Friday, March 7, 2014
Researchers from the University of Surrey, working together with scientists from Philips, have developed a new technology which could see flexible electronics, such as affordable roll-up tablet computers, become widely available in the near future. The researchers are continuing to develop the “Source-Gated-Transistor,” (SGT) which is a simple circuit component invented jointly by the teams.
The researchers originally discovered that the component could be applied to many electronic designs of an analog nature, such as display screens, but the new research work now shows that SGTs can also be applied to next-generation digital circuits. Until now this area of electronic design has been hampered by unreliability and production complexity.
SGTs control the electric current as it enters a semiconductor. This decreases the odds of circuit malfunction, improves energy efficiency and keeps fabrication costs to a minimum. The properties make SGTs ideal for next-generation electronic devices, and could enable digital technologies to be incorporated into wearable designs built using flexible plastics or clothing textiles.
Such technologies may include ultra-lightweight and flexible gadgets that can be rolled up to save space when not in use; smart plasters, thinner than a human hair, that can wirelessly monitor the health of the wearer; low-cost electronic shopping tags for instant checkout; and disaster prediction sensors, used on buildings in regions that are at high risk of natural disasters.
These technologies involve thin plastic sheets of electronic circuits similar to sheets of paper, but embedded with smart technologies. Until now, such technologies could only be produced reliably in small quantities. That confined them to the research lab.
By: DocMemory
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