PAPER ELECTRONICS
This is a rushed introduction to a topic that’s been consuming me for many years and that I’m figuring out how to expand and bring into my discussions of paper: paper electronics. This isn’t electronic paper, but the components of electronic devices: transistors, power sources, speakers, etc. being constructed from paper, or embedded into or printed on paper.
I’ve started work on constructing a project based around Nick Cave’s Nocturama album. He’s one of a number of mature rock-and-roll artists whose songs are symbolic, and observing how the symbols come alive in the world is more important than figuring out what they might mean to Nick. Music writing tends to keep artists in a state of perpetual adolescence, introspectively wondering who they are and figuring out what they believe in. As they’ve matured and their focus has turned to their places in the community, the criticism hasn’t kept up and sketched a context for the symbols in their songs.
I’m eternally inspired by conversations between people from different fields, discussing what they have in common: and listening to these conversations, but, later, also reading and referring back to the transcripts.
Quite unconsciously I’ve been compiling a collection of transcripts of great conversations:
Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said talking about home and music.
Michael Ondaatje and the film editor, Walter Murch.
Cameron Crowe and the film director, Billy Wilder.
Jean Claude Carierre, the screenwriter for Peter Brook’s Mahabarata, and the Dalai Lama.
The chef, Justin North, and the farmers and producers who supply the raw materials to his restaurant, Becasse.
and the enduring work, the book I refer to more often and above all others, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth.
I’ve been writing about this project on my book-binding site. It’s fairly simple: a transcript of a discussion based around Nocturama’s themes is bound into a book, and the cardboard covers of the book are embedded with what amounts to a disposable cardboard i-Pod that contains the audio of the discussion and the music. It will have to have headphones, but in my mind I’m pitching it forward into a time when targeted sound, without headphones is possible.
What I’ll expand upon here is how the individual electronic components themselves are going to be made from paper. This is quick overview of the topic:
Physicists in Sweden have teamed up with leading paper and packaging manufacturers to develop a new breed of electronic devices made from paper and conducting inks.
Packaging materials that display animated adverts and containers that sound an alarm if their contents go mouldy are just two possibilities that could result from a new area of technology called “paper electronics”. The substitution of paper for semiconductors in electronic components might sound bizarre, but Swedish physicists are currently developing devices that can be printed onto paper using conventional industrial-scale printing methods.
Many electronic devices rapidly become obsolete as technology continues to improve. There is also a growing trend towards adding electronics to items that were previously difficult to make electronically active, such as plastic and paper. Both factors are motivating the electronics industry to find cheaper ways to manufacture products. Some 50 years after the first transistor was developed, circuit boards are still being manufactured from a large substrate that undergoes about 50 different processing steps before being cut into smaller circuit boards. A substrate that can be manufactured cheaply and quickly is needed to satisfy the industry’s demands.
Paper seems an obvious replacement: it is flexible and we have produced more of it, in terms of surface area, than any other material. These days paper is manufactured in an environmentally friendly way and can be printed on in a fast “reel-to-reel” process. Indeed, a diverse range of printing, coating and lamination processes is used to convert paper into products.
Physics Web. July 2001
