This is definitely the stuff of the future and, as Michael Gorman at Engadget says in their headline when he wrote about this, it brings the idea of clothes in which a computer is woven – so to speak.
Researchers at IMEC have created a cheap bendable microprocessor by layering a plastic substrate, gold circuits, organic dielectric, and a pentacene organic semiconductor in order to create an 8-bit logic circuit with 4,000 transistors.
The trick was to overcome individual organic transistors’ variable switching voltage thresholds — as opposed to silicon’s predictable nature — that eliminated the possibility of organic-based logic circuits previously. But by adding a second gate to each transistor, IMEC was able to control the electrical field in each to prevent unwanted switching and usher in the dawn of plastic processors.
So, what do you think? A bikini enabled computer anyone?
image courtesy of Engadget – information source: IMEC
