Graphene circuits from an inkjet printer
Long gone are the days when the inkjet printer was the consumable that people bought for school projects and family photographs: a group of researchers from Cambridge University has added graphene-based transistors to the list of things that you can take from the output tray. The researchers, led by Andrea Ferrari of the …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Oh brilliant.
Now they'll finally be able to justify the ridiculously high price of replacement (graphene) ink cartridges.
Also...
...just as with commercial ink jets, more ink will probably be expended in "cleaning the nozzles" than in actually printing something.
Yes
They will say this is what they do with the current ink pigments, hence the current high cost :(
Well quite
I understand you're making a joke, but this is how graphene was discovered. What are the limits on just drawing graphene circuits with pencils, and why didn't its amazing electrical effects ever get discovered before? (ISTR making a resistor from a pencil drawing way back ...)
"why didn't its amazing electrical effects ever get discovered before?"
Nanotechnology is hard.
Pencils are great at smearing down a disorderd streak of graphite particles and binding material; this bears a similar relationship to graphene circuitry as sand does to silicon-based semiconductors.
Graphene seems to have been known about since the 60s. What sort of 'before' were you thinking of?
New Business Idea
Checklist:
One 3D printer
3 Graphene print cartridges
1 tin of white paint
I'll be up and running printing counterfeit iPhones by the end of the year. Orders anyone?
Dry your hands..
So, now we'll have PCBs that can be smudged with a damp finger?
erm..
"The solvent settled on is NMP (N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone)" not water...
And don't divers use pencils because they are waterproof?
Missing something...
Don't transistors traditionally have a gate?
Either I am missing something, or this transistor is.
Gate
Yes I wondered that too. But then again, if it's a field effect transistor the gate would be near but isolated from the channel, so perhaps it's been left out for clarity. As it is drawn it would appear to be a diode.
Wouldn't fancy the cost of replacing the gold/chromium cartridge in that thing either.
letters and/or digits.
I know a few of these printable electronics bods at Cambridge - if anyone can crack it, they can.
Not sure NMP is a great choice of solvent
It might work in the lab, but the MSDS for this compound lists it as:
R36 Irritating to eyes.
R37 Irritating to respiratory system.
R38 Irritating to skin.
R61 May cause harm to the unborn child.
and gives it an occupational exposure limit of 25ppm.
NMP
Used extensively in the fine chemical industry - it's a high-boiling point dipolar aprotic solvent meaning it has a high dipole that helps to solubilize materials but isn't capable of ionizing under 'reasonable' conditions.
Reading the data sheet is a bit like looking up your symptoms in a medical dictionary - scary
With correct handling, ventilation and recycling it's no problem. Doesn't mean that you should be using it in a 'normal' inkjet printer though
The problem with toxic chemicals
is that they're often extremely useful.
I don't imagine we'll get a benign replacement any time soon.
This topic is closed for new posts.
