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Technology

Electronics As Plastics 78

Posted by Hemos from the new-age-coming-soon dept.
WillSeattle writes: "Well, what goes around comes around. According to a New York Times article (free registration required), 21st century electronics may be based on plastic and other carbon-based molecules, or organic chemicals. "
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Electronics As Plastics More

Electronics As Plastics

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  • Organic solutions don't surprise me. There was a bacteria-based RAM solution I read about a while back -- light "froze" the bacteria into different positions that were readable from subsequent light passes. Kind of like a CD-ROM.

    I also heard about a light-crystal RAM solution that was pretty impressive. It used multiple layers to push up to a terrabyte into a piece of crystal. Very nice.

  • Nobel Prize (Score:4)

    by Grant Elliott ( 132633 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @04:59PM (#697936)
    A Nobel Prize is being awarded to a Physicist for his work (in the 70's) in plastic electronics. Evidently, most of his work is just now coming into use and shows great potential for future applications.
  • Plus I don't want some nasty lab technician dumbing a bacterophage into my computer and making me buy new hardware.

  • hehe (Score:1)

    by dizee ( 143832 )
    Gives a whole new meaning to viruses, eh? Not only will your data be screwed, but your whole computer is gonna die!

    Mike

    "I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
  • Tech Support: Hello. Tech support. How can I help?
    Customer: I think my computer's dead.
    Tech Support: Is it plugged into the wall?
    Customer: No, I mean dead. I left for a week without feeding it. I can smell the decaying flesh.
    Tech Support: Sorry, our warranty doesn't cover neglect.

  • Re:Wow. (Score:4)

    by ottffssent ( 18387 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:04PM (#697940)
    This is mentioned every time a NYT article comes up, but there *IS* a no-registration-required site. Instead of www.nytimes... use partners.nytimes...

    HERE'S THE ARTICLE [nytimes.com] without registration crap.
  • Eventually we will run out of petroleum and so the future of these circut designs could be in doubt. Also do we really want fluctuating oil prices effecting computer prices as well (at least directly)?
  • If slashdot knows of it's existence why force people to see the registration page?
  • some bits of information: polyacetylene which is basically the material the nobel prize was won for has a conductivity of about 10^4... while gold/sliver copper is only 100 times that... pretty good the polyparaphenylenes and doped polyparapheynylenes (sulfide/vinylene) have a reflective appearance which means their band gap is in the infra red which means they absorb the particular electro magnetic radiation which radar uses - this was used as a coating for the B2
  • "Well, what goes around comes around. According to a New York Times article (free registration required), 21st century electronics may be based on plastic and other carbon-based molecules, or Organic Chemicals."

    Scientists have been moving in this direction for a long time. This is not really news. The problem with creating things out of organics, is that organic things either decay or die or whatever. Granted, plastic, metal, glass and ceramic wear down in some fashion or another, but can be much more durable than organic material (for machinery). How do they intend to solve this problem? I don't see ordering replacement parts every few months, unless they're going to sell these parts like disposable contacts, where we get a year's supply at a time.
  • Organic semiconductors look like a classic disruptive technology (see "The Innovator's Dilemna".)

    They are bigger and slower than Si- or Ge-based semiconductors. Indeed, their most appealing attribute-flexibility-is totally irrelevant to the giants of silicon. At present, organic semiconductors have no market (judging by sales... the potential is huge), but will very likely establish a new market, and flourish within it.

    For all the reasons so eloquently explained in "Dilemna", the established semiconductor companies will have difficulty entering such a small, new market. This leaves the field open for new entrants to dominate the market for organic semiconductors. If they can establish a steep improvement trajectory, then they might be able to move upmarket in only a few years.

    This should be interesting to watch. The real test of a descriptive model, such as "Dilemna", comes when you use it predictively. Otherwise, you can only explain situations post hoc.

  • I guess it's because: 1) We'll run out of it eventually; 2) Organics may end up being cheaper and/or better

    Really though, it's kind of hard for me to tell whether they're doing this because they really think it's important or just because they want to see if they can.

  • Plastic eh.....

