Latest in Electronics
MXenes, Memristors, and More!
The invention of the transistor is easily one of the greatest scientific event in mankind’s history. Today, transistors form the building blocks of almost all electronic devices you see around you. It was not just the invention, but the rapid evolution of it is what had a huge impact on humanity and our technological developments. Even today, rapid developments are happening in the field of electronics. Here is another article added to the ”Latest trends” series, covering some significant research and discoveries in this domain from across the globe that may directly impact your life and work in the near future. Here is our top 5 pick, explained short and brief.
Flexible Electronics for a flexible future
Flexible or flex electronics, one of the hottest areas of research today, is a technology of mounting electronic circuits on flexible plastic substrates. They are of great significance in advance medicines and foldaway smartphone displays. They are more advantageous over the present rigid green plastic circuits, crammed with chips, transistors, resistors and sockets, interconnected by a suburban sprawl of printed wiring.
They promise an entirely new design tool. Imagine, if you could fold and wrap your smartphone like a rubber band around your wrist! If you are wondering that such a technology is insane and must probably be very costly, you get it wrong. It wins even when it comes to the cost. However, the real focus today is to make them even cheaper. That would help us build flexible electronics in a much larger scale. Flexible solar panels, flexible PCBs, and even flexible electronic clothing, the possibilities are limited by our own imagination.
The improvised wireless charging
Introduced a few years ago in a couple of devices wireless charging soon caught global attention but it wasn’t exactly like Tesla had envisioned for it. It’s exciting to charge your smartphone while you are holding it or using it, anywhere and anytime, without having to put it on a charging point. Isn’t it? Current wireless chargers work under principle of magnetic induction. When a charger and device are tuned to resonate with each other an alternating emf from charger gets converted into electricity in the phone, which is fed into battery. But the hitch is you need to leave your device in one place while it charges. Although some existing designs are efficient for a longer distance apart, but it’s more of a challenge when the device is moving. A team of researchers recently designed a wireless charger using a quantum mechanics concept “parity-time symmetry” such that the energy boost from an amplifier in the charger exactly balances out the loss of energy as it moves further away. Wireless systems can one day be used to beam power over much greater distances that would perform even greater marvels. Nevertheless, wireless charging is a space to keenly watch out for in the coming years.
What is a Memristor?
You may have heard of the building blocks of all electrical circuits as the resistors, the transistors and the capacitors but have you ever heard of a memristor?
Memristors are the fourth class of electrical circuit, joining resistor, capacitor and inductor which exhibits unique relation between electric charge and magnetic flux linkage. The word “memristor” is a concatenation of “memory resistor”. It was theoretically envisioned in 1971, but such was the knowledge behind it that it took 37 years for scientists to prepare its first prototype. What’s unique about this is that its variable resistance is in response of the current that had previously flowed through that device, or simply it changes in future by resistance value according to its past events. It’s a resistor with memory which can perform logic as well as store data even after it is switched off! It is intended for applications in nano electronic memories, computer logic and neuromorphic computer architectures. One of the most recent developments in this field includes the use memristors for deep learning, building a neural network to be specific. This neural network was named, Reservoir computing system. The specialty of it was that, it could efficiently perform speech prediction.
Ever heard of metal-polymer conductors?
We have just seen about flexible electronics. Here is something even more special, flexible electronics for biological electronic devices. One of the greatest challenges in bio-electronics is to achieve bio-compatibility and flexibility so that the devices can be smoothly integrated with the human body.
In a recent research from China, scientists have created what is known as a metal-polymer conductor (MPC). It constitutes of an elastic polymer combined with liquid metal (Gallium and Indium). When these mixtures are embedded with silicone based polymer, the resultant is a flexible material that also retains its conductivity. It is non-toxic, stretchable, and the most important of all, completely bio-compatible! The fabrication process can be achieved with great precision. All these features only indicate that these metal-polymer conductors will play a major role in development of new bio-sensors and implants.
You can read about complete research related to this here.
Next breakthrough in nano-technology
Recently scientists developed a new sintering process (a way of forming solids by using pressure or heat) for ceramics and many low-dimensional devices. It is known as cold sintering process (CSP), which uses very low temperatures thus saving energy and enabling to create a new form of material with high commercial potential. This method is claimed to bring in a new era for ceramic packaging and microwave device development.
To develop a ceramic-2D composite system scientists used a new class of 2D material called “MXene” with CSP. MXene’s are carbide and nitride sheets a few atoms thin that possess extreme strength and are also very good conductors. Mixing of even a very small amount of MXene into a ceramic system like zinc oxide, dramatically changes its properties. It forms continuous 2D grain boundaries, transforms the semiconductor to metallic ceramic, makes it extremely hard, and also improves the ability of the ceramic to transform heat into electricity. It is the first time they have created such a nano composite of 2D material, opening the door for new designs for nano-composites with applications such as solid-state batteries, thermo-electrics, varistors, catalysts, chemical sensors and much more. The extended research of this is surely a place to focus on.
For more information, click here.
As we continue to advance in science and technology, there is no stopping to the discoveries and inventions we make any time soon.
“The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
-Albert Einstein
Stay tuned for next article of this series.
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(This article was co-authored by Shyam Rangapure and XQ of ‘The Research Nest’)
