Transparant Integrated Circuit Invented

World's First Completely Transparent IC

Oregon State University (OSU) researchers claim to have fabricated the world's first "completely transparent" ICs from inorganic compounds. The technology can enable extremely inexpensive electronics for use in "throw away" devices, and is expected to be used in automobile windshields, cell phones, TVs, games, and toys, among other applications, OSU said.

OSU also believes that the technology might result in more efficient solar cells and improvements to LCD displays (liquid crystal displays), it said.

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n a statement, OSU called its accomplishment "another major step forward for the rapidly evolving field of transparent electronics," and said it "marks a significant milestone on the path toward functioning transparent electronics applications, which many believe could be a large future industry."

Transparant Chips (click for bigger picture)

A few years from now, there will be computer chips in just about everything. All products will become 'smart' thanks to chips embedded in them, or so I read (regularly) in the many articles I plow through in order to get content for my blog.

I can think of chairs and beds that automatically sense your personal pressure points, and then adjust their form to give you the most personal sitting/sleeping experience ever.

Can any of you think of more applications for chips in consumer products?


At the end of the article, there is an illustration of the very real exponential acceleration of technology, which is becoming more and more obvious every year.

I simply can't leave this out, so here we go:

"This is a quantum leap in moving transparent electronics from the laboratory toward working commercial applications" said John Wager, a professor of electrical engineering at OSU. "It's proof that transparent transistors can be used to create an integrated circuit, tells us quite a bit about the speeds we may be able to achieve, and shows we can make transparent circuits with conventional photolithography techniques, the basic patterning methods used to create electronics all over the world."

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"What's exciting is that all of the remaining work seems very feasible," Wager added. "It will take some time, but we just don't see any major obstacles that are going to preclude the commercial use of transparent electronics with these compounds. In a way, it's shocking how fast this field has progressed. We might be able to bring transparent integrated circuits to widespread use in five years or so, a process that took a couple of decades in the early evolution of conventional electronics."