    I wonder how long before Apple comes out with the iResistor and the iC Circuit, the chips you can see through.
  • Ok imagine a future windows setup mixed with these. Mission critical will mean a week of uptime at a stretch if you are lucky. This will only increase instability and decrease quality control and assurance. Why not make things last and make many of them?
  • Well I wouldn't be suprised if organic pieces of computers thrive, which I am sure they will, but not to soon... maybe when I am old and crippled I will see a gross mess that looks like a brain sitting on a processor... but thats not true... It wouldn't be a mess casue that is organic in the wrong sense... It is just bacteria, or some little particle of life... But it still has possibliities... remember in biology classes... 1 cell organisms have a lot of stuff packed into them. And single cells can harnessed.

  • WOO INVISIBLE COMPUTERS (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    OW, I STUBBED MY TOE ON THE COMPUTER, I WISH IT WASN'T SEE THROUGH

    WOOOOOOOO [slashdot.org]

  • Gives a whole new meaning to viruses, eh? Not only will your data be screwed, but your whole computer is gonna die!
    Organic != alive.


    Organic == carbon containing compound.

    Petrol is organic. You don't see that being 'killed' by viruses.
  • Agreed. Instead of silicon, which is slightly overabundant (though people might get annoyed when their beaches are ripped up to be turned into computers), let's move to one of the most controversial non-renewable resources we have! I don't understand why people keep researching to find more uses for petroleum--it's not like we need to get rid of some giant surplus!

    ~=Keelor

  • run out of silicon? before carbon? You really think so? I thought it was one of the most abundant elements on earth(or at least the crust).
  • You get beyond a certain limit and the cell cannot conduct proper membrane transport operations and will die.
  • We'll run out of it eventually? Why? Are the beaches disappearing?

    Point two is well-taken, though. Organics may well be faster.




  • If you read the article, they specifically say that by 'organic chemicals' they mean plastic...and it is so cheap that it probably is disposable.
  • Here is a really good article on discovery.com that I posted on my site the other day. neurocomputers are cool. [discover.com] I'm quite excited to see where it all goes. The next many years are going to be a exciting ride.... My site is here [jonsnews.com]. Its just all the cool links and stuff that I find everyday.
  • Also I thought it was the case that some plastics are impossible to recycle making the case even worse than that. I think some of the polyeurathane varieties have that problem right?
  • "I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer." --Homer Simpson Beer is not sweet. It does not even smell sweet. Honey is sweet. Bear smells more like sweat. IMHO.

  • Re:What's exactly so wrong with silicon? (Score:5)

    by dragonfly_blue ( 101697 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:25PM (#697960) Homepage
    I can think of at least three reasons why people would be interested in a plastic-electronics composite.

    • You can make the case for some pretty interesting display technologies if the plastic were flexible enough. For example, I could use a 15" flat display that folded into my Palm.

    • Wearable computing would benefit greatly if manufacturers were able to sew plastic "chipsets" directly into your clothing.

    • I would imagine that some flexibility will be required if any progress is going to be made towards embedded cybernetics. Consider ligaments and cartiledge, for example, which bear a great deal of resemblence to plastics in their behaviors.

    Anyway, I personally excited about the first one. it would really fantastic to be able to pull down a 38" screen a la old movie projector screens.
  • If a molecule contains carbon it is organic

    Plastics contain carbon => Plastics are organic

    --
  • The term "organic" in chemistry refers to any mollecule that has a carbon atom in it, or any with a carbon structure. This is somewhat counter intutive to what most people think when they say "organic" and think alive.

  • Re:Relaince on petroleum a rather bad idea (Score:4)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:33PM (#697963)
    And who says Plastics has to be based on petro?

    Plants as plastic producer [sciencedaily.com]
    Plants projected as fuel replacement [sciencedaily.com]

    In short:Chemists have known for decades how to alter the hydrocarbon chains in petroleum through processes known as cracking and reforming. Shortened hydrocarbon chains are used as solvent bases for paints and chemicals. Longer chains - as many as 200 hydrocarbons - are known as plastics. But these products also can be made from plants.

    What is more responsible, from an enviromental POV? A process where you take a slice of copper, remove what you do not want with chemicals and use other chemicals to clean it, and have a product of metal, glass fibers, and epoxies, or a product based on a plastic that is broken down over time with common soil bacteria?

