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Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough 166
adeelarshad82 writes "Xerox announced a new silver ink that it's calling a breakthrough in printable electronics, a leading-edge concept that's generated a lot of discussion but few actual products to date. Why? Precisely because of the issues that Xerox claims to have addressed. In concept, printable electronics is just what it sounds like: using a printer, basically an inkjet, to print electronic circuits. If this can be done reliably, electronic devices can be printed for far less than current methods cost. One can also print the devices on a variety of new materials. The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic, to paper and cardboard, to fabric."
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Might change the definition of an 'underwire bra' significantly.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The article only mentions a reduction in silver ink printing temperature allowing for printing on plastics and cardboard, as well as functioning well in open air without being a clean room environment. That tells me it's primarily a PWB printer, no mention of semiconductors for ICs. Of course, it's possible, with enough resolution, to print a resistor or capacitor. However, I believe this technology will just produce the conductors, allowing you to solder any components (hopefully it is able to be soldered to) needed.
My question is if they can make multiple layer circuits. This should be pretty easy, just print a layer of insulator on top, with holes for any connections between layers. Also curious what their resolution and tolerances are. Obviously this isn't going to go into high-performance industrial applications any time soon, but if it's possible to make reasonable reliable circuits with tolerances to the mil (0.001"), DIYers will be able to make (and pay for!) circuits they never dreamed of doing before.
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Replying to myself, I know, but this link [xerox.com] states Xerox already has printable semiconductors and dielectrics. This breakthrough was for printable conductors of the same quality, meaning that the entire circuit could be printed: conductors, transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, inductors. The only additional components that would be needed would be those that require specialized materials (LEDs, for example).
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It isn't mentioned if the printing temperature is the same as the melting temperature. I'm assuming that the ink undergoes a chemical reaction after printing so that the printing temperature is lower than the melting point.
As you say, though, it's pretty safe to assume this is not going to produce circuitry for high temperature environments. However, being able to print low-temperature low-power boards is certainly useful. This technology isn't a catch-all that will replace standard PWBs, but for some a
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Prototyping was the first thing that popped into my head, but my brother, a chip designer, said to me once that most electronic circuits don't scale well (e.g. inductance may cause to much line noise), so prototyping may be limited. Not sure how you would do feedthroughs, either (seems like you'd still need to solder), so probably best for simple circuits like the mentioned RFID tags.
Yeah - but can they make a shirtcuff watch (Score:2)
That's all I want - a watch printed on my shirtcuff - they can put the read out on the cuff, and have the guts somewhere in the yoke where the fabric is thicker.
But there _are_ already printed circuit !! (Score:2)
.... or am I missing something??
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I'm guessing it will be a while; most new tech is pretty expensive. The original IBM PC was four or five thousand dollars, laser printers likewise were very high priced. I doubt these things will be affordable to normal people at first. It sounds more complex than a simple inkjet -- it has to melt silver, and somehow does it so you can print melted silver on plastic without melting the plastic. And previous printers needed a clean room to do it, this new tech doesn't.
But I could be wrong. TFA says the main
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It sounds like they're either using some sort of self-arranging alloy or a crystallizing compound which contains silver. FTFA:
The ink has also been reformulated so that the molecules precisely align themselves in the best configuration to conduct electricity.
It's a sure bet they're not actually melting silver, again FTFA:
According to Xerox, one of the key benefits of its technology is that it can print with silver ink at a much lower temperature than competing technologies...
You can't lower the melting point of a metal while still keeping it conductive without alloying it with something else (as in Field's metal [wikipedia.org]) or by coming up with a compound which is still a semiconductor, and by their description, sounds as if it crystallizes in such a way that the magnetic poles of its molecules are al
"once the ink's affordable"...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the bright side (Score:2)
Remember all the great things Xerox invented during its monopoly days?
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Speed and turnaround. If this was cheaply available to a home user or at least enthusiastic hobbyist (less cheap, more involved) you could still roll out a prototype and test with a turnaround of a few dozen a day. Further, you could continue reducing the design until you found the smallest space necessary without risking as much money. By its nature, it's most likely quite a bit cheaper once broadly available than PCB services given the difference in the quantity and toxicity of materials. No toxic was
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what it would change from PCB on demand services where i can order anything for few euros?
