electricity by plastics

  A newly discovered technique makes it possible to create a whole new array of plastics with metallic or even superconducting properties. This is the quite epoch making science as, plastics usually conduct electricity so poorly that they are used to insulate electric cables but, by placing   a thin film of metal onto a plastic sheet and mixing it into the polymer surface with an ion beam. Australian research have shown the method can be used to make cheap, strong, flexible and conductivity plastic films.

Ion beam techniques are widely used in the microelectronics industries to tailor the conductivity of semiconductor such as silicon, but attempts to adopt this process to plastic films have been made since the 1980s with only limed success until now.

What the team has been able to do here is use an ion beam film to tune the properties of a plastic film it  conducts  electricity like metals used in the  electrical wires themselves, and even to act as a superconductor  and pass electric current  without resistance if  cooled to low enough  temperature ,and this makes this endeavor such a  unique project. Actually it makes for the transportations for the original aspects of material science from one established quality to another. To demonstrate a potential application of this new material, the team produced electrical resistance thermometers that meet industrial standards. Tested against industry standards platinum resistance thermometer, it had comparable or even superior accuracy.

Further this material is so interesting because we can   take all the desirable aspects of polymers such as mechanical flexiableity, robustness and low cost and into the mix add good electrical conductivity, something not normally associated with plastics. Thus it opens new avenues to making plastic electronics.

The most exciting part about the discovery is how precisely the film’s ability to conduct or resist the flow of electrical current can be turned.

It opens up a very board potential for useful applications, in the fact, the electric resistivity can be controlled over 10 orders f magnitude put simply, and threat means there can be ten billion options to adjust the recipe when making the plastic film. In theory, such plastic can be made that conduct no electricity at all or as well as metals do and everything in between.

These new materials can be easily produced with equipment commonly used in the microelectronics industry and are vastly more tolerant of espouser to oxygen compared to standard semiconducting polymers.

combined, these advantages may given ion beam processed polymer films a bright future in the ongoing development of soft materials for plastic electronics application  a fusion between current and next generation  technology, researches say

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