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Form-fitting, nanoscale sensors now make sense
What if a sensor sensing a thing could be part of the thing itself? Rice University engineers believe they have a two-dimensional solution to do just that.
Rice engineers led by materials scientists Pulickel Ajayan and Jun Lou have developed a method to make atom-flat sensors that seamlessly integrate with devices to report on what they perceive.
Electronically active 2D materials have been the subject of much research since the introduction of graphene in 2004. Even though they are often touted for their strength, they’re difficult to move to where they’re needed without destroying them.
The Ajayan and Lou groups, along with the lab of Rice engineer Jacob Robinson, have a new way to keep the materials and their associated circuitry, including electrodes, intact as they’re moved to curved or other smooth surfaces.
The results of their work appear in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 12 2018, @02:10AM (1 child)
There is a tautology here, but not how you've described it.
"What if a sensor sensing a thing could be part of the thing itself?"
Assume a sensor that always returns a positive result. Since the sensor is a part of the thing, the existence of the sensor is tied to the existence of the thing.
If the thing exists, the sensor exists and returns a positive result, thus "sensing" the thing. If the thing doesn't exist, then the sensor doesn't exist and does not return a positive result, thus correctly "sensing" that the thing doesn't exist.
Thus, such a sensor would be patently useless.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:27AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves