Whether fruit, meat or cheese - the quality of food is not always as consumers would like it to be. But, in future, a spectrometer will allow them to gage the quality of food before they buy it. No bigger than a sugar cube, the device is inexpensive to manufacture and could one day even be installed in smartphones.

Is that pear ripe? Or will you be annoyed when you get home and discover that the one you bought is neither sweet nor juicy? And what about that meat? Does it contain too much water, which will make it turn tough when you cook it? Buying the right food is often a question of sheer luck for consumers. But all that is set to change. In future, all you will need to do is hold your smartphone near the product in question, activate the corresponding app, choose the food type from the menu – e.g. "pear" – and straight away the device will make a recommendation: the fructose content of the pear is high, so buy it! The application is based on a near infrared spectrometer which measures the amount of water, sugar, starch, fat and protein present in the products. The system "looks" several centimeters below the outer surface of the foodstuffs – which means it can detect, for instance, whether the core of an apple is already rotting. Thin packaging film is no problem for the device as it takes measurements straight through it.

But how does the device actually work? By shining a broad-bandwidth light on the item to be tested – for instance a piece of meat. Depending on the meat's composition, it will reflect different wavelengths of light in the near infrared range with different intensities. The resulting spectrum tells scientists what amounts of which substances are present in the foodstuff.

Smaller than a sugar cube

The novel thing about this spectrometer is its size. With a volume of only 2.1 cc, it is 30 percent smaller than a sugar cube, and thus substantially more compact than its commercially available counterparts, which are around 350 times larger. Another advantage is that the devices are inexpensive to make and suitable for mass production. "We expect spectrometers to develop in the same way that digital cameras did," says Dr. Heinrich Grüger, who manages the relevant business unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden, where the system is being developed. "A camera that cost 500 euros ten years ago is far less capable than the ones you get virtually for free today in your cell phone."

Spectrometers are usually manufactured by assembling individual components: The mirrors, optical gaps, grating and detector each have to be put in place individually and properly aligned. The IMPS researchers instead manufacture the individual gratings and optical gaps directly on silicon wafers. But that's not all: The thin silicon wafers are large enough to hold the components of several hundred spectrometers, which means that hundreds of near infrared systems can be produced in one go. The scientists stack the wafers containing the integrated components on top of the ones bearing the optical components. They then align and bind the wafers, and isolate them to form individual spectrometers. This means the researchers do not need to position each component, but only the respective composite substrates. Another advantage of what is called Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology is that the devices produced are much more robust than their handmade counterparts.

At the Sensor+Test tradeshow being held in Nuremberg from May 22 to 24, the IPMS research scientists will be exhibiting a prototype of the spectrometer (in Hall 12, Booth 202). The device could be ready for market launch in three to five years. The researchers are also working on creating a corresponding infrastructure. "We are developing intelligent algorithms that analyze the recorded spectrums immediately, compare them with the requirements and then advise the consumer whether or not to buy the item. This advice is based solely on quality features such as ripeness and water content. The system cannot carry out a microbiological or toxicological analysis." Potential application areas for the spectrometers are not limited to foodstuffs: The device can also detect forgeries, for example, and can verify whether a product is made of high-quality original materials or whether it is a cheap fake. It can also reveal whether parts of a vehicle's body have been repainted, as well as test the contents of drugs and cosmetic creams.

Margot Krasojevic combines three of our favorite things, LEDs, 3D Printing and vertical axis wind turbines, to create the Air Turbine Light that spins in the breeze, generating the electricity it needs to operate.

The Air Turbine light comprises of the following main components:

- A propeller mounted on a shaft, in this case the outer shell attached to the axis via an rotor arm.

- An Alternator or Generator for producing the electricity when the shaft is rotated, in this instance a dynamo which lights the LED.

The body of the light is attached to a vertical axis which turns a diode rotor that transforms the movement into light.

The 3d printed shell traps wind which rotates the axis in turn generating and transforming this energy into light.

