Printed Flexible Carbon Nanotubes, for Cheaper Electronics and Wall-Sized Displays

From ExtremeTech:

Researchers have, for the first time, used a conventional, high-throughput printing process to create sheets of high-quality carbon nanotube transistors on flexible plastic (PET) sheets. These flexible sheets, made from the same kind plastic as the Coke bottle you just took a swig from, could be used to create flexible, low-power displays for applications as small as a smartphone or as large as your living room wall - or touch-sensitive electronic skin for robots and prosthetic limbs. This development comes from the Ali Javey and colleagues at Berkeley, the same group that previously produced rugged carbon nanotube-based e-skin back in 2011. While the end result of both studies is fairly similar - polymer sheets with thin-film carbon nanotube transistors baked in - the main difference is that the first study used a very slow and laborious process. These new sheets of single-walled carbon nanotube thin-film transistors (SWCNT TFTs) are produced using inverse gravure printing - a continuous, rotary printing process that's typically used for magazines, catalogs, and packaging (cardboard, plastic, etc.) This is exciting because gravure printing is massively scalable: Commercial gravure printing presses can churn its way through a three-meter-wide reel of paper or plastic at speeds of up to 14 meters (46 feet) per second.

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