CHICAGO (Reuters)- In the latest twist on electronics, Japanese scientists said onThursday they have developed a rubbery material that conductselectricity, a finding that could be used to make devices that bend andstretch.
The material, described by Tsuyoshi Sekitani of the University ofTokyo in the journal Science, could be used on curved surfaces or evenin moving parts, they said.
Sekitani’s team developed their material using carbon nanotubes, along stretch of carbon molecules that can conduct electricity.
They mixed these into rubbery polymer to form the basic material.Next, they attached a grid of tiny transistors to the material and thenput it to the test.
They stretched the sheet of material to nearly double its originalsize and it snapped back into place, without disrupting the transistorsor ruining the material’s conductive properties.
The elastic conductor would allow electronic circuits to be mountedin places that would have been impossible up to now, including"arbitrary curved surfaces and movable parts, such as the joints of arobot’s arm," Sekitani and colleagues wrote.
Earlier this week, a U.S. team reported developing an elastic meshmaterial that allowed them to use standard electronics materials tobuild an electronic eye camera based on the shape and layout of thehuman eye.
That device could be the basis for the development of an artificial eye implant.
John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whowrote about the eye camera in the journal Nature, said the developmentof materials that can be shaped and molded to curved surfaces willallow for a whole new class of electronics devices that can be used tobetter interact with the human body, such as brain monitoring devices.
(Editing by Maggie Fox)
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