America
Wrap smartphone around your wrist soon
Washington, Feb 11
Imagine wrapping your phone around your wrist when you go for a jog or folding your computer to fit in a pocket.
Researchers
from South Korea have taken a new step toward more bendable devices by
manufacturing a thin film that keeps its useful electric and magnetic
properties even when highly curved - paving the way for potential uses
in wearable devices.
A team of physicists and engineers from
South Korea took the same approach with bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) -- one
of the most promising materials whose electronic properties can be
controlled by a magnetic field and vice versa.
Such materials are called multiferroics and attract interest for applications like energy efficient, instant-on computing.
The researchers synthesised nanoparticles of bismuth ferrite and mixed them into a polymer solution.
The solution was dried in a series of steps at increasing temperatures to produce a thin, flexible film.
When
the researchers tested the electric and magnetic properties of the
film, they found that their new material did much more than preserving
the useful properties of bulk bismuth ferrite -- it actually made them
better.
The improved properties remained even as the film was curved into a cylindrical shape.
"Bulk
bismuth ferrite has crucial problems for some applications such as a
high leakage current which hinders the strong electric properties," said
YoungPak Lee, professor at the Hanyang University in Seoul, South
Korea.
Flexible multiferrorics could enable new wearable devices such as health monitoring equipment or virtual reality attire.
These materials could be used in high-density, energy efficient memory and switches in such devices, he noted.
The paper was published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.