The electronic circuit printed using nano particles

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have  found a way to use nano-particles of cadmium selenide to print electronic circuits on a plastic substrata.

Flexible circuits are very interesting since they can be used in a variety of applications and several solutions have been found.

They all share the characteristics of being possible through a process of deposition at ambient temperature (or not too different from that) since the plastic substrate used would melt at high temperature, like the ones used to create a silicon wafer.

The interest in the discovery of this group of researchers at Penn is that the resulting circuits have a performance 20 times better than an equivalent circuit based on silicon.

Now, we don’t need to be overexcited. The silicon production has achieved a tremendous degree of effectiveness, quality and performance and it will take several years to have an alternative production method.

Having said that, however, we can see that for a number of applications there is the need for a flexible chip and as these applications will become reality we will see this technology grow in volume and hence become more effective in terms of production processes. This is all what it takes to start a positive innovation spiral that eventually may lead to the dismissal of silicon. This latter, however, is not on the horizon!

The development of ver very cheap electronics, made possible through a printing technology, is about to change bar codes into electronic tags. This is what Thinfilm has agreed to do signing a contract with Bemis to create intelligent packaging and the related platform. They expect to bring this technology to supermarkets and stores by 2014.

Thinfilm technology creates an electronic circuit, like the one used for RFID tags (Radio Frequency Identification), simply printing it on a flexible material that can be sticked on any package, thus replacing a bar code.

The RFID tag can be read at a distance, since it communicate via radio. A cell phone can do that. The data contained in the tag can be as little as a simple code (a url) allowing an application to get more information about that product, or it can be a set of data (a few kBs). What is also interesting is that Thinfilm can produce a tag that has a much more complex circuit than the one used in an RFID tag. As an example it can contain sensor capability, to measure the temperature that package has been exposed to, and can store this information for subsequent control. It can also contain an active radio communications to send an alarm if the temperature approaches a critical level.

The shelves can provide the power support by generating an electromagnetic field that can be used to power the circuit and keep a small battery charged.

According to their press release:

“Intelligent packaging is an emerging technology with many potential intersections with Bemis’ flexible packaging and pressure sensitive materials business segments,” said Henry Theisen, Bemis Company President and Chief Executive Officer. “Our agreement with Thinfilm represents an investment in a technology that could eventually make printed electronics a component of every package we manufacture.”

Once you have this electronic circuits associated to each package in a supermarket you really start to have a huge amount of common “things” that can connect to the Internet. The strawberry package can embed a sensor to detect the excessive ripening and send an alarm to make sure that the package is moved to the front of the shelf (or thrown away if it is getting rot) and there you have the IoT, Internet of Things.

But that same package, connected to the web via the platform, can be used to deliver services, like recipes or information that can be cross checked with a particular customer to see whether those strawberry can create allergy problems. Welcome to the Internet with Things, IwT.

In the first case the relation is between the package and a system, a thing to thing communications, in the latter we have that the “thing”, the package, has become one of the element of the web and can be searched, polled, mashed up, associated to services to serve a person.

It is now a few years that researchers have found ways to print electronic components, like transistors, antennas and so on. There have been a few applications, like RFID tags, but the market has still to take off.

It is therefore interesting to note that a number of companies, each one specialized in a certain area, have decided to join effort to create a mass market application for printed electronics.

Battery printed on a thin layer of polymer

They are targeting the creation of stickers, at a cost of 30c of a $ each that can be applied to bottles, packages and pallets to continuously record the temperature. The sticker embeds a microprocessor, a storage part, a sensor, radio communication part and the battery.

Thin Film Electronics, a Norwegian company, has a good background in printing memory and they are cooperating with PARC, California, to embed transistors and with PST Sensors, University of Cape Town, and Imprint Energy, California, for the battery part.

They are expecting to have the first prototype available later this year. The challenge is to create an industry standard allowing the packaging of all components. As in any new product it is key to find a viable application that can be used as a spring board for others.

The idea of using it as a sensor to record temperature makes sense since on the one hand there are sensors costing a few pennies but offering only instantaneous measurements and a not very precise one (like stickers with a chemical that changes color) and on the other sensors with very good performances costing 20$. An offer priced at 30c may create a new market.

LED printed on a surface

LEDs used to be expensive (relatively speaking) but now the new technology of printing electronics has changed that and along with that we can start imagining completely new applications.

A recent article published by Technology Review reports on a start up, Nth Degree Technology, that has found a way to produce and print at a very low cost LED so that they can be applied to any surface and use as lightning system.

The LED are produced on a standard wafer of gallium nitride (millions of them on a 4″ wafer) and then mix them with special resins that can glue each one to a surface using a standard screen printer.