The lamp is functional a propeller that uses the wind’s kinetic energy to turn it. The light is generated by the spinning of wire coils past magnets generating electrical current to power the LED bulbs. Appropriate to its shell form the design has been printed in a ceramic material that is lightweight and durable enough to spin in the wind.

Every day, about 200 dogs and their owners visit the Cosmo dog park in Gilbert, Ariz. When they go home, they leave behind about eight cubic yards of dog waste, plastic bottles, bags and other trash.

Normally, all of that junk ends up in a landfill. But starting this month, the little gifts that Fido leaves will be used to power a light at the park, thanks to a team of engineering and technology students from ASU’s Polytechnic campus.

The “dog waste digester” was created as part of the College of Technology and Innovation's iProjects program. The student team includes Aaron Nelson and Sean Burris from mechanical engineering, Jesus Vasquez from electrical engineering, Ryan Williams in civil engineering, and Bryan Bowles, who majors in environmental technology management. Michael Ingram, a graduate student in alternative energy, also is engaged in the project, assisting his undergraduate colleagues.

Team member Aaron Nelson, a senior in the College of Technology and Innovation, said dog waste will be broken down in the septic tanks through a process called anaerobic digestion, which takes place in the absence of oxygen.

“Microbes in the waste use it as a food source,” Nelson said. “A byproduct of the anaerobic digestion process is biogas, a combination of methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor and other gases.”

One of the challenges in designing an anaerobic digester was finding a way to keep the system cool enough to function during the summer months, when temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees. Nelson said their solution was to bury the system underground, where it will be kept below 100 degrees. The underground design also prevents any unpleasant odors from reaching the noses of visitors at the park. Patrons can deposit their dogs’ waste into the system though specially designed openings. They also can help the digester work by giving its contents a stir.

“That allows them to interact with the system, but it also helps the digestion process by mixing the waste around,” Nelson said.

The City of Gilbert raised $25,000 to help fund the project, with additional donations from companies in the Valley that deal with waste disposal. Ultimately, the digester will help the city save money by eliminating the cost of collecting the dog waste and taking it to a landfill. It will also benefit the environment by reducing atmospheric emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Protecting the environment with help from adorable, four-legged friends has captured a great deal of public attention. The Purina pet food company even featured the project on their “petcentric” website.

But the iProjects program serves a less flashy, but vitally important goal – connecting students with industry to solve real-world problems. Nelson said the experience has required him to think beyond the scope of his major and work with students from different backgrounds.

Micah Lande is an instructor at the College of Technology and Innovation and one of two faculty mentors for the team. He said the project has given students the opportunity to apply what they learn in the classroom and hone their problem-solving skills.

“The iProjects are first and foremost learning experiences – a safe place to explore and maybe fail. Our students have changed their design a number of times, and that’s what an engineer does,” Lande said.

The team’s other faculty mentor, Kiril Hristovski, is an assistant professor at the College of Technology and Innovation. He said the iProject program’s interdisciplinary approach is part of what makes it such a valuable experience.

“The future engineers have to come out of an educational experience with deep knowledge in a specific discipline, but also develop the ability to collaborate with different professionals from a broad range of disciplines. The iProjects achieve exactly that,” Hristovski said.

Hristovski says local partners and industry have been very supportive of the iProjects program because it produces students who are able to “hit the ground running” when they enter the workforce.

Many of the projects have a component of “community embeddedness,” giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities and achievements while also making a positive difference in their community and the world.

Hristovski and Lande believe that project-based learning is the next logical step towards creating engineering education for the future.

“Reinventing the education, reinventing the way we teach, that’s one of the primary missions of the College of Technology and Innovation,” Hristovski said. “Here, faculty and students have the opportunity to prototype the future.”

Although it’s normal for infants to have some disruptions in their breathing while sleeping, prolonged periods of sleep apnea can cause their blood oxygen levels to fall dangerously low, sometimes even resulting in death – this is a particular risk for babies born prematurely. Usually, when an infant does stop breathing while asleep, all that’s required to get them started again is a gentle nudge or some other kind of disturbance. Unfortunately, however, neonatal wards in developing nations are often understaffed, so nurses might not notice a non-breathing infant until it’s too late. That’s why a group of five bioengineering students from Houston’s Rice University invented the Babalung Apnea Monitor.

