business_spotlight_2014_no_02__

80 http://www.business-spotlight.de 2/2014

Universuty of Illinois

Elektronische Geräte, die sich nach

Gebrauch in Wasser auflösen? Klingt

nach Science-Fiction. Oder könnte es

vielleicht eine Technologie der Zukunft

sein? MARKPIESINGberichtet.

Here today,

gone tomorrow

I

magine a microchip inside your

body that can produce enough

heat to kill bacteria and then be

absorbed by your body. Imagine

an oil spillclean-up being mea-

sured by 100,000 sensors dropped

from a plane. When their work is

done, the sensors melt in the ocean.

Or think of a no-longer-loved smart-

phone that can actually dissolvein

water.

Then imagine what the military

could do with these “born-to-die”

devices. For example, electronic eyes

and ears that could be sent to a war

zone and then be triggeredto dissolve

when their mission was over, or when

they were about to be discovered.

The US Pentagon’s Defense Advanced

Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is

currently financing the development

of transient electronics: in other

words, ones that can melt away.

In one demonstration of this tech-

nology, when water drops hit the fin-

gernail-sized integrated circuit, its

clear silk substrate quickly starts to

curl up. This causes the thin strings of

siliconand magnesium inside the cir-

cuits to separate and curl up, too.

After only one minute, what had

been a fully functioning circuit, with

transistors, diodes and capacitors, is

now just a long, dirty string of an un-

defined substance. In another demon-

stration, it takes only two hours for

an integrated circuit to dissolve in a

glass of water.

Professor John A. Rogers is head of

the Rogers Research Group at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign and a leading developer

of this technology. He believes that

we may be just “a year or two away”

from testing such electronics in hu-

mans, most likely for surface wounds.

He does not say much about his work

for DARPA, but he admits, “I did eat

one device, and I didn’t feel a thing. It

just dissolved in my mouth.” For

Rogers, today’s electronics are in-

advanced

capacitor [kE(pÄsItE] Kondensator

curl up [)k§:l (Vp] sich kräuseln

device [di(vaIs] Gerät

dissolve [dI(zQlv] sich auflösen

integrated circuit integrierter Schalt-

[)IntIgreItId (s§:kIt] kreis

oil spill [(OI&l spIl] Ölpest, Ölteppich

silicon [(sIlIkEn] Silizium

transient kurzlebig, vergäng-

[(trÄnziEnt] lich

trigger (sth.) Steuerimpuls; etw.

[(trIgE] durch Impulse

steuern

Disappearing act: electronics

that dissolve in water

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