Tech Gets Bendy

that's right. So yeah, that that bomb you are going off was my joke. So part of the reason why electronics aren't flexible in the first place just goes to the history of electronics, right, Like, if you look at old electronics, I'm talking like the early days, they were made out of massive components. They were physically wired together. There weren't integrated circuits. So you have all these giant pieces together, you couldn't have them on something flexible because

it wouldn't make any sense. And even when we moved to the era of integrated circuits where we have things that can all be fit upon a single chip, we're still talking about rigid chips and part of that is because the connectors we need, the little connections between the various elements like transistors, they had to be you know,

safe and solid. You couldn't really bend them because most of the time they were made off of a fairly brittle material and if they bent at all, they would break and then suddenly whatever your electronic device was isn't going to work anymore. So even if you were able to to make the circuit on some sort of bendable substrate, uh, the connections themselves wouldn't remain intact. And that was the problem.

So it took a lot of work to try and develop technologies that would allow you to make a circuit that could be bent and flexible so that you could do different things with it. But why would we want to make electronics flexible? I mean, don't you just need to cram them inside a huge beige box and let them do their thing? Well, it takes me back to

my Apple to E days. Uh, you could do that, but no, the reason why you want to go with flexibilities That just opens up a huge number of form factors and applications that you would not have with your

basic electronics that have all those rigid uh substrates. For example, let's say you're in marketing and you're going to some big event and you want to have some representatives walking around getting attention for your product, and so they're all wearing these snazzy jackets that have full displays on the back showing video in real time, and they can fold with the jacket, so it's not this flat, you know, rigid surface on their backs, like duct taping an iPad

to the tier back exactly. And that could be just a very you know, simple. In fact, it's probably the implementation I would expect to say first. But you could also have things like a really cool wearable device or even perhaps applications that go beyond just something that looks cool, like I don't know, I always wanted to have like a smart bracer, not a smart watch. I'm talking about something that fits on my forearm and it gives me readouts,

you know, like a like a like a video game character. Oh, you're talking about a curved screen, and that's one of those very popular, flashy kind of things. It's been shown off at CS and stuff like that. Lightly but right, if you're going to have a curved screen, you kind

of need a vaguely flexible electronic Yeah. Well, even if the surface that it's on the curve surface, even if that's a set uh shape and it's not going to flex out of that shape, you still have to have the flexible elements to get it in that shape in the first place. Right, So there's some applications that go beyond that. For example, electronic Skin. You guys have heard about this, Yeah, that's my garage, Okay, well it's it's also the name of Umbrella of Technologies, So it's interesting

that shares that that that facet with your band. But electronic Skin is specifically talking about these flexible patches that have electronic circuitry in a it into them, usually for some form of medical purpose. Okay, So we've talked about something sort of like this before on the podcast, right about the idea that that you could in the future perhaps have some kind of little smart tattoo that would help keep track of your vital signs while you're in

the hospital. Exactly. That's the very thing we're talking about here. It's it's something that's as thin as a temporary tattoo, and you just slap it on your skin and it can monitor anything from brain waves to your heart rate, blood flow, body temperature. If you put one on your vocal chords, it could even track the words you say.

I saw one potential implementation that wasn't medical saying. Put this on your vocal cords and then you play a video game, and then your vocal commands can easily be translated without you even having to have a microphone picking things up, because it will be able to interpret what you say just based on the vibrations from your vocal cords, which is kind of cool. So how does something like

this work. Well, you have all of those integrated elements, the sensors, the antenna, the power source, the various other pieces all integrated into a circuit. And it's printed on a very thin uh polymer substrates, So the substrate self is flexible and can it bend into any shape and even continue to bend once it, you know, once you put it on your skin, so it's not stuck in one position. It can even stretch to the point where you can stretch it several times larger than what it

originally was and still remain functional. And it's all based upon these advanced technologies to get this integrated circuitry to to maintain functionality even as it's being manipulated in these different ways. I thought one of the cool things about is that you don't even have to put adhesive on these patches. They'll stick to your skin by themselves. With our old friend the Van der Vall's force. You remember when we talked about geck gos Right, Yes, I think

I made that joke in the other podcast. Okay, good. I'm glad that some things can contin I'm not ashamed, I'm proud of it. At any rate, these these patches have some really interesting utility. They haven't been widely rolled out at all because it's still pretty expensive and you have to figure out, all right, well, how are we powering these things. Some of them are using little teeny tiny solar panel technology, which is kind of crazy to me.

