Xerox announces silver ink, keeps printable electronics dream alive
By Vladislav Savov 
posted Oct 29th 2009 9:35AM
posted Oct 29th 2009 9:35AM
Please note: If you're a current Engadget commenter, you do not need to re-register. Simply login and you will be prompted to select a username.
How is this news? If I take a look at what I've been paying for my inkjetcartridges over the years, there must have been silver in it all along.
Well done sir!
Pure comedic gold.
Don't you mean silver?
Hahaha true that but, with a melting point lower than the plastic fabrics, and still decently reliable conductivity on weird porous surfaces, how much lead is involved?
I wonder what the resolution is. That "a" in Nano looks like a mighty high resistance path.
Perhaps the motherboard industry will be the next to take up the war against piracy.
Now they just need some representatives from Apple to go to PARC and steal the technology.
What would that do? Apple isn't focused on catering to the DIY crowd, so I don't really see why they'd be interested in giving customers the ability to print their own circuit boards.
Hi CtrlBurn,
that sound, it is "whoosh".
I agree with CtrlBurn. Has apple ever made it easy to do anything with they're computers? To do anything in the case of an Apple product is a major pain due to their form factor. Most of the time, if you even open the product up it voids the warranty. So I agree they don't really fit the DIY bill. And creating an app for the app store does not done DIY. Please tell me if I am wrong, it will only makes me smarter.
So if they don't want you messing with that, why would they want you modding their products. If you create an app, they have to approve it before they will post it in the app store. So would they want to approve every board you print? It would go against their advertisement. Based on their ads, this would be one of the things that make PC's hard to use and a hassle. Because PC's support the DIY lifestyle, not so much with apple. Buy it and use it, just don't change it.
Also, when you make a statement like "that sound, it is "whoosh"". Why don't you explain yourself or make a valid argument. If you think what I myself or CtrlBurn says is dumb, produce an argument that supports your case instead of writing an elitist remark that produces no argument and gives no knowledge. Your short and sweet response just bashed another without producing anything knowledgeable to justify your inconsiderate post. Its like your scared to add anything more preventing you yourself from being flamed. Reading that statement lends me to believe that you have no insight in what you are talking about and that you probably no less than the poster you bashed. I have nothing wrong with calling someone out just give some reasons why. That would show your knowledge as well as sharing it with others so they benefit.
The joke horizontaleight made (and that Dster attempted to point out) was that the computer mouse was invented at XEROX PARC, and then copied by Apple and made popular with the Macintosh.
It was a poor, inaccurate, nerdy joke. I take full responsibility.
aww, dag. Guess I won't need to take my humility pill when I get home today.
I think it's "lain", not "laid". I'm sorry. I just had to say this. I'm really sorry.
At least it's not an obvious mistake if it is a mistake, and you are probably right that it is.
So I propose we forgive and live-and-learn
I wouldn't call Xerox obscure, you might not use their high end printers. They make fantastic color laser printers that use solid ink.
people seem to believe that if a company moves outside the "consumer" market they they are some now not relevant.
You know, company's like GE because people don't buy lightbulbs anymore, boeing because people don't buy planes, and American Steel, because who the heck is buying steel beams these days.
So the other article you mention DOES includes Xerox. PARC stands for Palo-Alto Research Center, which is owned by Xerox.
This sort of thing could be great for hobbyists. One of the things that keeps me from etching my own boards is storage and disposal of the echant solution. And prototyping services are still pretty expensive for hobby type work. It would be nice to be able to drop a "circuit board" cartridge in the printer and have a prototype ready to test a few minutes later.
yes this mean we can have more Droids that have even smaller qwerty keyboards and screens
i can see our mother board look like that in the future.now it is up to Intel to develop new process to print cpu on the film. then we will be able to download our own cpu.
You know motherboards have 5 or 6 layers, layers you cannot see but have traces on them routing hundreds of lines.
And those motherboards carry more and more juice in those traces, and the copper in them diffuses more and more heat, so no you won't see any printed motherboards.
And frankly it's probably way cheaper and quicker and easier and precise to use the current methods, although it is perhaps more pouting.
As I said on another blog (and got abused for), the University of Brunel in the UK were doing exactly this in the mid 90s. They too were using silver-based inks and lithographic printing processes.
The biggest problem Brunel had (aside from getting commercial funding) was making vias to allow the formation of multilayer boards. Multi-layer is absolutely essential for modern electronics. Xerox are likely to have problems in that area too.
Brunel were trying to use lasers to melt through their plastic substrates in a way that caused some of the silver ink to mix with the polymer and bridge between the two sides. I'm not sure that this worked very well though. I think their via resistance was high (of course arrays of vias can be used to reduce resistance, as is common on chips).
I can't but help notice that my keyboards are also consisting of conducting traces on plastic inside, and some are multilayer using pressed pads to make contact with various layers, seems the chinese also already thought it up and out then.
That looks excellent. Now we just need printable transistors. :-)
There are already printable transistors. That's the basis of Plastic Logic's technology that forms the drive circuitry from an e-Ink display panel on their up-coming ebook reader.
How about some silver E-ink? Imagine circuits that could change architecture on the fly depending on the current task at hand!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
Yes, like the FPGA but with the components connected by a conductive E-ink that could change circuit designs much like E-ink changes its display. Not likely feasible, at least not any time soon, but this article got me thinking.
The real question is - can it print multi-layer circuit boards.
I'd guess yes; print an insulating ink when not printing silver, let it dry, then print next layer.
As I said above, this was the problem the University of Brunel in the UK had when they did the same thing back in the mid-90s.
Arrigob:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)#The_GUI
I would imagine an application for this that might make them some money, would be e-ink magazines? One of the biggest issues with the Esquire e-ink trial last fall was that the circuit board inside was solid, so even though the page was flexible the entire magazine had a big chunk of plastic in it which made it impossible to flex and hold like a regular magazine. Printing such as this onto flexible plastic would have solved the problem.
Could also be used to print micro-connect cable such as those used for ZIF drives?
This could also find uses in microfluidic control (lab-on-a-chip biology) and chemistry control (silver catalysts for chemical manufacturing processes).
because Microsoft never stole a thing...
@Wwhat. Those keyboard membranes don't use printed conductors. I presume they're activating the acrylic substrate with a Palladium pre-treatment and the electrolessly plating a field metal, followed by traditional electroplating to build up the thickness. They then pattern the wires using standard photolithography. Or they might do the photolithography before the electroplate followed by debussing by cutting away the bus-bar if the design allows.
Incidentally, this technology has been around since before China started building all our electronics. I first saw it in my Sinclair ZX Spectrum keyboard back in 1982.
hmm, so who plans on soldering a capacitor on to this thin sheet of plastic
Low melting point for computer applications doesn't sound like a good idea.
No, but flexible monochromatic passive matrix displays can be printed on plastic for about, oh say -- five dollars cost @ vga resolution...~xobmo
And with a higher melting point than solder I assume.
At the Frauenhofer Institute in Erlangen (Bavaria, Germany) they showed a simialr Tech - really damn interesting