A team of Northwestern chemists developed a breakthrough in high-performance, cost-effective plastic electronics.
Chemistry Prof. Tobin Jay Marks designed organic molecules that self-assemble into an ultra-thin layer for use in a power transistor. Transistors are used to power products such as cell phones and laptop computers.
What makes these molecular components even more special is their ability to be printed on, like a newspaper, with new codes written quickly and easily, Marks said.
“Right now, if Intel (Corporation) makes a chip, they need a new factory to write a new code, which costs millions of dollars,” Marks said. “We have developed materials to do that process more cheaply by printing on plastic.”
The “smart molecules” Marks and his team developed could be used in a laptop screen display as well as in radio frequency identification tags for supermarket products.
“You could walk up to a cash register at the grocery store,” said Marks, “and it would automatically sense what each item costs and whether or not it has passed its expiration date — all in one step.”
He said the technology could be put into application within a couple years.
Prof. Antonio Facchetti, a research chemist, and Myung-Han Yoon, a graduate student in chemistry, also contributed to the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a multi-disciplinary science magazine.
Researchers seek ways to keep in touch artificially
Anyone who has crashed their race car on a PlayStation 2 or swung a golf club on an XBox knows that vibrations in the controller have an effect on the gaming experience.
But now devices, such as cell phones, feature ways to artificially recreate touch and texture — a field of study known as haptics.
“Haptics do for the sense of touch what television does for our sense of vision,” said James Edward Colgate, an NU mechanical engineering professor and director of the Institute for Design Engineering and Applications. “The notion that your cell phone can vibrate has been taken for granted. Now, we can do more than that.”
The silent vibrate setting usually reserved for meetings and classes can now be made stronger to indicate an important appointment or even varied to imitate a tickle sent from a friend like a text message, Colgate said.
The Immersion Corporation has licensed its haptics technology to Samsung, who debuted its new dimensional movement recognition cell phone earlier this year.
“It’s pretty simply technology,” Colgate said. “It’s small and portable.”
More elaborate applications of haptics have been used to simulate surgery, Colgate said.
— Elizabeth Sabrio
