Created a flexible 32-bit TFT processor

Engineers have developed a flexible 32-bit microprocessor on a flexible plastic base that could pave the way for next-generation electronics.

Despite being used in a variety of devices, all modern processors are made of solid silicon wafers.The rigidity and fragility of the chips does not allow them to be used to create more progressive smart products, such as smart clothes, packaging, or wearable gadgets.A team of researchers at ARM decided to remedy this by introducing a flexible analogue of the 32-bitmicroprocessor Cortex M0 +.

To make the chip, they used metal oxide thin-film transistors with amorphous silicon and an elastic polymer base. It includes ROM, RAM and interconnects.

In the first prototype of the PlasticARM microprocessorthe engineers placed the registers used by the CPU in the reserved portion of RAM, a total of 128 bytes. Therefore, although it is able to bend, it does not work efficiently, is not fast enough and has no program memory.

The team claims that while only studying the possibility of creating an elastic microprocessor, and now, after successful implementation, it will move on to improving its technical characteristics.

According to them, in the near future, flexible microprocesses will be applied in trillions of products, ranging fromsmart clothes that measure vital signs, to packages with milk quality indicators, and skin stickers that visualize a person's current mood.

Researchers at Duke University are also working on solving the problem of flexible processors, but they decided to go the other way and created the world's first transistor printed on paper.

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