Others are using inductor coils, which means you have to have a fluctuating magnetic field for it to maintain power. There's a new one that actually incorporates computer memory into the patch, which gives it brand new applications. Like a doctor can be able to see a pattern and symptoms if one exists by looking at the information stored in the memory or be able to tell how a patient is responding to certain types of medical treatments, and that

to me is really exciting. Also, there's a possibility of having drug delivery systems built into this, where you have a nano sized delivery system that will release medication through the skin, so you have orbit through your skin, and what will happen is the patch will measure your body's reactions and if your body starts to react in such

a way that indicates there's a problem coming on. Let's say that you're about to get a migraine or maybe even suffer a heart attack, it could release medication that could prevent that from happening, or perhaps you know either that or or just treat symptoms. Um there's one potential

application of using this to treat wounds. So if you get wounded and you put a patch on, it can detect whether or not you have any kind of infection because usually when that happens, the skin around the wound starts to heat up, So if it detects that change in temperature, then it can then release antibiotics into your system and help fight off an infection early on before

it becomes a serious problem. So yeah, this is this is obviously one of those things that you can easily see the benefit and it wouldn't be possible if this electronic device wasn't already flexible and couldn't just stay flush with your skin. And it also is not invasive, right, You don't end up having to cut into a asient to do it. This way, you don't have to even worry about connecting all these wires to a patient where they end up being essentially shackled to whatever, you know,

facility exactly exactly. They can have this kind of stuff, and there there are a lot of challenges that need to be overcome. Power systems need to be developed, there will be more effective. Power systems in general are one of those things that it's really hard to find a way of making them flexible. We've seen a lot of development and battery technology recently, but in general that's hard

to do. Yeah, right now, I think the best we can really do is hook one of these things up with a wire to a battery pack that you can wear in a pocket or something. That's that's generally what we see. Because even if you get a flexible battery, there are some out there, but they tend to be pretty big too, because you have to you know, you end up what you end up lacking in density with that battery pack, you make up for in surface area, so you end up having a much larger in surface

area battery than whatever the patches. So there's obviously some issues there. There's also the issue of figuring out the wireless communication between the patch and whatever else the doctor is using to to keep a monitor on a patient. But I think these are things that we can overcome eventually. I'm fairly confident about that. Oh, especially since it's so attractive for people to be researching it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is something that can make a huge difference

in patients lives. The idea of being able to release medication precisely when you need it, and maybe even in very precise amounts, so that you limit any potential side effects that medication might create. We've talked about that before in the past, about how you know, modern medicine, a lot of it involves taking a very measured amount of medication, but it's based upon an average, right, It's based upon the average person of this you know that fits your description,

what their symptoms are, how to manage it. All of your medication could be based upon that, and it's not necessarily keyed into your specific situation. And if I've got some sort of like I'm treating an illness and I've been told take a pill every six hours, that's not really that precise. If I have a patch on that is able to detect minute changes in my body and be able to anticipate when I need that medication, then I could have a very targeted medical approach to treating

that illness. So to me, that's really exciting. So what materials and processes are going into all of this research? A big one is on that flexible substrate. You know, the idea instead of using a silicon chip, which is rigid, figuring out sort of a polymer approach. You know, polymers are those long chain molecules that have flexibility built into them. Finding a way of designing one that that the electronics can sit on top of and maintain stability. That's obviously

an important part. The actual material of the connections themselves, that's really important because again, if you're using a brittle material, then as soon as it bends, it breaks and then it no longer works. So another thing is, oh, lad's organic light emitting diodes. You guys have heard about this, right, Okay. So I remember going to c e S several years ago when oh LED displays were just getting out of the lab and getting in front of people's eyes beyond.

You know, if you weren't a researcher, then you hadn't seen one. And I remember the first LAD screen I saw. It wasn't an eleven inch screen. Now keep in mind, this is at c S where I'm looking at eight five inch television, so this is a little eleven inch screen, and it was it was on a little vice that allowed it to bend, so it was showing that that

this display could bend. And I think it had a sort of an e paper display at the time, so it was a static image, but it was an image that was showing and it was just kind of giving you a proof of concept. And when asked like how much would this particular thing cost if it were incorporated into UH an actual existing product, it was an astronomical price tag. Now since then, we've seen the price come down as more research and development has been poured into

