Plastic used to conduct current
Plastic used to conduct current
2008-06-16Newsfeed
Scientists have discovered a method of conducting electricity using plastic that may do away with the need for metal in electronics.
Scientists have discovered a method of conducting electricity using plastic that may do away with the need for metal in electronics.
Alberto Morpurgo's team at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands found that jamming the right two pieces of plastic together creates a thin but strongly conducting channel along the junction that acts like a metal.
The team attached a micrometer-thick crystal of the organic polymer TTF to a similarly thin organic crystal of the polymer TCNQ.
The thin, flexible crystals conform to each other's shape and stick together due to van der Waals forces, says Morpurgo.
Both TTF and TCNQ are electrical insulators. But Morpurgo's team found that a 2-nanometre-thick strip along the interface between the two crystals conducts electricity as well as a metal.
When laid side-by-side the two materials are physically unchanged, but the way electrons behave is subtly altered along the interface where the different materials are in close proximity.
Mr Morpurgo thinks that at the interface, electrons from the TTF molecules are able to jump over to vacant spaces known as "holes" in the TCNQ molecules.
"Such an electron-hole system is really something new and it may have interesting electronic properties," Mr Morpurgo said.
Copyright © The Press Association 2008
