Engineers develop carbon nanotube circuits to make electronic devices flexible

Engineers have invented a way to make digital devices that bend by 'doping' carbon filaments with an additive to improve their electronic performance.

Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, said that it's the first time anyone has designed a flexible CNT circuits that have both high immunity to electrical noise and low power consumption.

In a bid to create flexible electronic devices, the team has developed a process to create flexible chips that can tolerate power fluctuations in much the same way as silicon circuitry and have found that the ultra thin carbon filaments have the physical strength to take the wear and tear of bending, and the electrical conductivity to perform any electronic task.

Bao added that CNTs have the best long term electronic and physical attributes.

The group reported its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.