The Babalung consists of a chest strap that is wired to a small control box, which is in turn wired to a bicycle tail light. The strap is worn by the infant, and contains an elastic sensor. That sensor expands and contracts as the baby breathes, sending electrical signals to the box. As long as breathing continues relatively normally, the system’s electronics register the signals as an unbroken sine wave.

If the baby stops breathing for at least 20 seconds, however, a vibrating motor in the strap will be activated. Hopefully, this will be sufficient to rouse the infant, and get them breathing again. If they’re still not breathing within an additional five seconds, then the bike light will start flashing. This should alert the nurse, so they can take action. An audible alarm was considered, although the team worried that it might not be heard unless it was loud enough to damage the baby’s hearing.

The students have performed 50 tests of the Babalung (mostly on themselves), and found that it detected every instance of their breath-holding for 20 seconds or more. It also gave no false alarms, which is a common complaint of commercial SIDS and apnea monitors.

Currently it costs about US$25 to put one of the devices together, although the students hope that the price will decrease as the system is developed further. They’re planning on sending three prototypes for testing in developing countries in coming months, although they wonder if it might also end up seeing use in America.

The team – Rachel Alexander, Rachel Gilbert, Jordan Schermerhorn, Bridget Ugoh and Andrea Ulrich – created the Babalung as part of Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders program, in which students design low-cost health technologies for use in Third World nations. Past examples of other devices made for the program have included a centrifuge made from a salad spinner, a respirator based around a water bottle, and a $240 battery-powered fluorescence microscope.

More information on the Babalung is available in the video below.

Peter Schmitt, an MIT doctoral student, printed a clock in 2009. He didn't print an image of a clock on a piece of paper. He printed a three-dimensional clock -- an eight-inch diameter plastic timekeeping device with moving gears, hands and counterweights.

When he put it up on a wall and pushed the counterweight, it went ticktock.

"It wasn't very accurate, but it was a functioning clock," Schmitt said.

MIT scientists also would like you to be able to print your own robot. Their vision: Decide what you want it to do, download the design from the Internet, use software to make whatever changes you want and hit "print."

Scientists around the world are working on a technology that could go well beyond robots and clocks and turn the world's economy upside-down. It goes by the name of 3-D printing, and some proclaim that it will trigger a new Industrial Revolution. The Atlantic Council, an industry consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., says the technology is "transformational."

Those working in the field call it "additive manufacturing."

Much of modern manufacturing is by reduction. Manufacturers take blocks of plastic, wood, or metal, and grind and machine away until they get the item they want. All the plastic, wood, or metal that doesn't make it into the item is thrown away, maybe as much as 90 percent wasted.

3-D printing puts down layers of metal powders or plastics as directed by software, just as ink is laid down on paper directed by printer drivers. After each layer is completed, the tray holding the item is lowered a fraction of a millimeter and the next layer is added. Printing continues until the piece is complete.

Molten metal is allowed to cool and harden; plastics or metal powders are hardened by heat or ultraviolet light. The ingredients aren't limited to those substances; almost anything that flows can be accommodated, even chocolate.

There is little waste, and it is possible to change the object by simply working with the software that drives the printer the way text is changed in a word processor.

The end products may be better or possibly more beautiful than current products, the council wrote in a research report. 3-D printing allows designs impossible to make with conventional manufacturing techniques.

The first 3-D printer was invented by the American Charles Hull in 1984. The first machines were huge, slow, very expensive, and had limited use.

In 2004, Adrian Bowyer, a lecturer at Bath University in England, invented a machine that manufactured 50 percent of its own parts and in 2008, the machine printed itself. There was no real profit to be made in a self-replicating machine so Bowyer put the RepRap in the public domain, "open source" in the lexicon. Anyone could buy this desktop printer for under $400 and adapt it at will to print more copies of itself, or other items.

