/ News
Graphene-based Ink Promises Future Flexible Electronics
Researchers at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering have developed a graphene-based ink that could be sprayed onto substrates to make flexible electronics.
While the research thus far has only extended to spraying 14-nanometer-thick layers to create precise patterns, the researchers believe that method they developed for creating the graphene-based ink could lead to flexible electronic devices in the future.
Graphene’s s one atom thick, two-dimensional characteristics have been tantalizing to those interested in flexible electronics. Just last year, researchers at Cornell University performed work with graphene that suggested that circuits could be made so thin that they would be both flexibleand transparent.
The Cornell researchers' approach used traditional chip manufacturing processes like lithography, whereas the Northwestern team has developed a graphene-based ink that could be used for ink-jet printing of electronic circuits.
This use of ink-jet printing means that the Northwestern team had to focus much of its work on finding ways of creating an ink-powder form of graphene without losing any of its attractive electrical characteristics, such as high conductivity.
The research, which was initially published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (“Inkjet Printing of High Conductivity, Flexible Graphene Patterns”), yielded a method for exfoliating graphite so that it produces small bits of graphene whose electrical conductivity has not been compromised. The method can be done at room temperature using a combination of ethanol and ethyl cellulose to exfoliate the graphite. This technique, say the researchers, reduces residues and leaves a high concentration of graphene flakes that are subsequently put into a solvent, creating the ink.
While the graphene-based ink leads to patterns that are 250 times as conductive as previous attempts to print graphene-based electronic patterns, the paper doesn't discuss whether the material can be engineered to act as a semiconductor. Engineering a band gap into graphene remains a critical prerequisite for applying the material in electronics, and was a preoccupation for the Cornell team in its attempts to use graphene in flexible electronics.
Of course, the focus of the Northwestern team was just to find a way to extract a large amount of graphene during an exfoliation process on graphite and have the resulting material remain highly conductive. But if a method is developed that allows for the doping of the graphene ink so it can be a semiconductor as well as a conductor, we may indeed be moving towards flexible electronics made from graphene.
Image: PARC
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/graphenebased-ink-promises-future-flexible-electronics-
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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