Silver Pen Allows For Hand-Written Circuits 161
Zothecula writes "People have been using pens to jot down their thoughts for thousands of years but now engineers at the University of Illinois have developed a silver-inked rollerball pen that allows users to jot down electrical circuits and interconnects on paper, wood and other surfaces. Looking just like a regular ballpoint pen, the pen's ink consists of a solution of real silver that dries to leave electrically conductive silver pathways. These pathways maintain their conductivity through multiple bends and folds of the paper, enabling users to personally fabricate low-cost, flexible and disposable electronic devices."
Life immiates art once again. (Score:5, Informative)
Amazing!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
They invented a product that has been available for over 20 years....
http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/pens.html [mgchemicals.com]
What's next from these ingenious companies?
Prototyping with a resist pen (Score:3, Informative)
Prototyping wouldn't normally be done using using conductive pens. The hand drawn stuff was usually a resist pen on the actual copper-clad board, then etched.
Re:Not slashdot too! (Score:5, Informative)
The article fails to explain what's new here, a major failing since most every slashdotter will have heard of circuit repair pens. These guys apparently used silver nano-particles and hydroxyethyl cellulose [physorg.com] to create a flexible conductor, presumably much more so than the circuit repair pens that have been around forever. I must admit I've never tried using a repair pen on something flexible, but I'm guessing it dries pretty rigid.
Re:But it's a Ball Point (Score:5, Informative)
Which is probably why the article doesn't mention PCBs - it mentions paper, wood etc. The current felt pens work poorly on those surfaces, particularly if you flex them.