WHAT IF WE BECOME THE DEVICE OF OURSELVES?
ago 2013 05

WHAT IF WE BECOME THE DEVICE OF OURSELVES?

Posted In Blog

LONDON – What if we become the device of ourselves? In sci-fi movies it’s very common to watch the characters touch their body to send signals to the central computer: A touch of a finger on an arm to control the robot, a touch of the thumb on the other arm to switch on the monitor in the laboratory or a hand on the other hand fluctuating together in the air to pilot a space ship. Yes, we know, that’s only fantasy.

But there are scientists who are working on this and in A few years it will come true. At the University of Tokyo a group of scientists, guided by Prof Takao Someya (in the picture on the right), have invented Jan ultra-lightweight design for imperceptible plastic electronics. The world’s recently developed  lightest touch screen could revolutionize our current style of using electronics devices like mobile phone, tablets, personal computers, music or video players. We won’t need to bring with us any devices, because we will be the devices of ourselves. Inside the new futuristic paper there’s a platform that makes electronics both virtually unbreakable and imperceptible. Fabricated directly on an ultrathin 1 micrometre polymer foils, their electronic circuits are light and ultraflexible and conform to their ambient, dynamic environment.

Organic transistors with an ultra-dense oxide gate dielectric a few nanometres thick formed at room temperature that enable sophisticated large-area electronic foils with unprecedented mechanical and environmental stability: Able to withstand repeated bending to a radii of 5 micrometres or less and be crumpled like paper and accommodate stretching up to 230% on prestrained elastomers as well as being operated at high temperatures and in aqueous environments. The idea behind the new touch screen is not only to use this new “skin” to make a call or change tv channels without using mobile phones or remote control, but the first application could be in Medicine: The project is to implant the device in the human body to monitor all sort of data to prevent any sort of illness. After that, we could replace the new futuristic skin with other common devices: One of them, for sure, will be our mobile phone. (A.A.)