The design keeps improving as people think of better ways to do things, a form of crowd-sourcing, and users share designs online, often for free.

Additive manufacturing, meanwhile, became a huge and growing industry. According to Wohler Associates, a Colorado consulting firm, the industry has sustained an annual growth rate of 26.2 percent for more than 20 years and revenues will reach $3 billion by 2016.

Every year the technique turns out more complex artifacts, faster and cheaper. The technology is now used to print aircraft landing gears, dresses, car parts, individualized tooth crowns, artificial hips and knees, and more.

Scientists are experimenting with human cells to print organs. An Airbus contractor is working on printing an entire aircraft wing using titanium powder. Parts of the fuselage of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner were printed.

Printing a robot is far more complicated than building a clock, but researchers at MIT, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard think the result will "transform manufacturing and … democratize access to robots," according to MIT's Daniela Rus, leader of the project.

You could identify a need -- say cleaning up the kitchen floor after a kid spilled lunch -- and design a robot specifically for tasks like that. You would download a design from the Internet, adjust to customize it for your kitchen, and print out exactly the robot you designed, moving parts and all.

The researchers already have printed two robots, including one designed to go into contaminated areas and one with a gripper that would help people with disabilities.

The technology introduces serious issues for the world economy.

Most finished products now are the result of many parts manufactured in various places around the world, coming together for assembling into one product. They are then shipped to customers around the world. With 3-D printing, in theory, the entire product would be made at one site, at one time, in one machine, anywhere. Economies of scale would be irrelevant.

"Printing a few thousand iPhones on demand (and with instant updates or different versions for each phone) at a local facility that can manufacture many other products may be far more cost-effective than manufacturing ten million identical iPhones in China and shipping them to 180 countries around the world," the Atlantic Council wrote in a report.

Clearly, not everyone would share the advantages. Manufacturing centers like China could lose millions of jobs in that sector, and their economies could be destabilized. The industries that transport the supply line and distribute the finished product would also be hit, the council wrote. Warehouses full of parts and products could be replaced by machines that print on demand.

The council predicts a renaissance in American manufacturing. But that concept has issues too: most of the machines require no human assistance once the printing starts. You turn it on before you leave the factory and when you come back in the morning, your widget is there.

To achieve buff biceps, proper form for strength-training exercises is key, and people often turn to professional trainers to correct them and prevent injury. Cornell student engineers have developed an alternative: A simple electronic device that guides the user through a proper bicep curl.

Michael Lyons '11, M.Eng. '12; and Greg Meess '09, M.Eng. '10, invented their "haptic exercise coach" for an electrical engineering class project in spring 2010. Their teacher for ECE 4760, senior lecturer Bruce Land, recognized the project's uniqueness and encouraged the students to apply for a patent.

In September 2011, Lyons and Meess filed a provisional patent application for the device through Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC). The filing status is a yearlong placeholder to protect the intellectual property, giving CCTEC time to perform the necessary marketing and commercialization that will lead to a decision on whether to file a formal patent application.

The haptic exercise coach, which looks a bit like a blood pressure cuff, has two accelerometers that attach to the wrist and upper arm and track the wearer's movements. A microcontroller takes data from the accelerometers. When the wearer's form goes out of line with pre-calibrated specifications, the device vibrates in two places, alerting the wearer to adjust his or her form. By keeping proper form, the chance for injury diminishes, say the inventors.

Lyons said the project fuses two of his interests: electrical engineering and working out. He envisions such a device helping people cut down on the cost and time of a personal trainer.

"With personal trainers, everything is kind of subjective," Lyons said. "With our device, you calibrate everything to kinesiology." For the project, Lyons and Meess researched the scientific principles that guide proper exercise, as well as the many ways people exercise incorrectly. For example, they discovered that people often bring the weight too high or too rapidly, failing to maximize force on the targeted muscles.

"It's basic physics combined with human anatomy," Lyons said.

