Yang Yang, a researcher at UCLA, and colleagues claim to have developed an ‘inexpensive and simple way’ to produce transparent, flexible transistors.
Transistors are generally produced using a multi-step photolithography process (printing a pattern onto glass or a wafer, using light). The process is expensive and uses toxic substances. Yang’s approach instead uses inks (referred to as ‘specially-designed metal oxide gel films’) that create patterns on thin, transparent devices when exposed to light. The ultraviolet irradiation of the gel films generates shapes of around 3
