincidence?

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