A plastic-metal hybrid as a granulate or a strand. In
the next step the conductive material can be plasticized
(softened) again and applied as a printed circuit board.
(Credit: Copyright Fraunhofer IFAM)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2008) — Plastic that conducts electricity and metal that weighs no more than a feather? It sounds like an upside-down world. Yet researchers have succeeded in making plastics conductive and cutting production costs at the same time.
You could hardly find greater contrasts in one and the same team. Plastic is light and inexpensive, but insulates electric current. Metal is resilient and conducts electricity, but it is also expensive and heavy. Up to now, it has not been possible to combine the properties of these two materials. The IFAM in Bremen has devised a solution that combines the best of both worlds without requiring new machinery to process the components.
The greatest challenge for the researchers was getting the plastic to conduct electricity, for plastic-metal hybrids are to be used in the very places where plastic components are equipped with printed circuit boards, for instance in cars or aircraft. Until now, this was only possible via the roundabout route of punching and bending metal sheets in an elaborate process in order to integrate them in a component.
The new solution is simpler: a composite material...read more
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1 comment:
This might lead for some other good purpose for cars in the future.
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