The possibilities reach far across the physical exercise spectrum; while working on the project, Lyons came across literature on rates of elbow injury in baseball players. "Easing those tendons back to life is something you want to do with very slow movements," Lyons said. "Instead of someone telling you how to do it, you could have a machine tell you to go at a certain speed and angle."

The bicep cuff was a proof of concept only. Meess envisions the same idea being applied to sensors for the legs, arms and torso, too. He is excited by the device's potential in physical therapy applications.

"The potential to provide instant feedback and ensure proper form is valuable, but also the ability to collect data for detailed updates on improvements could provide a useful motivational tool, as well as giving a physical therapist a quantitative way to remotely check up on their patient's progress," Meess said.

All the way back in March of 2004, working in his laboratory at the University of Southern California in San Diego, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, was working with a new process he had invented called Contour Crafting to construct the world’s first 3D printed wall.

His goal was to use the technology for rapid home construction as a way to rebuild after natural disasters, like the devastating earthquakes that had recently occurred in his home country of Iran.

While we have still not seen our first “printed home” just yet, they will be coming very soon. Perhaps within a year. Commercial buildings will soon follow.

For an industry firmly entrenched in working with nails and screws, the prospects of replacing saws and hammers with giant printing machines seems frightening. But getting beyond this hesitancy lies the biggest construction boom in all history.

Here’s why I think this will happen.

Contour Crafting

Contour Crafting is a form of 3D printing that uses robotic arms and nozzles to squeeze out layers of concrete or other materials, moving back and forth over a set path in order to fabricate a large component. It is a construction technology that has great potential for low-cost, customized buildings that are quicker to make and can therefore reduce energy and emissions.

Using a quick-setting, concrete-like material, contour crafting forms the house’s walls layer by layer until topped off by floors and ceilings that are set into place by the crane. In its current state of thinking, buildings will still require the insertion of structural components, plumbing, wiring, utilities, and even consumer devices like entertainment and audiovisual systems, as the layers are being built.

After using the technology to form simple things like walls and benches, discussions began to focus on other far-reaching opportunities like constructing rapid shelters after natural disasters, building operational structures on the moon out of moon dust, and building cheap houses for people in impoverished countries.

But those early visions were too much for an industry steeped in regulation and tradition, and the laudable ideas of helping the less fortunate will likely give way to a more mainstream approach of working with pieces before building the whole enchilada.

Experimenting with wall-printing technology in 2003

Breaking Through the Barriers

Starting with a mortgage industry that’s becoming increasingly wary of lending on virtually any houses, let alone something that looks radically different, coupled with city planning and zoning departments that have no way of deciding what the code should be on a “non-traditional structure,” and thousands of aging industry experts who can’t imagine building houses in any way other than we do today, we find ourselves up against a slow-moving, massively resistant building culture that will take years to overcome.

That said, this industry will have plenty of opportunity to move forward.

Early on, a number of industries will form around printed components and construction material. Printed blocks, cabinets, wall panels, toilets, and even doors will catch on quickly.

Printed artwork will begin to show up everywhere, including three dimensional “wall printings.”

Imagining what a house-printer could look like

A natural extension of printing new buildings will be devices that recycle the old ones. Ideally, the old material will be ground up and reformulated into new composites that can be re-printed into whatever is needed.

As an example, an old patio deck could be automatically “eaten” by some sort of PacMan device, ground up and mixed with other materials, and used to “print” a new patio deck – all within a couple hours.

By replacing our traditional techniques for pouring concrete, 3d printers could be used to print driveways, sidewalks, benches, fences, foundations, and much more.

When it comes to roofing, small bots will be used to create seamless coatings on the tops of houses. The small army of people needed to reroof a house today will be replaced with a single person who’s job is to place the bot at its initial starting point and make sure there is a consistent supply of material to coat the entire roof.

Only after gaining traction in a myriad of these component industries will we see the public warming up to entire houses being printed from the ground up.

