(Press-News.org) CORVALLIS, Ore. - Engineers at Oregon State University have invented a way to fabricate silver, a highly conductive metal, for printed electronics that are produced at room temperature.
There may be broad applications in microelectronics, sensors, energy devices, low emissivity coatings and even transparent displays.
A patent has been applied for on the technology, which is now available for further commercial development. The findings were reported in Journal of Materials Chemistry C.
Silver has long been considered for the advantages it offers in electronic devices. Because of its conductive properties, it is efficient and also stays cool. But manufacturers have often needed high temperatures in the processes they use to make the devices, adding to their cost and complexity, and making them unsuitable for use on some substrates, such as plastics that might melt or papers that might burn.
This advance may open the door to much wider use of silver and other conductors in electronics applications, researchers said.
"There's a great deal of interest in printed electronics, because they're fast, cheap, can be done in small volumes and changed easily," said Chih-hung Chang, a professor in the OSU College of Engineering. "But the heat needed for most applications of silver nanoparticles has limited their use."
OSU scientists have solved that problem by using a microreactor to create silver nanoparticles at room temperatures without any protective coating, and then immediately printing them onto almost any substrate with a continuous flow process.
"Because we could now use different substrates such as plastics, glass or even paper, these electronics could be flexible, very inexpensive and stable," Chang said. "This could be quite important and allow us to use silver in many more types of electronic applications."
Among those, he said, could be solar cells, printed circuit boards, low-emissivity coatings, or transparent electronics. A microchannel applicator used in the system will allow the creation of smaller, more complex electronics features.
INFORMATION:
This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and Oregon Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies Center, or Oregon BEST.
Research conducted in Okinawa, Japan, by graduate student Yu Miyazaki and associate professor James Davis Reimer from the University of the Ryukyus has found a very unusual new species of octocoral from a shallow coral reef in Okinawa, Japan. The new species can be considered a "living fossil", and is related in many ways to the unusual blue coral. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Unlike scleractinians, most octocorals lack a hard skeleton, and therefore many have the common name "soft coral". One exception is the endangered genus Heliopora, ...
COLUMBIA, Mo. - For years, news organizations that post content on the Internet have allowed readers to leave comments about stories. Often, these readers' comments become a forum for political debates and other communication that the news organizations do not consider important to their journalistic practices. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Journalism have found that editors and owners of news organizations may want to pay more attention to what their readers are saying about their news stories in order to better serve their consumers. Timothy ...
CLEMSON, S.C. -- Poor sleep habits can have a negative effect on self-control, which presents risks to individuals' personal and professional lives, according to Clemson University researchers.
In a study titled "Interactions between Sleep Habits and Self-Control," Clemson psychologists concluded a sleep-deprived individual is at increased risk for succumbing to impulsive desires, inattentiveness and questionable decision-making.
"Self-control is part of daily decision-making. When presented with conflicting desires and opportunities, self-control allows one to maintain ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Everyone knows that exercise generally helps the cardiovascular system, but much remains unknown about how the benefits arise, and what to expect in different people who exercise to improve their health. To gain a more precise understanding of how exercise improves health and whom it helps most, researchers analyzed the results of 160 randomized clinical trials with nearly 7,500 participants. The review appears open access in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
"Our meta-analysis is one of the first studies to systematically ...
Study found 35% fewer bird species in agricultural habitats
Researchers say farmland is a poor substitute for natural areas but simple improvements could make a difference to biodiversity conservation
Research led by the University of Exeter has found a substantial reduction in bird species living in cultivated mango orchards compared to natural habitats in Southern Africa. The results, which are published today in the journal Landscape Ecology, highlight the value of assessing habitats prior to land use change to predict the impact of agriculture on biodiversity.
The ...
Wind turbines could be installed under some of the biggest bridges on the road network to produce electricity. So it is confirmed by calculations carried out by a European researchers team, that have taken a viaduct in the Canary Islands as a reference. This concept could be applied in heavily built-up territories or natural areas with new constructions limitations.
The Juncal Viaduct, in Gran Canaria, has served as a reference for Spanish and British researchers to verify that the wind blowing between the pillars on this kind of infrastructures can move wind turbines ...
Amsterdam, July 2, 2015 - Biologically active molecules released by digesting bread and pasta can survive digestion and potentially pass through the gut lining, suggests new research. The study, published in the journal of Food Research International, reveals the molecules released when real samples of bread and pasta are digested, providing new information for research into gluten sensitivity.
The research is in vitro - in the lab rather than in humans - and the authors of the study, from the University of Milan, Italy, say that more research is needed to determine what ...
With the number of individuals affected by cognitive decline expected to rise over the next few decades, investigating its potential causes is of major public health interest. Two new studies published today in the American Journal of Hypertension delve into the connection between hypertension and cognitive decline.
Racial disparity in cognitive and functional disability in hypertension and its mortality
Researchers assessed the prevalence and racial disparity of subjective cognitive and functional limitations and their impact on mortality in the hypertensive US ...
This news release is available in Japanese.
Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo and other institutions have begun a wide-area survey of the distribution of dark matter in the universe using Hyper Suprime-Cam, a new wide-field camera installed on the Subaru Telescope in Hawai'i. Initial results from observations covering an area of 2.3 square degrees on the sky toward the constellation Cancer revealed nine large concentrations of dark matter, each the mass of a galaxy cluster. Surveying how dark matter ...
The hormones testosterone and cortisol may destabilise financial markets by making traders take more risks, according to a study.
Researchers simulated the trading floor in the lab by having volunteers buy and sell assets among themselves. They measured the volunteers' natural hormone levels in one experiment and artificially raised them in another.
When given doses of either hormone, the volunteers invested more in risky assets.
The researchers think the stressful and competitive environment of financial markets may promote high levels of cortisol and testosterone ...