The ability to easily design and produce your own in secret.
More importantly, PCB on-demand services produce in the standard way, requiring mechanical routing on a large copper-plated board. There's a big setup cost, especially with drilling and tooling. Most PCB builders have a minimum order because of this.
Finally (Score:3, Funny)
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I can replace my racks with a three-ring binder!
It would seem viable until you realize that $99 printer has $4999.99 cartridges and the first one only comes 1% full.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Funny)
I can replace my racks with a three-ring binder!
It would seem viable until you realize that $99 printer has $4999.99 cartridges and the first one only comes 1% full.
I'm not expecting [gizmodo.com] anything else.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. That HP ink costs 70 times more than crude oil. This is why I bought a laserprinter rather than an inkjet. The initial cost is high, but the ink is your typical photocopier toner, and can last 5000 or more pages. After you pass the first 800 pages the laserprinter is actually cheaper overall.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of stuff costs 70x more than crude oil. What was surprising about that link was that HP ink costs twice as much as human blood.
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So we need to either :
- Package human blood into ink cartridges.
- Genetically create an animal that excretes HP ink.
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Go to your grocery store or pharmacy and look at the prices of things. 70x the price of crude works out to ~$1 per oz. Toothpaste costs more than that. Hell, cereal is only a third of that.
It is surprising, I think, to find that blood is less expensive than grape nuts, in addition to finding that printer ink should be more valuable than vital liquids.
Assuming the graph is correct, of course. I'm just commenting on someone else's graph. My back-of-the-envelope calculation of HP 15 ink comes to a factor
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Actually, I'm suprised that blood costs more than the 3M coolant.
I was given to understand that my employer would forcibly repossess a volume of blood equal to the coolant I spilled if I ever did it again:)
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I bought an HP 4100. I had to replace much of the maintenance items (my fault for not paying attention at purchase time), but even with all of that, I'll probably have $200 in it. One toner cartridge good for 30,000 pages. It comes with network support. XP talks to it without stupid drivers or software. And it's fast.
I also have an HP Laserjet 3. It's slow, but indestructible. And the price was right. It was free.
I'll never buy a new consumer grade printer again. It's ex-office printers for me from
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I thought that was werewolves.
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Digital Signatures and e-Commerce (Score:3, Interesting)
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You forget that the digital version would probably be easier to fake. :)
The death of photography makes it possible (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:The death of photography makes it possible (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, thankfully we don't have to use silver ink in our inkjet printers. That would make the ink refills really expensive. Oh, wait...
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As a gold and silver bug... (Score:2)
Silver already has plenty of industrial uses, however they are not what drive the price of silver.
The reason most people invest in gold and silver are different: They are a kind of money that no government can print,they are costly to mine. Compare that to the pieces of paper that come out of the printing press in a central bank, and especially the central bank that we have that just doubled their balance sheet, and it is easy to see that the amount of gold and silver remains relatively fixed to the amou
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This seems like kind of a non sequitur. All he said was: photography used to be a major market for silver, but digital cameras and inkjet have destroyed that part of the silver market, since digital cameras and inkjets do not require silver.
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>>>I think by photography, you mean photographic film
Well since you were nitpicking the original author's choice of words, then I will be nitpicky too. A digital image is not really a photograph ("light written" i.e. on paper). It still captures light, but it is not done on paper, but instead by a charge-coupled device (CCD). A digital image is a photoelectronic, not a photographic, and thus the OP was correct when he called the photograph a dead or dying art, which frees silver for use in other
Thanks (Score:2)
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Nowadays, people just seem to point and click endlessly hoping that one of the results will be good
That's how alot of photography was done even before digital cameras, I used to do alot of B&W photography with a film SLR and would process my own photos in a darkroom. I took hundreds even thousands of frames, I would go through about 100 shots to find 1 that I would consider presenting to someone else AFTER spending a few hours touching it up in the darkroom. There's nothing wrong with spamming shots with a camera and it's one of the first things I recommend to people who are starting out in photog
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httphttp://photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00Sg0n://photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00Sg0n
That market has diminished drastically. You are right that "photography as a whole" is doing fine if we are agreeing that both silver-based imaging and digital imaging are both "photography". There's a lot of wanking over the
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When they cease to call them graphics cards and stop using the term computer graphics you may indeed have a complaint. The art of designing and taking a "photograph" has moved from simply the optical/chemical world to the digital world of computer graphics. The definition of "graphic" itself is highly motile and depends on the context of the conversation. Graphic language simply means highly descriptive and not really to be
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I don't intend to argue about word definitions; my
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Using a digital camera technical isn't the process of photography. It is the still the art of photography but not the process.
