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Using ultraviolet light to fabricate thin flexible electronics
New technique fabricates metal oxide semiconductors at room
temperature.  Most current flexible electronics still have
opaque components. The new technique may change that.  Current
semiconductor technology is based on silicon, gallium arsenide
(GaAs), and other opaque materials. But a promising alternative,
metal oxide semiconductors (consisting of molecules with both
metallic and oxygen atoms) are very efficient, and happen to be
transparent. However, fabricating them by ordinary means
requires extremely high temperatures, high enough to melt the
types of polymers that structure the devices.  A new method for
making metal oxide devices at much lower temperatures uses
ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Yong-Hoon Kim and colleagues used
UV light to chemically activate metal particles in a chemical
solution; the new metal oxide molecules condensed out of the
solution, forming a thin semiconduc