Printing Computers
“Oh, nuts, the computer just went down. Honey, would you print me another?” Researchers at Xerox have developed printer technologies that should soon result in the ability to print circuits in a process very close to inkjet printing.
Integrated circuits need three kinds of parts - conductor, semiconductor, and dielectric. The Xerox team can now print each of these components on paper or plastic, using specialized inks that work fine at room temperature, and in normal air (not currently possible with silicon-based chips). What they can’t do yet is print all three at the same time, but they anticipate getting past this problem soon.
The applications of this technology range pretty widely, but the first areas where it is expected to be used are rollable computer displays, and making Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) tags much less expensive. RFID chips replace barcodes, and use radio signals that allow scanning from a short distance. They’ll be used on store items, library books, and almost certainly on school ID tags sometime soon. Actually, it’s sort of a good news/bad news situation - it will be much cheaper for us to tag and track inventory wirelessly, and it will be much cheaper and easier to tag and track people wirelessly, too.
InformationWeek looks at this technology at www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18901869.