Not too much hype in summary (Score:5, Interesting)
When I saw the sentence starting "The possibilities..." I mentally filled it in with "are endless".
I was surprised (and a little gratified) to see the summary actually enumerating some of the possibilities instead of hyping it as is normally done. That's good!
Wait for it (Score:5, Funny)
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Mods, he's very on topic!
It's like an (semi) unloseable copy of your invention. Espionage aside, if your copy is certified dated properly, it would be a neat defense in lawsuit claims.
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I can see it already:
"Hey, sorry people, the concert has been canceled, our power amplifier just died"
"But wait, I have an amplifier tattoo'd on my skin!"
*goes sitting in the back of the stage hooked up to the equipment, while other people are enjoying the concert*
Good for prototypes, good for tech (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to prototype on something like this. But I doubt if the actual output off an inkjet would work beyond the first time I sneeze over it.
Honestly, in some sense I got into software rather than electronics because it was so hard to experiment with electronics freely. This could lower that barrier for hobbyists & more importantly, kids. It needn't last through the weekend, but if it works and you can see it work, it's enough.
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Conductive Inkjet [conductiveinkjet.com] in the UK are going to be doing a prototyping service coming out in a month or so which should be cheaper than normal routes. But not the same as printing a circuit at home.
Re:Good for prototypes, good for tech (Score:4, Interesting)
Been done before (Score:2)
Spamming clothes (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article:
Great, just what I want: Having my clothes turned into a spamming device.
There are certainly countless examples of how wearable electronics could be put to good use, but the first thing they think of is advertising. Very telling, I'd say.
The actual Xerox link (Score:5, Informative)
Components? (Score:4, Insightful)
Being able to print the circuit is all well and good, but presumably it's literally just the underlying circuit and components still need to be attached? I'm guessing you can't just print a resistor, a transistor, an IC chip or something?
If I'm correct in this assumption, presumably this technology doesn't really open any new doors in terms of what can be created, only makes the process for testing and eventually producing circuit designs cheaper and possibly quicker?
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No, I believe that they are talking about actually printing circuits. I know they were talking about printing OLED displays - this would require printing LEDs. An LED is a diode and if you can print a diode you can print a transistor. Resistors, capacitors, and inductors would be easy compared to transistors.
The whole point of this process is for cheap, flexible, disposable electronics. If you have to use chips, the cost would probably increase as soldering chips onto a piece of plastic has to be har
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That really is quite cool then, if you can print a full blown working circuit onto any printable surface that really does open up a lot of doors for new technology.
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The ability to print semiconductors (diodes, LEDs, and transistors) does not necessarily translate to the ability to print resistors (semiconductors have a near-constant voltage drop regardless of current, very different from a resistor), capacitors (no way this thing has the resolution to print *that* much surface area, and you still need a dielectric for any decent capacitance), or inductors (resolution again, plus you won't get much unless you can coil the conductor). There will still be a need for surfa
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Resistors could be printed by using a semi-conductive compound. Adjust the width, length, and depth of the printed element to adjust the value.
Capacitors could be printed in multiple layers. First a conductive layer, then a dielectric layer, then a conductive layer. Repeat the process to produce a capacitor of the desired value. They have already developed the required dielectric compounds.
Inductors are obvious, but likely limited in value due to the difficulties in printing in three dimensions. I
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Re:Components? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there are long term research projects going on into other printable materials that can produce resistors, capacitors, and FET transistors that would be useful in building complete digital devices. You're never going to get the kind of densities available in silicon, however, you can stack many layers of plastic film, and create a three dimensional device that would yield serious computing possibilities. You might even be able mix optical and electronic technologies in a large device of this type. You could build custom flexible logic devices home, business, or play. You could build intelligence into machines and products that you never considered candidates for intelligence before. It would be a transformative technology.