    The push is on in the EU to make electronics re-cycable by forcing the manufactors to take back their items and re-use/re-cycle them.

    Plant based plastics just might allow a 'compostable VCR', instead of the 'throwaway VCR'.
  • If slashdot knows of it's existence why force people to see the registration page?
    Probably because it's legally ambiguous.

    According to NY Times' linking page [nytimes.com]:
    Linking to Articles

    You may link to any article that you can locate in a search of our site. If the article does not come up in a search of our site, it means that it is no longer available for linking.
    Since the 'partners' site doesn't show up on their search engine, this probably means they don't want links to it.

    Then again it doesn't specify their search engine, so if you can find a link on Google [google.com] (search for sites related to partners.nytimes.com and you get a link right to the partners home page... I'd copy the link but Slashdot keeps mangling it) or whatever, maybe that makes it alright :-P

    The legalese [nytimes.com] doesn't seem to properly cover it either.

    What it boils down to is Slashdot don't want to be sued.
  • There is already a see-through iResistor.

    It is called an air gap.
  • Someone should patent that idea. Nuf Said.
  • Bear smells more like sweat. IMHO.
    Grizzly or polar?

    Can't say I've ever sniffed a bear.
  • What if the bacteria in the RAM module died? That would bring a whole new meaning to the term bit rot!
  • So do I. You ain't gettin my personal info, you dirty site! Opress the man.. read the article with no registration [nytimes.com]!


    ------------
    CitizenC
  • Please note that the mouse currently attached to your computer is organic, as is your keyboard, and the outer covering of the case.

    So is a Formica counter top, your wood floor, the alcohol you've been ingesting way too much of and the oil in the sump of your car.
  • Hey there :) Guess how much of the world's petroleum output goes towards making plastics. Just guess. Look at all the plastic around you. Must be a fair chunk, eh? :) Nope. 5% of petroleum produced is used to make plastics. Not a whole lot. Anyways, plastics arn't just made by petroleum, there are quite a number of plants that have been engineered to produce plastic. A good example is a plant some people made that is used for some milk containers :)
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • The American Chemistry Society has an article on the front page of Chemical & Engineering News [acs.org] titled Electrifying Plastics [acs.org]. It discusses the research which led to the Nobel prize for two chemists and a physicist, and laid the foundation for organic electronics. At the moment, the article is publically accessible. As a side note for Hemos, the cover story is on nanotechnology [acs.org], and covers the issues in some detail a general form.
  • Uhm, organic in this context just means that they contain carbon, not that they are from actual organisms. This is the old chemistry sense of the term that divides everything up into organic, carbon containing substances, and inorganic, encompassing everything else. Plastics are almost entirely organic compounds of one form or another, as well as most synthetic (and natural) fibers, petroliates, and Twinkies. And before I read it further down, could we make a Beowulf cluster out of smart Legos?
  • Oh right... wait no, silicon isn't the conductor... there must be something else in electronics... oh yeah, metal. Metals can be exhausted, although it would take an incredible shortage to make us unablle to provide the teeny amounts its required for electronics. One thing worth considering is that biological solutions might be more environmentally friendly then traditional systems, as chemicals like hydrofluoric acid are used in electronics production.

    Conversely, organic solutions might be less environmentally friendly, like the plastics or oil industries, who both deal in organic compounds.

  • Reminds me of gallium arsenide... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a professor of mine used to say, "gallium arsenide has been The Technology of The Future for the last 30 years ...". And this guy knew what he was talking about : he gave the courses on GaAs process ...

    The point is that, each time a new technology has threatened silicon's hegemony with a slight increase of performance, convenience, etc, it has been beaten flat dead in a matter of months. Each time a GaAs buff announced a new milestone for transistor speed, some guy in Japan came 3 month later with a Si transistor 30% faster.

    It's just that the investement and know-how in silicon process is so huge, so enormous. There's a huge incentive and a huge abitlity to push this process farther each time a contender shows up. Even more, not only silicon wins all the time, but even analog functions that used to require special process increasingly move towards standard digital process. Even the hotest new new thing in town, silicon-germanium, kowtows to this truth. Its most important asset is that it is 100% compatible with silicon process.

