Search This Blog

Friday, November 14, 2008

NanoClusters and InkJet Printing - The Print Process is Not Used to Print But to Manufacture

11/2008


The key to a "bottom-up" production of possibly the first heterometallic gallium-indium hydroxide nanocluster was the substitution of nitroso-butylamine as an additive in place of nitrosobenzene.

The above sentence is not made up - it is part of an article here.

But the reason I have been following NanoTechnology as it interrelates to printing - is simple.

One day most IC boards, video displays, light sources, and electrical devices will be as thin as a piece of paper and will have the ability to be manufactured on demand - with the help of Nanoclusters, thin-film, and Inkjet applications. See "State-of-the-art inks and other materials are opening up new applications for inkjet as a manufacturing tool."


Stop for a second and think - ink is applied onto a surface, if we replace the ink with a substance that could say, conduct electrical current, and we could control the current within the structures "printed" on a surface in an elemental sense we would be able to "print" fully functional, custom, IC boards.

We could print/spray/inkjet, on the surface of a sheet of paper, shingle, or car roof, a solar collector(Konarka demonstrates micro/nano inkjet-printed solar cells). And with wireless power, transfer the captured power to other, flat, "printed" lighting sources - a "light bulb" as thin as a sheet of paper.

Oh but wait, there is so much more.

The computer of the future could be 'painted' into your desk surface, or briefcase, or the lap of your trousers. ( see
Inkjet printers could be the chip factories of the future, squirting out circuits made from layers of organic semiconducting ink.)

HUH?

HD video displays "spray-painted" onto walls - this would add a dimension to "tagging".

Cell Phones, applied to clothing, tattoos that light up at night, cars that change colors - or show running video all over its surface...

Well, before all this BladeRunner stuff hits, I guess we can look forward to nanotechnologies assisting in regular, boring, photo-prints:


"Photo-quality papers with ink-receptive mesoporous layers that are based on inorganic solids fulfill the requirements of present-day high-speed inkjet printer much better than those based on organic polymers..."

Experiments indicate that the presence of nanosized polynuclear aluminum complexes in the ink-receptive layers of new paper can help to improve the permanence of photo-quality images. This means colors stay longer on paper containing nanosized polynuclear aluminum complexes.

I still want one day to be able to change the color of my Rover as easily as I change the color scheme on my Windows...

Interesting? See:

Nano Packs


Click to email me.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Contact Me

Greg Walters, Incorporated
greg@grwalters.com
262.370.4193