Here are a few examples of this type of 3D printed construction projects already taking place:

The SeatSlug

The SeatSlug is based on the shape of the recently discovered flabellina goddardi sea with the surface inspired by traditional Japanese designs known as karakusamon patterns. Serving both as a piece of artwork and a parkbench, there will be little resistance to this type of niche application.

D-Shape – A printer capable of printing an entire building

An Italian inventor, Enrico Dini, chairman of the company Monolite UK Ltd, has developed a huge three-dimensional printer called D-Shape that can print entire buildings out of sand and an inorganic binder. The printer works by spraying a thin layer of sand followed by a layer of magnesium-based binder from hundreds of nozzles on its underside. The glue turns the sand to solid stone, which is built up layer-by-layer from the bottom up to form anything from a sculpture to a sandstone building.

A team at Loughborough University rethinks the use of concrete with their 3D printer technology.

The Radiolaria

Enrico Dini’s first project was a 24’ tall gazebo-like structure call the Radiolaria, built in 2010.

Experimenting with their ability to craft unusual shapes and forms out of concrete, the Loughborough University team created this unusual piece.

When we rid ourselves of the constraints of flat walls and smooth surfaces, a massive new wave of options begins to appear.

Thinking Three-Dimensionally

If we were able to actually create a three-dimensional holographic display above our computers, like you sometimes see in movies, we wouldn’t even grasp what we could do with that because we have been entrenched into two dimensional thinking from birth, with two-dimensional tools like paper, slide rules and blackboards.

Breaking out of this 2D thinking, the questions then become things like, how do you surf the Internet three dimensionally? How do you build three-dimensional charts and graphs?

We won’t really know how to use that type of display technology until we’ve had an entire generation of kids growing up with it and learning how to use it so that it gets integrated into our thinking and dreaming on a deeper level.

Printing Houses

Our thinking about homes today has been constrained by the materials we work with. Eight-foot sheets of drywall, wooden 2X4s, specific sizes for doors and windows, and an overwhelming desire to keep all surfaces flat, flat, flat.

However, flatness is rarely found in nature. Construction worker hate dealing with curves and unusual shapes because it complicates their lives tremendously.

Once we step away from the world of flatness, we begin to see a number of playful options that seem to come straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.

There is no doubt that a non-linear home will have its own unique challenges. Hanging pictures on a wall, installing cabinets, and even arranging furniture will all present obstacles to our present way of thinking.

But the energy and creativity that will flow from these spaces will be nothing short of breathtaking.

Walls will no longer need to be flat surfaces. Every wall can be designed with textures, protrusions, and artistic “surface rubble” to put an end to the dreadful uniformity in in our homes today.

What’s Next?

When printing entire buildings, there are many details that are not well understood, and that’s where the great opportunities lie. As an example:

When working with composite material, what is the expansion and contraction rate of this material?

How long will it last?

How resistant is it to wind and rain and even extreme weather like tornadoes, hail, and hurricanes?

Is it possible to instantly switch the printer ingredients from concrete to glass, and automatically “print” windows into their place?

When printing a building with a seamless skin, what are the advantages and disadvantages of this process?

Is it possible to “print” the carpeting into a room? And when it wears out, is it possible to bring in bots that “eat” the old carpeting, grind it up, and reprints it with a new formulation and new color?

Once a building is in place, can a printer be used to “print” the cabinets, furniture, toilets, shelving, and decorative details?

If part of a structure is damaged, will it be possible to use “repair printers” to produce seamless patches?

Can we use this same technology to “print” our highways?

Non-linear thinking for the buildings in our future

Final Thoughts

Will your next home be a printed home?

Along with this new technology will come a number of labor-reducing and cost-saving features. The number of people needed to build a home will drop by a factor of ten, maybe more.

Over time, we may see old houses torn down with PacMan-like recycling machines, where the material is ground up, reformulated, and an entirely new house is printed in its place – all in less than one day.

All of this sounds pretty radical by today’s standards. But once we see the first homes being built this in this fashion, a new wave of change will quickly descend upon us. And even though many will lose their old jobs, the number of new jobs that get created along the way will more than replace everything we lost.

