"MATERIALS: Nanocrystalline circuitry gets sprayed on"

The future of semiconductors is not chips: Instead of fabricating circuits on chips and soldering them to printed-circuit boards, Canadian researchers propose painting transparent "solution processed" circuits directly onto a device's surface. Such semiconductor circuits--from emitters for large-area displays to detectors for spray-on solar cells--could drastically lower the cost of electronic devices, the group says. The first beneficiaries could be night vision goggles for the military that would be 10 times more sensitive, yet less expensive, than today's models. But that is just the beginning, according to the team at the University of Toronto, because now spray-on circuits no longer have to sacrifice performance to attain low cost. Besides being inexpensive to mass-produce, the photodetector material could post a tenfold sensitivity increase for military night vision systems, which image in infrared, as well as for biomedical imaging systems that use infrared to see through skin.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=190500733