One of the biggest problems of cell phones & iPods is being dropped to the ground and no longer being anything more than an ugly paperweight. The chip inside cell phones & iPods contain electrical pathways that send signals throughout the device. After a device pavement bounce these pathways are sometimes permanently disturbed making the device unusable. I say sometimes, because I’ve dropped my cell phone more than a couple of times and thankfully, they still work. However, dumb things happen and too many bounces or a dumb enough act of destruction can enable a device completely useless.
An emerging technology that is trying to solve this is problem is plastic. Plastic can absorb shock but they are not good conductors of electricity. Plastic Logic, a new company, has developed a patented technology that allows manufacturers to print plastic onto a polymer substrate. The result is a plastic-based transistor that is inexpensive and flexible.
Paulette Prins of the Delft University of Technology has extended the research of useable plastics and has rebuilt the chain in plastics to form a ladder-like structure. This new plastic can conduct electricity in a much better way which makes these chips an alternative of silicon chips.
The technology could drastically reduce production costs and consumer costs, because plastics is more stable than silicon. In addition, the plastic chips could mean that manufacturers of what is called TFT (thin-film transistor) flat-panel screens and televisions, which currently use a traditional silicon-based transistor for each pixel, would be able to switch to much cheaper chips.
Ideas Rule The World
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