Flexible

There’s no doubt that we will soon be seeing a lot more in the way of low-cost electronic circuits that have been printed onto common, flexible materials such as plastic, paper or fabric. One of the key technological innovations making this possible is silver ink, which is used to print these circuits’ conductors. While such ink usually incorporates particles of silver suspended in a carrier liquid, a new type of ink created at the University of Illinois forgoes the particle approach, and is said to offer some distinct advantages as a result. Read More

Why change channels by clicking on buttons, when you could do the same thing by twisting your remote? Japan's Murata Manufacturing Company obviously sees advantages in this approach and has created a prototype dubbed the "Leaf Grip Remote Controller" to showcase the idea. Flexing the battery-less device not only changes TV channels, but it also switches inputs, controls the volume, and turns the power on and off. Read More

Wearable electronics generally take the form of clothing embedded with electronics or miniature electronic devices that can be worn close to the body for purposes such as medical monitoring and communications. Now engineers have developed a device that places electronic components onto an ultra-thin skin-like patch that can be mounted directly onto the skin, paving the way for skin-mounted electronics that could be used for sensing, medical diagnostics, communications and human-machine interfaces. Read More

Graphene promises to revolutionize electronics but we’re still waiting for graphene-based technologies to hit the market. Rice University researchers have now created transparent, graphene-based electrodes that they say could be the “killer app” that finally puts graphene into the commercial spotlight. The graphene-based electrodes could be used to replace the increasingly expensive indium tin oxide (ITO) in touch-screen displays, photovoltaic solar cells and LED lighting. Read More

There have been numerous attempts at designing partially transparent gadgets over the years, with the LG GD900 cell phone being a notable example. Fully translucent mobile devices are difficult to produce, however, as they would require a fully see-through battery, which hasn't been available yet. Stanford University researchers now claim to have developed such a device - a see-through, flexible, lithium-ion battery, suitable for powering mobile gadgets like cell phones, tablets or e-readers. Read More

Researchers from the Human Media Lab at Canada's Queen's University have created a fully-functioning floppy E-Ink smartphone, which they also refer to as a paper computer. Like its thicker, rigid-bodied counterparts, the Paperphone can do things like making and receiving calls, storing e-books, and playing music. Unlike them, however, it conforms to the shape of its user's pocket or purse, and can even be operated through bending actions. Read More

Notebooks and tablets already offer pretty convenient computing on-the-go solutions, but Germany's Orkin Design proposes rolling up both devices into one ultra-portable package. The Rolltop concept will take advantage of advances in flexible OLED and touchscreen technologies to create a cylinder-shaped laptop computer that can be rolled out to form a notebook, a tablet, or display monitor. The concept has been floating around for a while, but has recently received a few tweaks to the design. Although specifics are in short supply, read on for what we do know ... Read More

The paper-thin, flexible AMOLED display developed by Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has taken gold in the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Award. Catering for two-sided surface visibility, FlexUPD could see its way into rollable mobile phones or e-Readers, or incorporated into clothing to provide information about the wearer – for medical purposes, for instance. Read More

TDK has been showing off its new OLED film at the CEATEC conference in Chiba, Japan. This flexible film surface can even show images while bending, giving it an immediate advantage over glass displays. TDK hopes to begin production of the film displays within one year, so it might not be such a long time before we see them popping up in our mobile devices. Read More