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Now you mention it I do recall reading about the idea of printing multiple layers to produce 3D devices that are still essentially almost flat because of how thin the layers are, although I can't remember where from!
As you say, being able to print full blown working circuits would open up a lot of new doors!
Re:Components: Resistor (Score:2)
Paper + Electricity = Fire (Score:2)
I'm a long way from Einstein, but even I know that.
I admit, it does sound very cool; and maybe on plastic (or polymer) it might have some chance of working. Paper, cardboard, or fabrics however are not a good idea.
Hm. No. (Score:2)
It's going to be very hard to start a fire on the typical 1 to 5V potential used in everyday electronics. I don't suppose that kind of thing will be used for power electronic. And yeah, I know lithium batteries can easily start a fire but they don't need paper PCBs to do that.
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Open up some electronics sometime, or for that matter, dissect some batteries. What do they often use for insulation? Paper.
Heck, paper used to be used to insulate high voltage AC in appliances and homes.
It's not all that dangerous, especially for low-voltage use. For higher-current applications you probably want flame-retardant treatment on the paper to reduce the risk of combustion, but it really isn't a problem.
Even more definite no (Score:2)
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Not really. you must heat paper to 451f to get it to ignite. Back in the old days they even used cotton on house current wires for insulation it worked but wasn't as safe as what we have now.
If you are talking about high voltage, high power stuff then yea not the best idea. If you are talking about the power levels in most computers then it is fine.
If you can do it on say paper or fabric how about ceramic? That would be even safer than the PCB boards we use now as far as fire goes.
wearables .. (Score:2)
-------
Making (microsoft) ACPI not work with Linux
"Foxconn
The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation, causing weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems"
'You are
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Have you read Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End"?
How ridiculous, prior art, etc.. (Score:2)
There are dozens of patents, going back to 1940, for printing conductors on a surface.
IBM based their 360 line of computers on a set of circuit modules which had the conductors (probably silk-screen printed) onto a ceramic wafer.
So there is nothing remotely new about printing conductors. Or resistors.
You can't print semiconductors-- transistors, diodes, FETs or LEDS-- they have to be very pure crystalline solids with definite junctions, so that's a big roadblock.
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The problem is that to sinter "normal" silver particles you used to need extremely high temperatures, normal oven sintering would destroy paper and plastic substrates (although flash sintering with microwaves or high intensity strobes can still work). They managed to create 5 nm sized particle suspensions which can be sintered at much lower temperatures.
You seriously never heard of polymer semiconductors? (OLEDs ring a bell?)
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If you could do this on fabric maybe you could make a camouflage suite that has tiny optical sensors and oleds :)
Tinfoil hat inversion (Score:2)
If they can print circuits on fabric... (Score:2)
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Oh, they have. A friend of mine did her PhD on computationally-enhanced textiles. [treehugger.com]
Do-it-yourself rapid prototyping machinery is roughly in the same state that home desktop publishing was back in 1980. Fabrication devices like 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC routers, and soon robotic garment makers will eventually become cheap enough that you will likely have access to one (if not in your home, then perhaps at your school or local crazy artist co-op). The thing is, most people have such a consumption mentalit
prior art exists. (Score:2)
AT&T Western Electric printed the cards for many items, including the computers for the Safeguard ABM system and their class-4 phone switch cards, in the 1970s. sprayed silver ink.
no patent forrrrr YOU.
It's Already Been Available for Desktop Inkjets... (Score:3, Informative)
as water based ink and does not require sintering or secondary processing and works well on standard inkjet or copier paper:
http://www.methodedevelopment.com/whatsnew.aspx?newsitem=29 [methodedevelopment.com]
http://www.methodedevelopment.com/whatsnew.aspx?newsitem=30 [methodedevelopment.com]
Commercial inkjet systems for printing electronics on a wide range of materials has also been available for some time: http://www.onelabs.com/prntelec0000.htm [onelabs.com]
Multilayer conductive pcb traces including passive and active components are already being inkjet printed. The current geometries however for components are in the few micron range. A couple of decades behind current semiconductor processing but far ahead of current pcb fabrication techniques.
Uh-oh (Score:2)
I feel a disturbance in the force ... GPLv4.
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Why service it when you can just reprint it for pennies?
Re:Oh I can't wait. (Score:4, Informative)
Electronics are going to be even more of a pain ... to service.