    So well, yeah, may be, one of those days.

    News of the death of silicon have always been greatly exagerated...

  • As long as you don't include elements (less carbon) and most compounds and in your definition of 'everything'.

    --
  • If this organic chemistry/plastic tech was taken to the limit, what you might get is a single, nearly featureless plastic shape, molded to your personal taste. There might be a connection for a battery, some keys and ports, but otherwise the thing is probably featureless.

    All the plastics in the device look alike (maybe different colors), but each servs different purposes. One plastic could produce a laser/light for the screen, one plastic provides the computing capability. A magnetic plastic provides memory. They even have plastics that act as solar panels, so maybe it wouldn't need to have batteries replaced so often.

    Now try to reverse engineer this thing.

    Go ahead. Find the wires. Can't see anything, because everything is the same kind of semi-opaque color?

    You probably can't even open it up because the device was extruded and baked, not etched on circuit boards. And it's definitely not meant to be modified or upgraded, but just thrown away, because once these things can be mass produced they are going to be really damn cheap.

    This is a computer company's dream come true: disposable computers. It is also a boon to the consumer's pocketbook. Still, the hardware nerds will have to stay on their toes to keep the technology open-source.

  • Doesn't this remind you of "The Graduate"? (Score:3)

    by Paul Maud'Dib ( 135044 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:52PM (#697978) Homepage
    Doesn't this title remind you of the classic film, and the time that inspired it, "The Graduate"? "Plastics, kid, that's where all the money is; I'm telling you!"

    In a similar way, electronics are the plastics of today. They've been the holy grail of investors for the past decade as well as the dream job of many of today's youth. Perhaps a similar conclusion will be drawn about electronics, thirty years from now. Today if an 18 year old told their parents they weren't going to college but would instead start off at $20 an hour at a start up many, but not all, parents would be happy. And yet in 30 years, when a large portion of the American economy will probably be dedicated to creating 'virtual' products (Be it through actual coding or through content generation) will it be the same 'glamour job' that it is today? One of my History Profs continually reminds us that at the beginning of the century Auto-mechanics were looked upon as 'glamour jobs.' Perhaps a similar effect will occur with computers.

    Sorry if this drifted off topic...I just liked the graduate reference and kept going!
  • I've long thought that the eventual method of production of ultra-miniaturized electronics (if they still qualify for that name) will be to essentially have them grow themselves. I have a great deal of respect for our engineer's ability to get ever-smaller semiconductor feature sizes out of a given frequency of light, but the present system of using ever-decreasing wavelengths will hit the wall before it reaches the molecular level, IMO. Even though we can probably get to these sizes using direct-write electron beams, I don't see this as being viable for mass-production, since it would take a looong time to expose an entire wafer. I think some sort of self-producing system is where we'll end up, and it's encouraging to see these advances being made in organic substances.
  • "Plant based plastics just might allow a 'compostable VCR', instead of the 'throwaway VCR'."

    I'm not a chemist, but its my understanding that plastic is plastic just the same as a methane fuel from cannabis (Whoooo CANNABIS!) is methane all the same.

    There's definately a need for environmentally responsible production of everyday items - but we can't ignore that they are still destructive once there lifetime is up. Recycling is good, but its also just another form of 'toss it and forget it'.

    Recycling costs resources and takes its toll on the environment and the air we breath just the same. I've heard speculation that for certain metals and/or plastics recycling involves more resources and pollution than mining and production. That's just a rumour.

  • Proteins can build a living being, why not a processor?

    -----------
  • You should really try something other than Coors Lite or Milwaukee's Beast sometime...
  • Even if no new petroleum is discovered from tomorrow on, and we have no other way to make plastic from any other source, we still have enough proven reserves at current expected rates of increase in use to last fifty years. Given that the silicon chip is less than 50 years old, I don't think a minimum life of 50 years for plastic chips is something to worry about.

    And, given that the quantity of plastic added to computers would be significantly less than the plastic that already ships with computers, the extra price volatility is fairly small.

