TECH

Electronic gadgets give intelligence to any object

This seems to be the realization of all the dreams of those who are working to make the internet of things viable, where all objects, from the refrigerator to the table decorations, will be plugged into the internet.A team from Purdue and Virginia universities in the US have created thin-film electronic circuits that can be applied and removed from a surface at will.The technique not only eliminates several manufacturing steps of traditional microelectronics - and their associated costs - but also allows any object to receive "electronic powers", to detect its environment or to be controlled remotely, for example.For this, it will be enough to apply on the thing that wants to plug in the internet a sticker of high technology, endowed with the circuits designed to give you the functionality that you need.Thus, billions of objects, from cell phones and clocks to buildings, machine parts and medical devices can be converted into wireless sensors in their environments, expanding the internet network of things."We can customize a sensor, put it in a drone and send the drone to hazardous areas to detect gas leaks, for example," said Professor Chi Hwan Lee.


Electronic Stickers
Most of today's electronic circuits are individually built into their own silicon wafer, a flat, rigid substrate.The material can withstand the high temperatures and chemical corrosion that are used to remove wafer circuits, not without damage, forcing the manufacturing process to use an entirely new wafer every time.The new manufacturing technique, called "transfer by print," uses a single wafer to build an almost infinite number of films containing electronic circuits. Instead of high temperatures and chemicals, the film can take off at room temperature with the help of water.A layer of ductile metal, such as nickel, inserted between the electronic film and the silicon wafer, makes it possible to peel in the water. These thin film electronics can be cut and pasted onto any surface, providing the object with electronic resources.Placing one of the decals in a flower pot, for example, made the flower pot able to detect changes in temperature that could affect plant growth - that is, the uses are virtually infinite.


Bibliography:Wafer-recyclable, environment-friendly transfer printing for large-scale thin film nanoelectronics
Dae Seung Wie, Yue Zhang, Min Ku Kim, Bongjoong Kim, Sangwook Park, Young-Joon Kim, Peter P. Irazoqui, Xiaolin Zheng, Baoxing Xu, Chi Hwan Lee
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences