I read an article yesterday about yet another use for silver in the future. It seems that they are coming up with more uses for this versatile metal all the time. The latest is the use of silver in ultra-thin flexible touch screens that can be rolled up.
Imagine being able to roll-up your laptop like a Sunday newspaper. Nanotechnology makes that possible and would make laptop computers even more convenient to carry around. This technology can also be applied to solar panels so they could be rolled out on rooftops or wherever needed.
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Nanotechnology is the study of the controlling of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures sized 100 nanometers or smaller in at least one dimension, and involves developing materials or devices within that size.
The size, or lack of, a nanometer is mind boggling to me. A nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter. Imagine taking a meter stick and cutting it up into 10,000 or 100,000 pieces. It is hard to grasp. Then expand that out into a million, then 500 million, and onto a billion pieces that get so small that it takes a 10,000X microscope to get a good look at them.
TOUCH SCREENS
These cheap, flexible touch screens made with silver and gold nanowires could be available soon in cell phones, computers, and more. The same technology could even be used in solar panels.
It’s a roll-to-roll process similar to printing newspapers, that makes it extremely fast and able to be done at very low cost.
Today, most touch screens and solar panels are glass-based. The hard, insulating glass helps protect and support the thin coating of electrically conductive metals. But glass is also brittle and heavy. When an object strikes a solar panel, or a person drops a cell phone, the glass can shatter.
Touch screens made from thin plastic coated with silver and gold would weigh less, take up less volume, be more flexible, and could be produced much more quickly than glass plates; up to 100 times faster in fact.
Even though the screens are made with silver and gold, they are still cheap. The total amount of precious metals in each screen is so small that it doesn’t significantly increase the price.
The connections between the silver nanowires are good, but the conductivity has been improved by fusing them together with tiny amounts of gold. They are also working on creating longer, thinner silver nanowires, which will make the screen even more transparent and improve conduction of electricity through them.
The thin metal mesh formed by the nanowires is flexible and sticks to a variety of materials. When applied to plastic, the material can be bent, flexed or dropped, and the screen won’t crack and will still conduct an electrical charge.
That’s a far cry from many glass-based touch screens, which have an unfortunate tendency to shatter on impact.
The silver nanowires could also be used as electrodes for solar cells that can turn light into electricity. Flexible silver and gold nanowire screens could replace the hard, glass-based electrodes.
Unlike many technologies that have a significant lag time between development and application, this technique could be used immediately. The same machines that produce tons of newspapers every day could instead assemble rolls and rolls of touch screens and electrodes for solar panels.
Several scientists agree that the consumers will likely soon see this research in a variety of devices. The products that come from this technology will indeed be very useful.
ArminVoigt Via ProBlogPartners™
Reference:
Silver, Gold Makes for Cheap, Flexible Touch Screens
January 2, 2011
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