  • organic chemicals aren't what you think they are (Score:4)

    by cjmilne ( 38848 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @08:02PM (#697984)
    "organic" chemicals are not chemicals made by mother nature & sold in your health food store. they're not bacteria or any other biological system, including proteins. organic chemicals are exactly what the topic said : carbon based molecules. anything made of solely carbon, nitrogen, oxygen & hydrogen is generally considered organic. this would be as opposed to inorganic chemicals which contain metals, non-metals (like silicon) or either of the lanthanides or actinides.

    when this article refers to organic chemicals it means stuff made in a lab by chemists & includes, as was mentioned previously, polymers, plastics etc.

    the reason these systems are so interesting is their versatility. bell labs [bell-labs.com], uh sorry, lucent [lucent.com] scientists recently showed some really neat behaviour [bell-labs.com] in the anthracene/tetracene family (as in mothballs) including lasing (albeit at low temperatures, but you've got to cool most lasers anyways) & superconductivity. they've managed to build field-effect transistors out of single crystals of pentacene. all very cool stuff & some of it came out recently in either PRL or nature, ok now i can tell you it's science [sciencemag.org]. if you do an authour search for batlogg you'll get a chronological list of what they've been up to. i will attempt to link the search results here [sciencemag.org] (fingers crossed). you should be able to read the abstracts at least.

    hope this clears up why organic chemicals have nothing to do with the organic world & why the NY times is so excited about organics.

    chris
  • Farm plants can't replace petroleum for fuel, despite your second link. Even genemod plants that produce triple of the oil of current maximum oil producers, planted on every acre of arable land on Earth, could only replace half the current demand for diesel. If you then extract ethanol and methanol by fermenting the remains and make every gas engine run on those perfectly, you still can't replace demand for gasoline. At best, you'll be extending current petroleum reserves another fifty to a hundred years, then have a massive fuel crunch.

    Now, oily algae do have potential, because they can be harvested multiple times per year. The technology is immature, but at least it has the possibility of working.
  • Doesn't this title remind you of the classic film, and the time that inspired it, "The Graduate"? "Plastics, kid, that's where all the money is; I'm telling you!"

    That was why I gave it that title.

    And I think you've got a good point - plastics is the electronics of today in a lot of ways, especially now that design and form are becoming important.

  • You probably can't even open it up because the device was extruded and baked, not etched on circuit boards. And it's definitely not meant to be modified or upgraded, but just thrown away, because once these things can be mass produced they are going to be really damn cheap.

    I think most will have interfaces, and probably will have modules to allow certain things to be upgraded by replacing or adding new modules.

    This is a computer company's dream come true: disposable computers. It is also a boon to the consumer's pocketbook. Still, the hardware nerds will have to stay on their toes to keep the technology open-source.

    These are the scary parts - if it's disposable will it biodegrade (maybe pulltabs with biodecompositive agents hidden inside) or choke our dumps forever? And if it's a single unit, will this mean monopolies will keep the bio code out of the open source movement's hands?

    If patents continue to expand without checks, this could be the case.

  • Got me. It was submitted by 1pm P.S.T. and didn't show up within four hours of recording that it was accepted. They must have some kind of publication aging queue for stories.

    [valid question - I submitted it and so know the answer to the time issue - Will]

  • Think about the quantities of petroleum that would be used in electronics. The box of styrofoam peanuts your device is shipped it will likely have several thousand times the petroleum in the device itself will have. The price of petroleum used could never cost more than a fraction of a cent.

    By the way, we'll never *run out* of petroleum or virtually anything else. As the supply decreases, the price increases and alternatives become more attractive. And there are tons of alternatives to petroleum for making plastics, as others have pointed out.

    Cheers!

    -Bruce
  • Can I have LED paint? It would be nifty to dip a brush in a bucket of goo, paint a stroke, apply a voltage across it, and have the paint emit light a la an LED. I have no idea if this is possible (I think I get a C in electronics, generally), but from all that talk of using inkjets to paint on circuits, why not? The only problem I can envisage is polarity, but then I'm not even sure whether these things are fussy about that. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
  • Bush got higher grades at Yale while partying than Al Gore got at Harvard while being his stiff self.

