Plastic computers taking shape, but won't replace silicon
Plastic computers taking shape, but won't replace silicon
A researcher says plastic computers are still far away,
as challenges need to be resolved on writing data and processing
Agam Shah
April 18, 2014 (IDG News Service)
Can plastic materials morph into computers? A research
breakthrough published this week brings such a possibility closer to reality.
Researchers are looking at the possibility of making
low-power, flexible and inexpensive computers out of plastic materials. Plastic
is not normally a good conductive material. However, researchers said this week
that they have solved a problem related to reading data.
The research, which involved converting electricity from
magnetic film to optics so data could be read through plastic material, was
conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa and New York University. A
paper on the research was published in this week's Nature Communications
journal.
More research is needed before plastic computers become
practical, acknowledged Michael Flatte, professor of physics and astronomy at
the University of Iowa. Problems related to writing and processing data need to
be solved before plastic computers can be commercially viable.
Plastic computers, however, could conceivably be used in
smartphones, sensors, wearable products, small electronics or solar cells,
Flatte said.
The computers would have basic processing, data gathering
and transmission capabilities but won't replace silicon used in the fastest
computers today. However, the plastic material could be cheaper to produce as
it wouldn't require silicon fab plants, and possibly could supplement faster
silicon components in mobile devices or sensors.
"The initial types of inexpensive computers
envisioned are things like RFID, but with much more computing power and
information storage, or distributed sensors," Flatte said. One such
implementation might be a large agricultural field with independent temperature
sensors made from these devices, distributed at hundreds of places around the
field, he said.
The research breakthrough this week is an important step
in giving plastic computers the sensor-like ability to store data, locally
process the information and report data back to a central computer.
Mobile phones, which demand more computing power than
sensors, will require more advances because communication requires microwave
emissions usually produced by higher-speed transistors than have been made with
plastic.
It's difficult for plastic to compete in the electronics
area because silicon is such an effective technology, Flatte acknowledged. But
there are applications where the flexibility of plastic could be advantageous,
he said, raising the possibility of plastic computers being information
processors in refrigerators or other common home electronics.
"This won't be faster or smaller, but it will be
cheaper and lower power, we hope," Flatte said.
In the new research, Flatte and his colleagues were able
to convert data encoded in a magnetic film from an electric flow into optics
for an organic light-emitting diode (OLED). The LED was made out of the
plastic, and connected to the magnetic film through a substrate. Plastics can't
handle electricity; the data had to be converted into optics for communication.
"The plastic devices are very important in certain
areas of light emission but have tended not to be important in
communication," Flatte said.
The researchers were more concerned about making the
technology happen -- environmental concerns related to plastic are a completely
different discussion, Flatte said.
To be sure, there are plastic devices with silicon
computers in them already on the market, like a baby garment from Rest Devices,
which has electronics to measure a baby's motion, temperature, breathing
patterns and pulse. And before this week, basic transistors made out of plastic
had been demonstrated. Now, this latest research establishes a method for
plastic devices to read data from storage.
"The writing problem would have to be solved. But I
think [reading] is an important step forward," Flatte said.
Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and
semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's
e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com
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