The printer lays first a layer of silver (used as conductor), than the LEDs, than a layer of phosphors to change the color of the light emitted and seals it all with an insulating layer. The front of the screen contains the other contact, made by invisible wires that are sprayed as a further ink layer.

This technology may also find application in a new wave of touch screens.

Now, just imagine what kind of new architectural design becomes possible if you can have your walls painted with these LEDs. And, of course, by managing the on/off you can easily create changing patterns that will contribute to create an ambient that fits your mood…

This goes beyond the pure aesthetics, there are several people that react differently depending on how they emotionally perceive the ambient and in some cases a soothing space can ease stress and panic in patient with mental disorders.

The price of chips has gone down amazingly to reach today a few dollars per square millimeter. Take into account the fact that more and more transistors are being packaged in that square millimeter and the decrease in cost achieved is staggering, some billion times less than it used to be 30 years ago. And yet paper is still cheaper. Replacing all the labels on packages in a department store with chips would be too expensive.

Processing and storage on a single 'paper like" chip

But the progress of printed electronics is bound to change that. Researchers at PARC working with Thin Film, a Norwegian company, have announced the implementation of a printed chip containing both the processing and the storage on a single thin layer of polymer that is dirty cheap: a hundred times cheaper than etched silicon (the one used in today’s chip).

Adding logic to memory is crucial to increasing the storage capacity of the device, explains Janos Veres, manager of printed electronics at PARC. “We really needed to have a printed logic array that lets us address memory and increase bit count,” he says. Memory arrays are split up into rows and columns. To select a row or column, you need a logic circuit, Veres says. “The power of this demonstration is we’ve shown that you can address rows and columns with this technology,” he says. “The next step will be building bigger memory.”

And, what’s more, the next step will see the penetration of these kind of chips in everyday objects, wherever there is a paper label we can imagine a chip. And that’s is going to make the difference.

As everybody is talking about the disappearance of paper, being replaced by bits, researchers are finding new ways of using paper to replace expensive computers and diagnostic tools.

Leds built on a piece of paper generates the light used to sample the presence of viruses

Two start up in Cambridge, Boston,  and researchers at the University of iIlinois, are working to create dignostic tools on paper the size of a postage stamp, that can be used everywhere in the world at a cost of a few cents each.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26575/?nlid=3655&a=f

They aim at creating medical tests to detect viruses, like the load of HIV viruses in an AIDS patient to monitor the effectiveness of the drug treatment. Most of these patients live in areas where it is difficult to have proper medical equipment and are far from hospitals.

A first device has been produced: a tube for IV injections that is capable to detect that the infusion liquid is indeed what it is supposed to be. The internal lining of the tube is covered with detectors and these can signal the presence of specific substances. The paper like fabric contains points acting like a wick of a candle, absorbing the liquid and bringing it to special wells where they react. A LED illuminates the well and on the other side the light is detected by a photodetector. By analyzing the diffraction and frequency shift it is possible to detect the presence of viruses and other substances and if needed to send an alarm.

All of these operations, sampling, analyzes, signaling is being performed by components embedded in the paper, deployed by robots. The overall industrial cost shall be of a few cents each.

The Gates foundation is founding this research.

In a recent post I already presented a liquid based computer being studied as part of European Cooperation research. It resonates with the news I am publishing today.

Both are a further indication on the technological possibilities and it reinforces the forecast of a world more and more aware of what is going on. Bringing this information to places where it can be further processed and correlated is part of the telecommunications business.

Embedding of processing power and of communication capabilities is at the core of the Internet with Things (as it is for Internet of Things). In general, though, the processing power required on the object is very limited since it is sufficient to have a unique identity displayed and work through this identity to provide information and service related to that object. Most objects, indeed, will have just this identity etched or printed on them in form of an RFID. Communication is enabled by the reader that is also providing the required energy. The availability of printed electronics to “print” RFID on objects is probably one of the most significant enabling step in this direction. This is likely to become mass market (e.g. usable in all supermarkets through hand held printer) in the next decade.

It is also likely that electronic identification will overcome the bar code identification in the production and delivery chain so that any object will be produced with this embedded identification.

Cell phones will be able to read this identification seamlessly.

Another crucial technology is the availability of platforms supporting mash ups. This is crucial to open the market and let offer of information and services based on objects bloom.

The access to information and services, associated to an object, needs to be a seamless and rewarding experience. This entails reaction time below 0.5 seconds and one click interaction.

To create a marked stimulating offer creation, the price level to engage in the interaction should be below the user perception. In most cases interaction to access the portfolio of offer should be absolutely free. Connectivity shall not be perceived both in terms of delay and in terms of cost.

The fruition of information and services may of course be on a pay per use or subscription scheme and the price will depend on the value perceived by the user. However, to stimulate the audience, a significant amount of information and some services should be made available for free.