OH lads. You can go and get something that's an old screen that's not going to be you know, ten thousand dollars now, but it was one of those deals that it took several years for that to happen. Uh. These days, you can actually find some pretty interesting displays, like Umu Samsung at ce S had an eight five inch television that was a a flat screen or a curved screen television, and you could change it by pushing a button. And by pushing the button, you see it

curve in front of you. It's only a very subtle curve, and it was meant so that if you were off to the side, like I sometimes like to cook, uh and watch television, but my television is almost flat, Like, yeah, I can't. I can't really see because it's a flat screen with that curve, that could create an angle that I might be able to see a little more of what's going on. So that way, I can watch that episode of The Mighty Bush that I've seen four hundred

times as opposed to like, I know what's happening. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with seeing it, but yeah,

that's another deal. Also, you mentioned a moment ago the stuff that the actual circuitry is made out of, and there's a lot of that research going on right now, some of it with carbon nanotubes, of course, because everything is carbon nanotubes, right um, Well, I mean and specifically because these suckers have such excellent conductivity, so you can use little filaments of them to to easily make circuitry.

Their physical properties also let them bend without breaking, and they can be even more energy efficient than the traditional silicon. So on the downside, unfortunately, they're they're less stable than traditional circuitry materials because we're still figuring out ways of doping them to be stable around power fluctuations and an electrical noise. This was a huge advance that had to

happen for us to make transistors and computer components in general. Right. Doping, for those who don't know, that's where you specifically introduce impurities into a substance so that you can guide how it behaves under certain circumstances. How the positive versus negative

flows of energy are going on, specifically semiconductors in particular. Right, So, if you were going to dope like a silicon chip, you'd have silicon, but you'd be adding little atoms of other elements to it, right um, And It's harder to do that with carbon nanotubes because by their very nature they are made of one thing, and they're also really tiny, very small. Yeah, however, some researchers at Stanford just published

some promising research this March. We might still be a really long way from commercial applications of carbon nanotubes and flexible electronics, but it's cool that that's that that's out there, right. Yeah. Something to keep in mind always is whenever we talk about these technologies, there there's always a chance that we never see it come to fruition. But the research that's done can always inform us in other ways and we

make fine workarounds. So that's it's pretty cool. Yeah, there's other stuff going on at the nano scale with circuitry. Some researchers out of the UK have been out of the University of Cambridge, I believe, have been investigating zinc oxide based flash memory that can be printed onto flexible electronics. That's pretty cool too. And now that I've mentioned the word printing, I do want to say that printing circuitry has been a huge advance towards making flexible electronics possible.

In the process, you load like an ink jet style printer with what's essentially wire ink um, you know, made from whatever you want to try to make the circuitry from. And you can print circuits on any material on which you can get that ink to stick, fabric or paper or whatever need. And you see this, I have a lot of people say, oh, does that like three D printing? Really this is like two D printing, right, because circuits are so thin already, Like before we got into the

flexible part. You look at circuits and the circuitry is so thin, you're talking about maybe a few nanometers thick of material. Then that's essentially two dimensional, I mean to to all practical purposes, it's two dimensional. So that's pretty cool. Uh. And then you know we've already got some some flexible electronics. I mentioned that Samsung television. If you want to go out and purchase an eight five inch television that can curve on command. There are all other curved uh electronics,

like you were mentioning, Lauren, things like that. You've seen the curved smartphones that have come out recently, curve television sets, that kind of thing. Now, in that case, we're talking about flexible electronics that were flexible in order for you to in order for these companies to build these products, but they're not necessarily flexible once they hit the Market's right, I wouldn't try sitting there and bending it. Yeah, it's it's in a fixed uh, a fixed state at this point.

So you get a curved phone, you can't like, well, look, I can straighten it out, and I need a new phone. That would be That would be bad. But you can find a few other examples, and I've seen a lot of prototype um products that haven't hit the market yet, but it does show what this kind of stuff could be used in the future, including things like a flexible

e paper. One of the list ones I saw this was at CES two thousands thirteen was an e paper display that felt like it was kind of like a magazine material almost like and you could bend it and just like it was a piece of paper, and only that you could lay it down on top of an existing display or piece of paper and it could copy whatever it was laying on top of and then you lifted up and you've got your own copy. It was

really by tech right there, super neat. Yeah, this was all It was all like attached by cables to various computers. So yeah, it was it was a proof of concept, but it was really neat seeing that this flexible paper used for that. So imagine being able to use that on surfaces that are not perfectly flat. So if you needed to make a copy of something like, I don't know, a flyer that's on a telephone pole, you could totally do it. Of course, you could also take a picture

