Smart labels help our food talk to us
The Science Foundation Ireland-funded Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research (AMBER) Centre has announced that it has produced printed devices with 2-dimensional nanomaterials that “combine exciting electronic properties with the potential for low-cost production”.
The centre said that these “nanosheets” are flat nanoparticles that are a few nanometres thick but hundreds of nanometres wide.
AMBER says its findings, published today in the journal Science paves the way for industry to cheaply print electronic devices such as solar cells and LEDs with applications that could lend itself to interactive smart food and drug labels.
“In the future, printed devices will be incorporated into even the most mundane objects such as labels, posters, and packaging,” said Prof Jonathan Coleman, an investigator in AMBER and Trinity’s School of Physics. “Printed electronic circuitry, constructed from the devices we have created, will allow consumer products to gather, process, display and transmit information: for example, milk cartons could send messages to your phone warning that the milk is about to go out-of-date,” Prof Coleman said.
Prof Coleman said the group’s 2D nanomaterials have the capability to yield more cost effective and higher performance printed devices than existing materials: “However, while the last decade has underlined the potential of 2D materials for a range of electronic applications, only the first steps have been taken to demonstrate their worth in printed electronics.
“This publication is important because it shows that conducting, semiconducting and insulating 2D nanomaterials can be combined together in complex devices. We felt that it was critically important to focus on printing transistors as they are the electric switches at the heart of modern computing. We believe this work opens the way to print a whole host of devices solely from 2D nanosheets.”
The ability to print 2D nanomaterials is based on Prof Coleman’s scalable method of producing 2D nanomaterials, including graphene, boron nitride, and tungsten diselenide nanosheets, in liquids, a method he has licensed to Samsung and Thomas Swan.
AMBER said printable electronics have developed over the last 30 years based mainly on printable carbon-based molecules: “While these molecules can easily be turned into printable inks, such materials are somewhat unstable and have well-known performance limitations. There have been many attempts to surpass these obstacles using alternative materials, such as carbon nanotubes or inorganic nanoparticles, but these materials have also shown limitations in either performance or in manufacturability.”
“Prof Coleman’s publication provides the potential to print circuitry at extremely low cost which will facilitate a range of applications from animated posters to smart labels,” AMBER said.
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