The Change Mariner

Print yourself a roll of semiconductors?

ZDNet

Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center has developed a way to use inkjet printing techniques to create cheap, flexible sheets of transistors--a process that could radically change the way flat-panel screens are created.
The fabled technology lab is one of several facilities around the world that have been working to recreate the functions of traditional silicon semiconductor chips with tiny transistors printed on plastic sheets. Using electricity-conducting ink that bonds to a flexible plastic sheet, PARC researchers said Tuesday that they have been able to create arrays of bendable semiconductors that work much like their rigid counterparts.

The new printable chips aren't nearly as efficient as their silicon counterparts, but they work well enough to serve as the core of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens and futuristic displays such as electronic paper, the researchers said.

Instead of hugely expensive "clean room" manufacturing facilities, the products could be created in printing facilities that might more resemble a newspaper's printing press, with sheets of transistors scrolling off the high-tech printers, the scientists speculated.

"Instead of smocked people carrying individual (silicon) wafers around a clean room or robot arms carrying stacks of wafers, imagine a person carrying a roll that looks like a 35-millimeter camera cassette, with a roll of film a meter wide and a hundred feet long," said Raj Apte, a PARC research scientist working on the project. "The clean room might even be a dirty room, since the film is going to be on cassettes."

The drive for plastics that conduct electricity has gone on for years, as scientists look for ways to replace the capital-intensive process of traditional chip and display manufacturing. Several other companies' labs, including those of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs and Philips Semiconductors, are also pursuing the concept.

Posted by Norm M. Wada at October 28, 2003 11:16 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Area - Tech - Semiconductors

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