Another flexible circuit project emerges, carbon nanotubes to blame

Yeah, we get it, flexible electronics -- sans application -- are about as exciting as the circuitry under your keyboard. But it's Friday, and this here story has real-live carbon nanotubes, so you know it's a winner. Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo has built for himself a stretchy, flexible conducting material using carbon nanotubes mixed with a polymer. The nanotubes are mixed into a compound called "bucky gel" to prevent clumping, and after some rubber-like flourinated copolymer is mixed in and it's all poured onto a glass plate, holes are punched in the material to better flexibility. Apparently it ends up looking a bit like a nylon stocking, but we won't hold that it against it, since it can be stretched up to 38%, while also managing to be 100 times more conductive than any other elastic material. The possibilities for such technology is pretty much endless, but we'd say "nylon stocking that is also, conveniently, a computer" is the first product category worth felling.

[Via I4U]

[YesHone @ Aug 8th 2008 6:05PM]

Just think.... A stretchable, flexible computer condom that can
sense and compute in real time, the exact requirements
for the female orgasm!

[Krush @ Aug 8th 2008 6:44PM]

... and "give" away cancer for free .... good times (for the chemo labs)

[cesium @ Aug 8th 2008 6:07PM]

kthxbye

[austin @ Aug 8th 2008 7:56PM]

thats something that a 13 year old girl would say on myspace.

[kaiswil2 @ Aug 8th 2008 6:10PM]

You sure Steve Jobs would be cool with wearing stockings with an integrated iPhone?

[Cal @ Aug 8th 2008 6:12PM]

Burn in hell.

[andres @ Aug 8th 2008 6:12PM]

C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

[zomg0t @ Aug 8th 2008 6:19PM]

FUCKING WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!

[Mike10010100 @ Aug 8th 2008 6:22PM]

C'mon Engadget! Ban this guy so hard his grandchildren will feel it. If he ever has any. I'm betting that with this kind of time on his hands, he won't have any.

Loser. Burn in hell.

[Good_Bytes @ Aug 8th 2008 6:30PM]

That is another reason why I hate Apple... they pay people to spam everywhere and creates fanboys that do the same, because they think it's cool. Live would be 100X better without this.

[CraigJ @ Aug 8th 2008 9:12PM]

That guy is not a fanboy. He's a troll. nothing more. nothing less.

[Good_Bytes @ Aug 8th 2008 6:31PM]

*Live = life

[Y00. @ Aug 8th 2008 6:32PM]

idiot.

[Jeremy K. @ Aug 8th 2008 6:33PM]

lol

[camille.lambert @ Aug 8th 2008 8:49PM]

I "ship" you to some foreign country. Poor other guys!

[J Ozer @ Aug 8th 2008 9:11PM]

This means that within 10 years, I will be able to throw jumper cables out of my car to instantly electrocute joggers or cyclists who make me feel bad about lazing around in a carbon spewing V8. Thank God for progress.

[John H. @ Aug 8th 2008 9:36PM]

I'm sorry, I really don't understand this article...

[parkside701 @ Aug 9th 2008 12:57AM]

I am just too stoopid to even attempt any of this.

[Nate DiDonato @ Aug 9th 2008 1:43AM]

I see a CR2032, some wire, clamps, an LED, and what could just simply be a stick of chewing gum with a wire under it.

Can we get a video of the "stretch" in action?

[tekdroid @ Aug 9th 2008 5:15AM]

anti-static wrist straps?

[Dr Zoidberg @ Aug 9th 2008 10:38AM]

NO i[s]sheep[/s]SHIT .jr the real question is "will this little 12 year old bastard (you) ever fuck off?"

I mean for God sakes shut the fuck up about the iPhone - do you even have an iPhone or are you just a stupid attention seeking twat?

[EricR @ Aug 11th 2008 10:03AM]

It should have been "a shower curtain with possible application as a portal device"