Wrap Chips: The world's first stable Organic Microprocessor announced

Up until now, we have been used to the fact that the Microprocessors that control most electronics of today sit in a pristine sanctified box. The applications of electronics have been limited by this fact. And we have been hearing stories, mostly fantastic, about how some day we would be able to wear electronic clothes, write on electronic paper and basically wrap electronics around everything that's around us. The wait for the realization of these dreams may finally be over. A team of European researchers have come up with an out-of-the-box idea that promises to bring microprocessors out of their boxes!

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The challenge with creating flexible chips has been that they are extremely unstable. Unlike mono-crystalline silicon, having a malleable structure makes their behavior unpredictable. The transistors fail to have a constant and uniform threshold voltage. What the scientists at the Belgian Nanotechnology Research Center, Imec, have done is to add an extra gate to the transistors. This allows better control of the threshold voltage and makes the switching more predictable.

Unveiled at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, this chip has its share of limitations. The chip is 25-micrometer thick, has 4,000 transistors and an 8-bit logic microprocessor which makes it seem anachronistic compared to today's microprocessors. But it is a welcome step towards what could be the future of electronics and computing.

Via:Spectrum/Popsci