By Avi Machlis
Small Times Correspondent

JERUSALEM, June 27, 2001 — Manufacturing electronic circuits using chemicals and copper boards is about as old as the electronics industry itself, but one researcher has found a new way to create circuits using nanoparticles and a standard laser printer.

Andrew Shipway, a British-born supramolecular chemist working at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, knew that nanotechnology researchers were putting silver particles on DNA and theorizing about the possibility of using this technique to make tiny circuitry.

But watching scientists try to scale things down made Shipway think about working in the opposite direction. “I took this idea that people were using to make wires on the nanoscale and said, ‘Wait a minute let’s try and actually make something that works on the macroscale.'”

He came up with a piece of paper embedded with palladium nanoparticles. Circuit designers, working on standard computer programs, then print out a negative of their circuitry on the paper.

When inserted into a solution that includes copper sulphate and a reducing agent, the palladium particles spark a chemical reaction. Within 10 minutes, copper wires form along the areas not covered with ink. Conventional circuit boards take at least 24 hours to produce, and the process involves using powerful acids to etch away patterns on copper-coated boards.

Using a standard 600 dpi printer, Shipway’s patent-pending process could theoretically yield a circuit with a resolution of 50 microns. This is way too big for designing integrated circuits or chips, but it certainly can be used for circuitry common in conventional electronic applications.

As a scientist with little business acumen, Shipway has left the commercialization of the technology to his professor. He does, however, think it can save circuit designers significant time in their design processes. Shipway is also talking to Power Paper, the Israeli thin and flexible battery manufacturer, about possible smart card applications.

David Bergman, vice president of standards technology at IPC, the Chicago-based circuit board trade association, says some companies have been developing procedures for printing circuits on thin substrates, but not using standard laser-printing technology.

Companies will likely ask questions about the reliability of these circuits, says Bergman, who doubts whether it could be practically applicable in multilayer circuitboards. “But I think you would find some companies willing to play with it,” he says, especially if circuit designers can speed up their processes — and time-to-market — by printing out test circuits next to their desks.

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