Electrically Conductive Plastic Polymer

AustinSlacker writes to mention Fox news is reporting that a Dutch researcher is announcing a breakthrough in plastics. A new way of rebuilding plastics could allow them to conduct electricity just as well as the silicon wafers currently used in electronic gadgets. "Prins discovered that in plastics, the movement of electric charges was mainly hindered by the shape of the polymer, the chain-like molecular structure [that is] the basis of each kind of plastic. Prins extended the work of a German group that had reshaped a polymer to form a ladder-like structures. By bombarding the specially developed plastic with electrons from a particle accelerator, she was able to study rapid electrical reactions and demonstrate the new plastic's ability to conduct electricity much better than regular plastic and as well as silicon chips."

As conductive as silicon?

[kmac06]

Silicon is not a good conductor. The advantage it can be doped to make it as good of a conductor as necessary (which also allows you to make transistors out of it). I doubt this plastic can be doped...

Also, why not run a test current through it to measure the conductivity instead of using an accelerator?

Original release

[mattr]

Waging the good fight against dumbed-down science and research by press release, your masked hero finds.. this.

Mobile phones can soon survive being dropped [www.nwo.nl]

Good because you cannot get a patent after publication? Or bad because.. oh phooey. This might be by the same person.

* In unrelated news is anyone going to be at ETC2007 [iastate.edu]? Neal Stephenson talk and a new hires cave called C6 by Iowa State! Someone video the thing!

Re:as well as silicon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont you take a look at how silicon wafers for microchip production, and how solar panels are produced, and just how environmentally hostile it is.

Or just bloviate with your 8th grade knowledge of science.

Carbon and Oxygen are everywhere too! Why all the crying about CO2 in the atmostphere?

Electrical Conductive Plastic Already Exists

[docinthemachine]

http://www.docinthemachine.com/ [docinthemachine.com] reported in January on the development of a product called Electriplast that is a resin based electrically conductive plastic- and that is commercially available. I believe it has potential in the medical device market as well as consumer electronics. You can read more about the product at : http://docinthemachine.com/2007/01/08/electriplast / [docinthemachine.com] "Electriplast is a highly conductive recipe that can be molded into virtually any shape or dimension associated with the range of plastics, rubbers and polymers. CES chose this technology with a 2007 Innovation honoree for enabling technologies. Now it's just a matter of convincing manufacturers to look at the small medical tool market and not focus on its current #1 use- next generation cell-phone antenna."

Oh good

[ObligatoryUserName]

I don't think we had enough uses for oil yet.

Re:Oh good

[ductonius]

Strong, flexible plastics replaced metal for many products because plastic is much cheaper to produce. I would wager that conductive plastics would actually decrease the use of oil by generally reducing the amount of resources it takes to produce an electronic product.

The amount of fuel unused in mining and refining of aluminum and copper would probably cover the increased use of natural gas by electronic manufacturers.

We may think of oil as expensive, but plastic is still cheaper than metal and has a smaller environmental impact.