    What an urban legend. Bush was shooting crack and barely getting a straight C all through Yale. His father had to get him out of expulsion a couple of times.

  • Most plastics are derived from components in petrol. Wonder if these advances will drive up the value or cost of gas. Gallon of gas or future advanced thing-a-ma-jig...hmmm...
  • I read the title "Electronics as Plastics" and thought of something completely different.

    Now, instead of "Son... Here's a point of advice. If you want to be successful, get into plastics!" we have, "If you want to be successful, learn computers."
  • Running out of silicon isn't an issue. Hitting the limits of what we can do with it is. Although I've read some neat stuff recently that IBM or someone was doing to print much smaller silicon stuff. Still, it'll run out eventually.
  • Organic solutions are one thing (that pretty much just means carbon-based doesn't it?) But I'd be pretty surprised if *living* organic material ended up it wide commercial use.

    Someone call PETA!

    -Bruce
  • Apparently these guys [americanin...tional.com] sell some tape that does that. The RX7 spy car guy [magicnet.net] detailed his car with the stuff. Looks freaky cool.
  • For glowing stuff, check this link out. It just came out yesterday:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid _975000/975271.stm
  • ligaments and cartilege are polymers to start out with

    Plastic chipset - how big would that be - say you have .18-.25 micron silicon chips... to have the same functionality (source, gate, drain) on the actual chip the size would be a LOT bigger.. the conducting polymers are made of many mers (hence poly) and get into the 100s of thousands easily.... sure they may be only a few atoms wide, but their length will be enormous and the reliability of placement - how easy is it you think to get a 1000link chain to just set neatly somewhere on a surface with bumps as big as the links (atoms/mers)

    so can you guess what i'm interested in?
  • No problem by that time we'll have magnetic and electronic sensors so sensitive that it could be use to scan the plastic computer and trace every wire in the device without touching one atom in it at all. The wonder of induced magnetic field and current can work miracles!
  • Wow, that's very interesting; I don't really have the background on circuit engineering to know the size differentials. Check this out, though;

    If the surface area needs to be larger to get the same amount of computational power, this could lead to a couple interesting notions. One: could the polymer circuitry be printed on the back of, say, large solar panels, making them nearly self-sufficient? These would be especially effective in space, assuming they could withstand the temperatures.

    Two, plastic circuits would probably run at cooler temperatures - although I don't know this for sure, wouldn't there be melting issues if they ran as hot as P-III's? Therefore, you could actually utilize the entire surface area of, say, a jacket, thereby giving you the potential to accomodate polymer circuit's space-hogging nature. Plus it might serve as a personal heater in the winter =P

    And, I didn't know ligaments and cartiledge actually were polymers, they just looked like it. They always looked sort of plastic-y to me, whenever I got a deep enough cut around one of my joints it always made me wonder...heh.

  • There's also several problems, or at least considerations, to using organic compounds as components of electronics.

    1) Lifetime. If a 'breed' of organic compound with a long lifespan can be utilized effectively, then it's all well and good, but no one wants a component that will have to be replaced every 30 days (as an example).

    2) Production time. Are there any time-estimates not only when organic components would be commercially available? How about time-estimates for how long it would take to for a facility to produce one circuit board of organic compounds? I frankly have no idea how long it would take.

    3) Disease. There's enough problems with viruses attacking the software and hardware. The last thing anyone wants is for the components to catch a cold.

    4) Mutation. If it is an organic compound, there is always the possibility that it could mutate over time, degrading the performance of the component. One nice thing about inorganic components is that it is already pretty well known how they will react to most every condition we expect them to operate under.

    5) Upgrading. How easily could this be done? Could it be done with a retrovirus? Would you have to buy a whole new component? Also in this vein, how susceptible would these components be to inadvertant tampering by the end users?

    Just a couple of thoughts on this...

    Kierthos
  • It's been brought up somewhat before, but it needs to be stressed more, the impact our current "habbits" have on the enviroment and our resources will totally deplete our planet's resources, sure, it's gonna take quite some time, and yes, we'll probably find solutions to most of the energy problems and such, but actively searching for less wastefull methods of making things, and making things less wastefull themselves should be a top priority.

