Posted 12.22.2011 at 12:19 pm
18 Comments
Self-Healing Circuit
Microcapsules full of liquid metal sit atop a gold circuit. When the circuit is broken, the microcapsules rupture, filling in the crack and restoring the circuit.
Scott White/University of Illinois
Over the weekend, faced with the dreaded Yellow Light of Death, I ripped apart a PlayStation 3 and blasted it with a 500-degree heat gun to re-flow the GPU and CPU. It was pretty fun and it worked, much to the delight of the member of my household who was this close to finishing “Batman: Arkham City.” Next time, this new self-healing circuit compound could make our work unnecessary.
Broken circuits could fix themselves using an emergency capsule of liquid metal, invented by researchers at the University of Illinois. As a crack propagates in a circuit, a microcapsule breaks open, spilling liquid metal into the gap and restoring electrical flow. The circuit would only be broken for a few microseconds, just as long as it takes for the capsule to fill in the cracks. During tests, 90 percent of the circuit samples healed to 99 percent of original conductivity, even when only a small amount of microcapsules were used, according to the U of I. Watch White explain the system in the video below.
Illinois professors Nancy Sottos, Scott White and Jeffrey Moore had already done lots of work on self-healing polymers and other types of structural repairs, but this is the first time anyone has tried self-healing conductivity. It works automatically and only at the point of a circuit failure. It’s so simple, you wonder why no one has thought of this before.
The method could replace some of the redundancies in complex circuits, perhaps making electronics cheaper, lighter and more sustainable. The researchers even hope it could be used to improve battery performance. The work was published in the journal Advanced Materials.
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Such a drag when that happened to my 60gig ps3, this would be super cool if they can make this cheap to mass produce.
okay self healing circut boards, giant robots from japan, how do we kill them when they rise up against us!?
@Hatandboots: We install iOS on them, and then charge them for every update until they can no longer afford to charge.
@hatandboots
we dont ^^ we will just stand still and admire them ^^
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bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^
@Fallacy
lmfao
I agree with the crapple bashing post
self healing circuitry is a necessity. Providing extra redundancy to vital networks
and THIS is why people think that robots are going to take over the world . XD
robots cant take over the world. Humans must code every single "decision" a robot can make
Its all about IF, End If, Do, Do while, for(int i = o ; i != ? ; i++) and try catch logical control loops
The robot will never be able to do something it was not programmed to do.
The only way i see this happening is by allowing robots to write code(again limited to the libraries we provide its comppiler) themselves and compile on the spot...
Robots, computers and automation will not take over the world, naturally from human development.
Tools were created, because we humans with our super brain power wanted to find an easier way to accomplish a task.
Earth will be give to the robots out of our desire to be lazy. And when we finally do give up Earth, we will believe it was the intelligent thing to do; go figure?
.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense.
Religion sees beyond the senses.
There will be no human vs machines war (at least no more than there is right now). Evolution will simply merge the two. Over time we will simply become more and more integrated with technology. Everyone in one form or another will be a "cyborg". Eventually, as the technologies to transmit and store human thought outside the body become available and machines learn more and more to truly think, the difference between man and machine will be academic.
and by then, resistance will be futile....
Sir,
Speaking as a Robot, resitance is a lack of Oil,
first spoken about from the movie Wizard of Oz and the Tin Man.
.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense.
Religion sees beyond the senses.
one step closer to nanite repair paste
hmm so this is to prevent circuit conductivity breakdown over time (though it is quite fast) and not really as an active measure against deliberate circuit incapacitation due to say, a kinetic impact (causing micro-fractures in circuits) or an EMP pulse? Although I guess an EMP works fundamentally opposite from a micro-fracture in which there is too much conductivity on the board and not enough insulation to restrict current, allowing electricity flow freely across the circuits and frying them.
Very cool idea, however I find that ususally its the components (resistors, transistors, capacitors, etc) that tend to fail, not the circuit itself. Is this capable of repairing those if they burn out?
Science always asks "can we," but doesn't seem to ask "should we."
If you want to learn more, you can download the original Advanced Materials paper for free from dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.201102888 .
Dave Flanagan, Advanced Materials
@isitcoldinhere
I would agree with your comment on the consumer electronics level. I hope to see future evolutions of this technology in a capacity that it could be integrated into nano scale transistors.
I also agree with your sig tagline. Especially in the case of one of the recent strains of modified flu, we need to examine the "should we" with far greater scrutiny.
www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-11/should-recipe-engineered-bird-flu-potent-enough-kill-millions-ever-be-published
@hatandboots: lol. That's what I thought after reading both articles
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Anyways, my doubt about this tech somehow involves about how it would handle recurring damage. It sounds great in a pinch,but I'm hoping for more on metallic shape-memory tech further down the road.