Personally, I can’t wait.

A breakthrough in the development of a new generation of plastic electronic circuits by researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory brings flexible and transparent intelligent materials – such as artificial skin and interactive playing cards - a step closer.

The sense of touch is something we take for granted. The sensitive nerves in our finger tips generate a flow of information to our brains that enables us to do things that require extraordinary precision. Reaching out for an object in the darkness, we are able to tell in a split second what we’re touching and how to respond. Artificial skin with the ability to process information – such as texture and temperature – has long been the holy grail of researchers working on the next generation of electronics. Artificial skin, which has potential in areas such as robotics, and other products are now within our grasp as the result of recent research into the exciting field of plastic electronics.

Initially discovered in the late 1970s, plastic electronics is an expanding technology that is bringing us a myriad of products incorporating flexible and transparent electronic circuits in which the active materials are deposited as printable inks onto polymer-based substrates using various printing technologies. Rather than relying on conventional, rigid and brittle silicon chips to process information, plastic technology relies on novel organic materials which can be printed, just as coloured inks can be printed on paper. Plastic electronic circuits have the potential to be printed in a small laboratory containing one or two printing tools, whereas state-of-the-art microchip factories are about the size of three football fields and require purpose-built facilities.

However, the full commercial potential of plastic electronic circuits has been hampered by their lower speed and by the requirement of high supply voltage (of the order of 100 V), which meant that they were unable to compete with conventional silicon-based electronics especially in off-the-grid applications, which are the most attractive for this technology.

A breakthrough by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory lays the foundation for plastic electronic circuits that are fast, flexible and have low power consumption – as well as being cheap and relatively straightforward to produce. Physicists Dr. Auke Kronemeijer and Dr. Enrico Gili, working in the Cambridge team led by Professor Henning Sirringhaus, have developed a technology based on solution-processed organic semiconductors that will find a wide range of applications in everyday life – from radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on supermarket packaging to transparent displays embedded in car windscreens displaying vehicle speed or satellite navigation directions.

Put simply, the new technology provides a simpler way to fabricate plastic electronic circuits with relatively high performance. Dr. Kronemeijer said: “Our research shows that it’s possible to produce electronic circuits using a new class of ambipolar organic materials that simplify considerably the fabrication process compared with more traditional materials. Typically, to fabricate high performance plastic electronic circuits you need two different active materials. Our technology obtains the same result using only one material. This is an ink that can be printed and requires little more than room temperature to reach its peak performance. Conventional silicon chips, on the other hand, typically require more than 1000degC to be fabricated. The robustness and flexibility of our new material opens up the possibility for developing all kinds of intelligent products such as clothing items that interact with their wearer.”

Countless reports have predicted a future in which we will enjoy roll-up TV screens in our homes and buy phones with rollable display screens. But so far, these products have been restricted by the reliance of plastic electronics on high voltage power supplies which makes them cumbersome and impractical. Typically such circuits would operate at a speed of a few hundred Hz and would require input voltages of several dozens of volts – while the consumer would expect the devices to have embedded printed batteries able to supply all the power needed. The new circuits developed by Drs Kronemeijer and Gili exhibited the fastest operation published to date using this class of materials (a few hundred KHz) and reduced the power supply requirements by approximately one order of magnitude so that they can already be operated using a standard 9 V battery.

The physicists are confident that they will be able to reduce the power supply requirements further to make this technology suitable for ubiquitous electronic devices incorporating printed power supplies. This was achieved by using new ambipolar organic materials developed by Dr. Martin Heeney’s team at Imperial College, London, exhibiting carrier mobility in excess of 1 cm2/Vs. Moreover, these materials conduct both electron and holes, making the use of two different materials (such as in complementary logic circuits) redundant.

