Liquid Metal Nano Printing Set to Revolutionize Electronics

What it is: Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, from the School of Engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne, has led an international team in overcoming some of the challenges in the fabrication of large electronic wafers. The promise of nanotech has been the ability to construct atom-thick semiconductors to improve processing speeds and enable flexible electronics, but current methods have been difficult to scale and require high temperatures. Here, the team used gallium and indium (which have a very low melting point) to create an atomically thin oxide layer that can be transferred to a wafer, successfully creating transistors and photodetectors with very high fabrication reliability at scale.

Why it's important: At each stage of Moore's Law, we find a new way to overcome the challenges of continuing the pace of development. Even as we expect quantum computing to make significant advances in the near future, look for traditional computing power to continue to increase, novel properties such as flexibility to emerge, and cross-pollination with quantum approaches.

Abundance Insider: March 3 Edition