    I'm not a big eco-freak, I realise that certain things are just not financially sound, but organic chips is something that has a future.

    People live in the present too much, and not enough in the future, resources WILL deplete, and it is shortsighted to insist on using our planets precious resources when there are viable alternatives.

    I personally hope that organic chips start replacing silicon chips in the near future, however, this will be one of the largest revolutions in the computer world so it will take some time, in that light, what better time to start that now?

  • actual chip the size would be a LOT bigger..

    This just isn't remotely true. The optoelectronics group here in Cambridge have produced polymer FETs at about 1nm, (i.e 0.001 micron), and there is also work going on here on single electron logic, with a benzene (with some sulphur) molecules as the gates between a traditional silicon source and drain, again this on the nanometre scale.

    The micro electronics group are working on 0.5 nm single nanocrystals of silicon devices as well.

  • In that case you use the button on the front of your computer called aphrodisiac

    I can just picture it: Breed you sons of bitches!!! I've got an essay to finish tonight.

    I can really identify with you, so much.

  • Am I the only one who saw the title of this article and instantly thought of the substance imipolex, from Rudy Rucker's books "Software"/"Wetware"/"Freeware"? (all excellent reads by the way). How long will it be until I can have a Happy Cloak?

    Or will we at least see kids talking about trading the latest Tupperwarez?

  • Damn...so we will be able to just bring up our favorite image viewer and print off reams of cpus? That rocks!
  • Well, organic semiconductors don't have the same size market as Si or Ge at the moment. But that's not saying the market isn't already huge.

    * Organic LED displays have already been incorporated into cars (e.g. Lexus and Acura).

    * Every roll of Agfa or Kodak film is coated with a thin film of organic semiconductor (a polythiophene derivative) as an antistatic film--this accounts for some 100 million square meters.

    There are more applications, but I have to go prepare my seminar on the subject at the moment. (Sound like Fermat?)

    -Geoff
  • >Farm plants can't replace petroleum for fuel, despite your second link

    Yes, plants can. But as you ALSO point out, the consumtion demands exceed production capability.

    Rather than blame too much demand (be it from resource hogs, or too many people) lets blame the lack of resources.
  • If the guys down at N Y T got a
    subscription to Scientific Deutchelaender,
    they would be buried navel deep in articles
    & ads on organic conduction for everthing
    from grounding layers for cathode ray tubes
    to lightweight substrates for batteries [which
    is probably one of the few legit apps for this stuff; unless of course they bring in a
    room temp superconductor.]

    ]X[

    VA doctors have found neither
    chemical or biological
    justification for the Desert Storm
    Syndrome. Perhaps our officers
    are punishing their men for what
    they did under orders. Symptoms
    created with a MICROWAVE LASE
  • Actually, No Oil = No CHEAP Plastics.
    You (the chemist) can still make 'em, they'll just cost more. BTW, for most of the last century, the official prediction has always been "we only have 25 (or so) years of oil reserves". But guess what happened? We kept finding more. Progress occurs in more fields than just electronics.
  • I don't like *SOLID* sccreens
    I believe in projection screens.
    Projectors for instance could pronably
    be polarized for *flating* or 3D effects.
    Plastic displays might be good to stop certain types of vandalism but for general
    useage a *dureable projector* would be alot more
    fun.

    An optical fiber/piezoelectric crystal
    might be caused to scan a section of wall
    w/ a modulated beam to give you a 38" screen
    at a fraction of the weight of carrying
    the weight of the screen with you.

    The original omechanical scanners didn't work well because of poor timing bearings.
    A miniaturized mech scanner the size of a
    discman could probably give you a large screen in brilliant color

    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
    Got migranes,face pains
    toothaches, sinus
    flu,nausea or other
    conditions pertaining
    to the head & throat
    ...make an aluminum
    foil hood, move around,
    so as not to be reaquired
    as a target; & don't
    look at a tv tube
    the morphological
    similarities between a
    MICROWAVE LASER &
    TV tubes
    is beyond the scope
    of this message
  • what?! i was talking to the guy dissing on hemos. *sigh* oh well.

    -- .sig --

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