Pen draws the circuit on paper

A group of professors and students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, invented a rollerball pen with silver ink, which helps draw electrical circuits on paper, wood or other surfaces. Other non-conductive surfaces, paving the way for a new, cheap and flexible new electronic device.

Silver ink pens help draw conductive circuits on paper, wood or other non-conductive surfaces.

The ink of this seemingly ordinary pen is essentially a molecular nano-silver solution. After writing, the dried silver ink will form electrical lines that can be preserved even if the paper is folded repeatedly.

The idea of ​​this smart pen is for students of different design departments at the University when they are looking for a cheaper way to create electrode models. They used rollerball pens because they were cheap, portable and easy to use.

In the past, it was often used with inkjet printers to spray metal ink onto electronic devices on the spot. This pen provides metal printing techniques on paper surfaces without the need for complicated or high-cost operations such as inkjet printers.

'This metal print pen allows people to create a conductive device as soon as needed; for example, in case you are a soldier on the front and you have to create a simple radio antenna to communicate, 'said Jennifer Lewis, the head of the patent team.

The team used the pen to draw a flexible LED display on paper, conductive inscription and three-dimensional radio antenna.

Researchers have used silver ink to form a circuit that conducts electricity to a bright spot on the roof of a house that draws energy from a 5-volt battery on the edge of the picture.

Not only is it interesting to electronic engineers, the potential of this device can be exploited to create artworks, the team also emphasized.

Using a pen to sketch Jung Hee Kim's ' Sae-Han-Do ' painting (drawing a house, a tree and some Chinese sentences), the researchers used ink to form a conductive circuit. give a bright spot on the roof of the house to get energy from the 5 volt battery on the edge of the picture.

Although nano silver molecular ink was created in the laboratory, its price was relatively cheap. At a cost of $ 1.06 per gram of silver, Lewis estimates a pen is only about $ 50. Equivalent to every circuit you draw on the spot cost less than 1 dollar each Plus the ink is never dry.

' The simplicity of this idea really surprised us, ' said Professor Yi Cui of Stanfor University's Department of Materials Science and Design, referring to the pen. ' This is not just a high-end pen; it is a machine equivalent to millions of pens writing at the same time . '

Lewis said they will sell the pen to the market within 1 to 2 years. Currently they are trying to improve the technology even further, creating better functions and expanding ink materials to be able to write on paper with ion conductive materials.