back to article Printed diode can slurp power from phone signals

A group of Swedish researchers has created a printed diode that can use the radio output of a smartphone for power – and along the way has answered a long-standing question about how printed diodes work. In this paper at PNAS, the researchers demonstrate a device created by printing a niobium silicide layer over a silicon …

  1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Clever boffinery but more to the point

    This suggests (and I'll put it no higher than that at present) they could print transistors operating in the GHz range.

    IIRC the record for printed transistors has been about 14MHz.

    Which might explain why those plans for a printable mobile phone had to be put on hold.

    Thumbs up for this.

  2. Whitter
    Happy

    Congrats for proper PhD research

    Excellent work folks!

  3. Christoph

    Clothing labels

    Is this just for stock control up to point-of-sale, or do they expect to use them for smart wardrobes and washing machines?

    Because it's likely to last about as long as the ink on those washing instruction labels - about 3 washes.

    1. JimmyPage Silver badge

      Re: Clothing labels

      If manufacture is as cheap as to be effectively "free", then durability is less of an issue.

  4. Down not across

    Colour me impressed

    Quite impressive.

  5. ukgnome

    is it only me....

    that sniggers when they read PNAS?

  6. Stuart Halliday

    You can make a diode out of a piece of coal and a wire.

    Colditz prisoners did this during WWII.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Happy

      "You can make a diode out of a piece of coal and a wire."

      I'm sure the 'hipster wearable brigade' will find that bit of information most useful!

    2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      "You can make a diode out of a piece of coal and a wire."

      Forgot about that one, did remember POW's using a razor blade and a wire for a diode for a radio.

      Years ago I considered gathering and rectifying stray currents from mains current usage. Right until I calculated the wavelength.

      Of course, today, our environment is so much richer in frequencies and "lost" signals of a much more easily utilized wavelength.

  7. NeilPost Silver badge

    Boffin's again - FFS

    The Register - FFS, can you stop calling anything 'sciencey' "Boffin's say", "Boffinary" - it makes you sounds dumb as horse-sh1t.Have you taken on some pay as you drivel on Humanities Grad/Interns that have no comprehension of science, engineering, basic arithmetic, statistics, methodology or just plain old common sense to challenge a press release masquerading as news but know from their much lauded college degree (never mentioned what in) how to write a headline (regardless of whether is correlates to the article) from CBS interactive's now defunct Smartplanet or something ?!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Boffin's again - FFS

      "The Register - FFS, can you stop calling anything 'sciencey' "Boffin's say", "Boffinary" - it makes you sounds dumb as horse-sh1t"

      Ditto for apostrophe abusers.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. diode

    Interesting.

    Wonder if anyone has tried to see if any of the common EL materials (GaZnS:Mn comes to mind) have rectifying properties?

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