A Plastic Designed For Wearable Electronics

aphexbrett writes "Researchers have developed a new plastic that conducts electricity, may be simpler to manufacture than industry counterparts and easily accommodates chemical attachments to create new materials. This new material could mean easier manufacture of paper-thin TVs and "smart" cloth. Developed by TDA Research in Wheat Ridge, Colo., Oligotron polymers are made of tiny bits of material that possess a conducting center and two, non-conducting end pieces. The end pieces allow the plastic bits to dissolve in solvents and accommodate specialized molecules."

Re:do they make condoms

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Electronic condoms with speech syntesiser:
"Red Alert! Hull breach!"
"Bad news Jim, She's pregnant"
"Condom has detected user below legal age. Authorities are notified."
"Warning! Husband approaching!"
"Erection at 35%. Press OK to order Viagra."
"Virus scanner running..."

1.565M ohms?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they don't intend to pass a lot, or even a little current through this plastic.

Re:1.565M ohms?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's on the order of the resistance of the body itself, isn't it?

Solar Cell applications

[mingust]

Given that solar cells (GaAs ones at least) pass relatively low amounts of current, this could have huge implications.

The endless hours spend soldering a solar array together could come to an end. Many of these could be shingled and encapsulated fairly easily, not worrying as much about materials shorting out all the time.

I look forward to more news!

Possibilities....

[immortal]

So, this could make clothing huh? I wonder if it could turn the jacket into one big neon light? Or maybe turn my back in a billboard and I could rent the space to someone. It sure puts a new light (yea pun intended) to making that Tron outfit seen in an earlier article.

Re:Possibilities....

[ferralis]

Wow... you mean we could cover our naughty bits with bits?

Seriously, though, I can think of at least eleventy one uses for this stuff. Someone already mentioned solar cells, I'm currently wondering if it can be sprayed a-la inkjet like several other plastics... this could be the start of something seriously cool. How 'bout your own custom fab lab in your computer room? Things just don't get much geekier than that... :)

conductive plastic ink

[PrinceAshitaka]

THink of the possibilities of being able to just print out a cricuit on your home computer with an ink made from this stuff. "When we added photo-sensitive end groups to the Oligotron we created a material that could be printed using an ultraviolet light source. Using a patterned light source resulted in a patterned image that could conduct electricity" maybe soemday we will download and print out hardware upgrades for home computers.