For those who love soaking in smell of
paper while reading their favourite book, here comes a breaking news.
Scientists in China are in the process of developing a metal ink - made of
small sheets of copper - that can be used to write a functioning, flexible
electric circuit on regular printer paper, said a study published in the
journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
The conductive ink could pave the way
for a wide range of new bendable gadgets - such as electronic books that look,
feel and smell like traditional paperbacks - said the study that appeared in
the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces. To have a versatile conductive
ink, researchers tried copper nanosheets, which are inexpensive and highly
conductive.
They made copper nanosheets coated
with silver nanoparticles in the lab and incorporated this material into an ink
pen, using it to draw patterns of lines, words and even flowers on regular
printer paper.
To show that the ink could conduct
electricity, the scientists studded the drawings with small LED lights that lit
up when the circuit was connected to a battery. To test the ink's flexibility,
they folded the papers 1,000 times, even crumpling them up, and showed that the
ink maintained 80 to 90 percent of its conductivity, added the research funding
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
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