Boffins at Oregon State create transparent circuits?
Dude, screw the transparent OLEDs, it's all about transparent circuits, which some Oregon State University scientists seem to have created. The significance, of course, is clear (ahem): you save a lot of space in devices -- especially portables -- when your circuit board is your screen, not mounted on a wafter in a package on a board behind it. Apparently the scientists even expect clear, glass-mounted indium gallium oxide circuitry to ultimately be cheaper to produce than silicon. The military's in on the gig too, the Army Research Office is a project sponsor (as is HP and the National Science Foundation), probably for the project's obvious heads-up display uses. Will we, um, not see this gear any time in the near future? Hard to say, they're only up to 26 transistors in a single array as of yet (compared to the hundreds of millions in chips nowadays), but we'll be waiting.
[Thanks, James F]