The integration potential of the new technology will open up possibilities for the production of entirely new products as well as lighter, more flexible versions of existing products. Dr. Gili explained: “Take an item such as a hand held solar powered calculator. This requires several discrete components contained in a bulky casing, such as a solar cell, back-up battery, silicon chip and LCD display. Using plastic electronic technology, all these components could be integrated on a single plastic substrate by simply printing different inks in different areas. Moreover, the end result would be a transparent piece of flexible plastic performing similar operations to the original, bulky calculator. Although the circuitry may not be powerful enough to perform very complex calculations, this opens up a multitude of novel applications, such as interactive playing cards or self-powered customisable business cards.”

Forty years after the introduction of microchips which have revolutionised our life with consumer products such as computers, mobile phones and TVs, it’s hard to remember a world without them. Will this new generation of plastic electronics replace the technologies used in the day-to-day products that we have come to rely on? Dr. Gili said: “The new technology has broad applications in areas such as display technology and ubiquitous sensor networks. It is not likely to replace silicon chips in computational-hungry applications such as PCs, but is has the potential to open up a whole new range of exciting applications of plastic electronics which will be cheaper and easier to manufacture, flexible and easy to customise.”

This research was published in March 2012 in the journal Advanced Materials (Vol. 24, No. 12, pp. 1558-1565) and was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and by the Cambridge Integrated Knowledge Centre (CIKC).

Noise levels, fine particulate matter, traffic volumes – these data are of interest to urban planners and residents alike. A three-dimensional presentation will soon make it easier to handle them: as the user virtually moves through his city, the corresponding data are displayed as green, yellow or red dots.

Fine dust, aircraft noise and the buzz of highways have a negative impact on a city‘s inhabitants. Urban planners have to take a lot of information into consideration when planning new highways or airport construction. What is the best way to execute a building project? To what extent can the ears – and nerves – of local residents be protected from noise? Previously, experts used simulation models to determine these data. The latest EU directives provide the basis for this. They obtain the data as 2D survey maps; however, these are often difficult to interpret, since the spatial information is missing.

That will get easier in the future: urban planners will be able to virtually move, with computer assistance, through a three-dimensional view of the city. In other words, they will “take a walk” through the streets. No 3D glasses required, though they would be a good idea for the perfect 3D impression. The corresponding values from the simulation “float” at the associated locations on the 3D map – where noise data might be displayed using red, yellow or green boxes. The distances between data points currently equal five meters, but this can be adjusted according to need. The user determines how the map is displayed – selecting a standpoint, zooming in to street level or selecting a bird’s-eye perspective. This can provide quick help in locating problems such as regions with heavy noise pollution. The 3D map was developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO and the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP. “For the simulations, we used standard programs that are oriented around EU directives on noise-pollution control,” says Roland Blach, department head at IAO. “The main challenge was to come up with a user-friendly way of displaying different simulation results.”

Another interesting consideration that the researchers were able to visualize with this tool: if electric vehicles alone were driven in the city, instead of cars with internal combustion engines, how would this change the volume level? What if both gas-driven and electric motor vehicles were on the roads? “Admittedly, you can barely hear electric cars when starting up. At about 30 kilometers per hour, however, you start to hear rolling noises that can get really loud at speeds of 50 kilometers per hour. Initial simulations found that the conventional simulation models stipulated by public agencies tend to average too sharply: we have yet to see any significant difference in the noise level in electric vehicles or gas-driven cars, since apparently it‘s the rolling noise that predominates,” says Blach. Researchers are presenting these simulations, using Stuttgart as an example, at the Hannover Messe from April 23–27 (Hall 26, Booth C08).

The 3D map is only one of the tools developed by researchers in the “Virtual Cityscape” project. Another is parametric modeling. Here, a structure is designed such that any subsequent changes to dimensions can be made simply by entering the new measurements. If new buildings are to be planned, the scientists first analyze the logistical flows. How many people pass through which halls and corridors? What goods have to get through? “The program takes these usage parameters into account, and automatically incorporates them into the planning,” explains Blach. For example, if only standard windows are supposed to be used in a building, and the architect enlarges a space, then the program automatically places the windows at the appropriate distances or even inserts another one if space allows.