The promise of flexible electronics

Bahgat Sammakia, director of Binghamton's Integrated Electronics Engineering Center, is ushering in a new age of flexible electronics. "A computer the size and shape of a ballpoint pen, or biomedical or environmental sensors woven into clothing, are the sorts of ideas that are on the doorstep of becoming real."

Transcript:
So flexible electronics are electronics which do the same things that traditional electronics do, with the big difference that they are lightweight, and they are built onto flexible substrates. So we can think of a sheet of plastic that has a display on it, and can also have a keyboard and can be woven into clothing, so it's very lightweight, very rugged, hopefully very inexpensive and very high-quality. Some of the mid-term applications for flexible electronics are going to be a set of evolutionary improvements over traditional electronics, so we can think of computers that are lighter-weight, and more rugged packaging that is flexible and can accommodate multiple chips. So, small improvements in engineering that result in cheaper, better-performing electronics.

You can also think about mid-term applications. Things like an electronic newspaper, a newspaper that can be downloaded directly on a sheet that you carry with you, and you can fold and put in your pocket. Other applications would be wallpaper that emits light gradually and senses you as you enter the room, solar panels that are used just like roofing tiles -- can be nailed to the roof, but collect energy allowing you to use it in the home. So there's a very wide range, and all of these things are being worked on today, so this is not a dream. These are things that will happen.

The long-term applications and implications are just tremendous. To me, the ultimate things are things that deal with people's lives and their health, so biomedical applications are obviously a very exciting application. They can be simple things, like wearable electronics that diagnose people's health and sense their environment, and warn them if there's something harmful in the environment. You can have point-of-care medicine. So for people with chronic pain, you can have clothing that senses their pain, and senses what's causing it, and does something about it.

You can have clothing that calls in medical help when it's necessary, so applications that deal with people directly, and, even longer term than that, you can think of electronics that can be directly interfaced to living tissue, so you can have artificial organs. You can have applications where you can dispense medication and control health, and do something about emergency situations until medical help arrives.

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