Yes, and painted-on swimsuits outperform regular swimsuits!
(Hopefully the Admin Moderator will let me get away with that one....)
Posted on 07/18/2006 4:50:50 PM PDT by annie laurie
Researchers at the University of Toronto have created a semiconductor device that outperforms today's conventional chips -- and they made it simply by painting a liquid onto a piece of glass. The finding, which represents the first time a so-called "wet" semiconductor device has bested traditional, more costly grown-crystal semiconductor devices, is reported in the July 13 issue of the journal Nature.
"Traditional ways of making computer chips, fibre-optic lasers, digital camera image sensors – the building blocks of the information age – are costly in time, money, and energy," says Professor Ted Sargent of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and leader of the research group. Conventional semiconductors have produced spectacular results -- the personal computer, the Internet, digital photography -- but they rely on growing atomically-perfect crystals at 1,000 degrees Celsius and above, he explains.
The Toronto team instead cooked up semiconductor particles in a flask containing extra-pure oleic acid, the main ingredient in olive oil. The particles are just a few nanometres (one billionth of a metre) across. The team then placed a drop of solution on a glass slide patterned with gold electrodes and forced the drop to spread out into a smooth, continuous semiconductor film using a process called spin-coating. They then gave their film a two-hour bath in methanol. Once the solvent evaporated, it left an 800 nanometre-thick layer of the light-sensitive nanoparticles.
At room temperature, the paint-on photodetectors were about ten times more sensitive to infrared rays than the sensors that are currently used in military night-vision and biomedical imaging. "These are exquisitely sensitive detectors of light," says Sargent, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. "It's now clear that solution-processed electronics can combine outstanding performance with low cost."
The U of T development could be of critical importance to both research and industry, according to John D. Joannopoulos, a Professor at MIT. "The ability to realize low-cost, paintable, high-performance designer semiconductors for use as short-wavelength infrared detectors and emitters is of enormous value for a wide range of communications, imaging and monitoring applications," says Joannopoulos, the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics and director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"The key to our success was controlled engineering at the nanometre lengthscale: tailoring colloidal nanocrystal size and surfaces to achieve exceptional device performance," says lead author Gerasimos Konstantatos, a doctoral researcher at UofT. "With this finding, we now know that simple, convenient, low-cost wet chemistry can produce devices with performance that is superior compared to that of conventional grown-crystal devices."
And what will this actually contribute to society, besides a faster Ipod or digital camera? I'm happy somebody spilled paint and we're geniuses and all, but this kind of news is pointless.
Yes, and painted-on swimsuits outperform regular swimsuits!
(Hopefully the Admin Moderator will let me get away with that one....)
Build you chips at home?
Rather a sweeping generalization for such a single, narrow point of data.
bleat..bleat....bleat
Future Tech ping
Very cool. I can think of numerous applications off of the top of my head for this. It would be interesting to know if the coating is translucent under ambient conditions.
You must be a real joy at parties.
Get a grip. New advances rarely show their full potential early on. I for one can think of an immediate application. More sensitive detection systems for infrared space cameras.
wow...thanks and I think you might be in trouble.
This could be a big development, but the question is, will circuits made by this technique have the durability to perform well for years in the real world? Lots of inventions work in a controlled lab environment, but when you expose them to the heat, cold, dirt, and vibration of the real work they break down and fail. Semiconductor chips have done really well in real world conditions.
limited use....
May have applications as sensors but don't think Intel can fab a pentium out of it.
Good picture there. I've got a couple of paint-on swimsuit pictures that would definitely get pulled by the mods....lol.
Surprised they didn't mention the possible application to solar cells.
"low-cost, paintable, high-performance designer semiconductors for use as short-wavelength infrared detectors"
The sidewinder missle uses exactly this.
The real issue is whether this technology can be adapted to create low cost high efficency solar cells.(This sounds more like a photo sensor.)
Well, I am guessing that 5-10x more sensitive night amplification gear to start.
Well, since the spectral range is in the INFRARED, it won't be much use in either an IPOD or digital camera--but there are dozens, if not hundreds, of instruments and sensors that can use a more sensitive, smaller, lower power INFRARED detector. Chemical spectroscopy of various sorts. And I assume you missed the mention in the article of better night-vision and medical imaging uses.
It could lead the way to better night vision goggles for the troops and better IR sensors for our missiles. For starters. If it works.
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