Scientists Create Self-Healing Electronics

[weatherdude]

Don't worry, as long as we have metal smelting furnaces we'll be fine. John Connor at least.

 

[groveborn]

Adamantium is Latin for diamond. Diamonds aren't conductive unless they've been doped.

 

[freggo]

Next step will be self healing DRAM and than self healing CPUs/GPUs.
Can't wait

 

[unempit]

Re: http/www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16291943
Umm...in what universe is 21 December 2011 a year before January 6, 2012?

 

[richboyliang]

this probably only works for the most basic of circuits, of course

but in years it might help with electronics that we use today

 

[serendipiti]

[citation][nom]rubix_1011[/nom]How do you control how far or to what extent the 'liquid' disperses? At some point, you don't want it creating shorts by contacting adjacent circuitry. Cool idea, but a lot of questions to be addressed with this concept.[/citation]

I think they talk about microcapsules, so, its size is probably 1/1000 or 1/10000 of a conductive layer, at such scale you don't need to worry about shortcircuits... The question is how to get them renewable (are made of gold...)

Anyway, technology is making posisible what science fiction dreamed just 50 - 80 years ago. And perhaps its time to take a look on how that science fiction described that societies...
I always had interpreted that stories like a metaphor. Think of Blackberries like matrix: you get caught, and all your attention goes in there while your real life keeps going on... in this relationship, you feed your blackberry (you need to recharge its batteries) and you get a virtual world,,,
I grew up in a little city in Spain and I can see how TV influenced me (at a social level,,,) looking at my grandparents... Perhaps it is time to look at how we use technology and what kind of society we are creating.
Because, in the name of crisis we are happily loosing rights that cost blood and fight to get decades ago. Probably it has something to do with what already knew in ancient Rome: panem et circenses.

 

[kjsfnkwl]

[citation][nom]lp231[/nom]Umm... you guys are a bit late. A year late to be exact. http/www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16291943[/citation]
More like 2 weeks late?

 

[jabliese]

Hmm, wonder when a scratch was the cause of failure for any of my electronics? Bad caps, sure. Bad solder, probably. But a scratch in a circuit?

 

[nottheking]

My open question is how useful this would be to the semiconductor industry: when I read about "self-healing electronics," my first impulse is to think how it'd be useful for spacecraft, which is one environment where parts failure is of utmost concern. Because of this, most spacecraft computers are positively outdated by enthusiast standards. As a comparison, in spite of being launched in 2016, the New Horizons probe sent to Pluto runs off a MIPS r3000 CPU... About comparable to what the original Playstation used. (and, in fact, running slower) Similarly, the Mars Science Laboratory rover recently launched uses a PowerPC 750-based CPU comparable... To an underclocked GameCube. (it runs at around 200 MHz, vs. 485 MHz for the GCN)

In short: probes rely on CPUs slower than comparable designs that debuted 9 years beforehand. Most of this is because of the concerns over developing an existing design to make it radiation-hardened, but if the same sort of durability against deep-space damage could be assured more easily, our probes could start using more up-to-date designs.


Now, this sort of idea of self-healing circuits sounds great for this application... But the question her is of scale: the microcapsules likely have to be vastly smaller than the circuit in question in order to work, but with semiconductors, the scale is already so small, that making the microcapsules small enough to fit may be impossible, especially given our modern circuits are reaching the point where they're starting to be under 50 atoms wide.

[citation][nom]groveborn[/nom]Adamantium is Latin for diamond. Diamonds aren't conductive unless they've been doped.[/citation]
Carbon *IS* a semiconductor, after all... Just like silicon. (which, likewise, is doped to fabricate circuits)

 

[Guest]

This would be excellent technology for the automotive field where so many components move like seats, sunroofs, doors, engine harness', etc.