Flexible Circuits tagged posts

Flexible Circuits made with Silk and Graphene on the horizon

By controlling silk protein nanostructure for the first time, scientists pave the way for advanced microelectronic and computing applications. Ultra-thin layers of silk deposited on graphene in perfect alignment represent a key advance for the control needed in microelectronics and advanced neural network development.

After thousands of years as a highly valuable commodity, silk continues to surprise. Now it may help usher in a whole new direction for microelectronics and computing.

While silk protein has been deployed in designer electronics, its use is currently limited in part because silk fibers are a messy tangle of spaghetti-like strands.

Now, a research team led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has tamed the tangle...

Read More

A Better Pen-and-Ink system for Drawing Flexible Circuits

010621-ballpointpen
A pen containing conductive ink can draw circuits on a variety of surfaces — even a loofah (seen here).
Credit: Adapted from ACS Applied Electronic Materials 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acsaelm.0c00866

Conductive ink is a great tool for printing flexible electronic circuits on surfaces. But these inks can be costly, they do not work on some materials, and devices to apply them can plug up. Now, scientists report in ACS Applied Electronic Materials that they have developed inexpensive conductive inks for clog-free ballpoint pens that can allow users to “write” circuits almost anywhere — even on human skin.

Flexible electronics are widely used in applications such as biosensors, electronic skin and energy storage...

Read More