Silicon Circuits That Bend and Stretch

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."

Finally!

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!

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.

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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

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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..

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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...

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Yea, but airport security [schneier.com] might not like it.

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Screw that. I want my flexible girl robot [myspace.com] already.

Well, that's it.

Slashdot is lost. First it was the militant rednecks, and now the high school jocks from MySpace have joined the fray. They finally found a way to get revenge on us after having to haul our goods and pump our gas all these years. By trolling Slashdot. What

Oblig

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

Dry Rot

Yeah, when that rubber dry-rots, then what are you going to do?

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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

how durable is it

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?

Something I Keep Thinking About

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...

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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.

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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

This is great for miniaturisation...

...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

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 i

I know where we can use these...

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!!

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... 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 b

Bend ?

Does it mean that Uri Geller found a new job ?

Flexible cash

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

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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

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You'd still want to get rust-proofing. These Colecos'll rust up on ya' like =that= [snpp.com]

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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

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Do you really want your condom to tell you you're not good at it too? I mean, being chastised by your partner is one thing, but the condom too? You must be a glutton for punishment.