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."
Well that would be a great system, especially for DIY and prototype circuits. No more etch and hassling with masks. The FA is pretty light on details (which appears to be official Slashdot policy these days) and so I don't understand where the 'components' come from. Do you just glue your IC down to the paper / plastic / textile base or does this create the components de novo (rather unlikely for complicated things like an IC, but conceivable for resistors, caps, etc.)?
Might change the definition of an 'underwire bra' significantly.
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.
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).
THAT is exactly the point, IMO. We're at the threshold of not only being able do download pirated software, but ALSO being able to download the hardware to run it on.
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.
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
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.
I think it would be great if we can attach an electronic version of a printed document so that we can verify its authenticity using digital signatures.
Until the end of the 20th century, a major market for silver was photography. The digital camera and the inkjet printer have slowly destroyed that market and replaced it with digital imaging. Now there's a new use for the silver which, presumably, had digital imaging not come along would have been much more expensive. (Although color photography ends up more or less silver free and there was considerable recycling, there was still a steady consumption of silver, and as the photography market democratised, the amount of silver in use at a given time was steadily increasing.)
So, possibly time to start investing in silver? If they use it as stated, a lot of silver may bet get dumped into landfills as part of trash packaging.
Until the end of the 20th century, a major market for silver was photography. The digital camera and the inkjet printer have slowly destroyed that market and replaced it with digital imaging.
Yeah, thankfully we don't have to use silver ink in our inkjet printers. That would make the ink refills really expensive. Oh, wait...
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.
>>>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
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!
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.
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.
I know a guy who used to work at HP. He was an ink chemist, although not personally responsible for the prices you pay;-) He's a diehard electronics hobbyist, and he's been printing his own boards this way for several years now. I've seen some of his boards, and they seem to be very durable. And this was with an inkjet printer he hacked himself, with home-made ink (he won't tell me what's in it)
which will allow wearable electronics -- a T-shirt with a display, say, replacing a printed slogan for marketing or for showing support for a political candidate.
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
I see a use in wearables [bradleyrhodes.com], devices built into your clothes..
-------
Making (microsoft) ACPI not work with Linux..
"Foxconn.. have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX [ubuntuforums.org].
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"
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.
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.
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.
The bulk of servicing cost is labour, and when you're doing the labour, fixing stuff can still be cheaper.;-)
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
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
As a result, many electronic devices made today are effectively disposable. The cost involved to fix them just isn't justified. As an EE, I do try to repair my own devices if they are out of warranty coverage, but sometimes the effort required is just not worth it. It's far easier and cheaper to replace in many cases.
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
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.
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.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Might change the definition of an 'underwire bra' significantly.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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).
But there _are_ already printed circuit !! (Score:2)
.... or am I missing something??
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
"once the ink's affordable"...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Finally (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Digital Signatures and e-Commerce (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You forget that the digital version would probably be easier to fake. :)
The death of photography makes it possible (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
>>>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
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Parent
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?
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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!
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.
wearables .. (Score:2)
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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
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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