with your CLLL phone, but don't mind that. So it's it's kind of a cool application. And on top of that, we have the medical processes we've already mentioned. Uh, the fact that we've gotten into this era of majorization means that there are a lot more uh possible medical applications we could see in the future. But beyond that, uh, you know, just imagine some of the other stuff you

can do with flexible uh displays. I mean anything like you could cote a a surface, a rounded surface with a flexible display and then lifted up and code a different surface with it. Just the party potential alone, people, you could have a sailboat that streams video. Could you could do that? There are plenty of calls for for

sensors that can be applied wherever they're necessary. I saw some research out of DARPA working with the Palo Alto Research Center to to develop these sensors that could be stuck. I mean basically like stickers to soldiers helmets and record a week's worth of information about nearby blasts and other indirect impacts that are sending some soldiers home with brain injury. Yeah, it's obviously a very important use of the technology. I

mean that's pretty incredible. Or or hey, what about seeing what's going on inside of you, not just what what's happening on skin level. Researchers at a startup called mc ten are developing this inflatable catheter. But you can cover this thing in a stretch electronics and therefore use it during heart surgery for example, um to act as a as a live streaming pacemaker um or or monitor for

any other complications in any other surgery. And then you know there's the less life altering or or important you could argue applications. I don't think it's arguable at all they are less important. Some people would argue it, but not me. But like the more kind of fun, silly versions, you might say, things like wearables. The various types of wearables like like I guess you can finally get my smart bracer. Or if you wanted some workout gear that can really tell you how you're doing on a run.

Oh sure, like maybe you can give you a much more accurate idea of how many calories you're really burning as opposed to maybe just a watch that's kind of measuring the motion. Uh. Or you know, you might want to have a wearable again in the medical field where it can alert you. For example, for someone who might be diabetic, you might be able to alert them if it's detecting minute changes in bodied chemistry so that they can take steps before they have any sort of attack.

That would be great. Um. So yeah, we can see a lot of different applications from the fund to the very serious for flexible technology we haven't even really covered

like the industrial uses. I mean obviously there are there are whole companies that want to be able to use this kind of stuff in order to market products or even just make something that stands out in a crowd, like when you have a presence at a big event like c e S. Anything you can do that differentiates you from every other company that's there is a bonus.

And so some of the stuff we'll see probably will never be incorporated into consumer ducts, but they'll still be, you know, they'll still be great applications of flexible technology. I'll never forget when I went one year and they had one of the displays I think it was Kodak.

Actually it looked like a digital waterfall of all these uh you see pictures of their products going down this vertical computer screen, and then it curved around into a horizontal like river that' said about waist level, and at that point you could do things like touch one of the pictures and get information about that particular product, or if someone was across the river from you, like on the other side, and they wanted to see it, you

could actually swipe and slide it over to them. And the whole effect was just very impressive because it was very smooth, this progression of from vertical to horizontal surface.

It's one of those things where this was just for display purposes to sell a product, but you could easily imagine something like that incorporated in entertainment, whether it was for home entertainment or maybe some sort of kind of like a video game lace you would go to to play things in an environment that have been specifically engineered for that game. Uh, it's you know, there's some interesting potential.

I don't know how much of it is viable in the long term, but a lot of it is stuff that we just couldn't have done, you know, five ten years ago, because we just didn't have the technology or it was so expensive to implement that there was no point in trying because you would never get a return on that initial investment. But I'm really excited to see where this goes, mainly again for the medical purposes and

also to finally get my smart bracer. Uh. I really want to have like things like you know, life level and have it in little hearts, an energy level and be like Manna and it's a little blue bar and you know, and then I could press a button and it makes pupele laser noises. These are the simple things I want. You need a sanity meter like in Eternal Dark. Yeah, you're right, we talked. We talked about that game without you being in the room. Oh no, no, that's that's okay.

It's a as long as it would also have some kind of digital projection technology that would let other people know what your sanity meter is. That because I think that that's the most important. Yeah, I think it was just I think you should just have a speaker that screams out things like yo dog, this guy is crazy, and then people would just be like, all right, give him a wide wide, little wide berth wearing a talking bracer. Most people don't wear those. I think that I think

that would be step one of identifying the crazy person. Yes, so anyway, there are lots of different potential uses for flexible technology. If you guys have any ideas of ones that we didn't cover but you thought, you know, this would be a really interesting application of that sort of tech. Let us know, drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus or a handle at all. Three is f W thinking and we'll talk to you again really soon.

For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places,