I was under the assumption that with today's 7 layer PCBs and bewildering array of surface mount components (and not just the resisters, the ICs too) that the days of servicing electronics was long gone.
My Canon G7 died slightly over a year after purchase in that it simply wouldn't power up any more. The cost of servicing exceeded the value of the camera.
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Not just servicing, but hacking and such is going to be a lot more of a pain if the traces vaporize when you look at them sideways.
I'm not sure what this is marketed as, for prototyping? Fast prototypes would be nice. But the vast majority of electronics are mass produced stuff, where the physical cost of the PCB is a small portion of the overall circuitry, with components, labour, and R&D b
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I'm not sure what this is marketed as, for prototyping? Fast prototypes would be nice. But the vast majority of electronics are mass produced stuff, where the physical cost of the PCB is a small portion of the overall circuitry, with components, labour, and R&D being the real cost. I can't see printing traces of silver being cheaper than the existing methods. Maybe I'm missing something.
If it could be so much faster and cheaper to create a prototype, the barrier to entry for companies seeking to build a particular piece of electronic equipment would drop drastically. Right now you have to pay a hardware designer a lot of money, you have to minimise the number of prototypes you order because each one costs an arm and a leg and takes some time to produce. There's a reason why there are relatively few companies that do anything more sophisticated than silkscreen their name onto a reference
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Any electronics device *can* be serviced or repaired. The issue is cost and difficulty of the repair itself. In many cases it is simply too difficult to replace a failed component or too costly. In your camera example, it could be a component buried deep inside the camera on a small PCB which is not easily accessible. It may take a technician an hour or more to disassemble the camera into a few hundred pieces to get access to the failed component. That is certainly a more expensive operation than replacemen
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This i where our current (capatalist) system failes. (Not blaming capitalism per sé btw, but it has influenced our pricing and thinking). The reason repairs are not worth the trouble ar
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if only I was an EE...
.. with a soldering iron and an oscilloscope..
Re:Oh I can't wait. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not multilayer PCBs and SMD that makes electronics uneconomical to repair, it's the purchase price of a new article that does it. In the past, if your television failed, you got it repaired - because in 1979, a colour TV cost (in 2009 money) over £1000. Having a technician charge you £150 in today's money was worth it.
But when a digital camera costs £150, it's not worth spending £150 to get someone to fix it.
Surface mount components aren't all that difficult to rework with practise. Today, many electronics hobbyists work with SMD, personally I've made my own boards with 0.4mm pitch (that's 0.2mm between the pins) LQFPs, and 0603 chip capacitors/resistors etc (about 1/10th of the size of a grain of rice). Many hobbyists are working with leadless QFNs, and some masochists are using 0201 components (2/1000in by 1/1000th in). (For me 0603 is fine, it's small enough to be able to put where I need them, yet large enough I can assemble a board without a magnifying glass).
Printable PCBs would be the holy grail for homebrew PCBs. We've got close - some people have modified printers to print etch resist directly onto copper clad board, which you can then etch. The rest of us typcially use iron-on toner transfer (shiny paper through a laser printer, then ironed onto copper board with a clothes iron) or UV photo exposure methods.
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Components are easy to replace on a PWB, at least the first few times until the pads start to lift. I have done rework on 0402 package (0.04" x 0.02") resistors and capacitors using a hand soldering iron. Even finer and larger components can be repaired with a rework station [howardelectronics.com], using hot air to reflow the solder and suction cups to place/remove components. Of course, this is made simple due to the solder mask, which keeps the solder on the pads and pulls the components with it.
That said, if the PWB itself
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Well you could, you know, remove said electronics from said ass before servicing. Just a thought...
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Electronics are going to be even more of a pain in the ass to service.
When integrated circuits were first invented, engineers scoffed. "How would you replace a part in one?" not realizing how cheap the "parts" would be. This is the same thing. TFA says, for example, that today an RFID chip costs a dollar, while this tech would reduce the cost to a penny.
You don't service them any more than you repair a burned out light bulb.
I can't see it being terribly reliable either.
If TVs were a dollar each I wouldn't c
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I can't see it being terribly reliable either.
this is precisely one of the problems that this is designed to fix. Printing circuits from a printer is not new this is a better more reliable process.