I read an article today in one of my feeds about a new material developed that will bring "printable circuitry" closer to a reality. In a nutshell, printable circuitry means you could literally print out circuits using some kind of magical "circuit printer", resulting in much smaller electronics. The advantages of this would be that Apple can now make the iPhone even smaller and more expensive.

Anyway the point of me writing about this is how most of the article went entirely over my head. Here are a few quotes from the intro paragraphs:

The n-type semiconducting polymers have proven to be one of the biggest challenges, and some have raised the prospect that matching current p-type polymer performance wasn't even possible due to the nature of how polymer bonding influences the formation of electron holes and free electrons. A new paper, however, describes an n-type polymer with excellent electrical and processing characteristics and its use to form fully functional polymer transistors, produced entirely by printing.

Okay.

The polymer being used is the dauntingly-named poly{[N,N9-bis(2-octyldodecyl)-naphthalene-1,4,5,8-bis(dicarboximide)-2,6-diyl]-alt-5,59-(2,29-bithiophene)}, which, naturally, one gets from reacting N,N9-dialkyl-2,6-dibromonaphthalene-1,4,5,8-bis(dicarboximide) with 5,59-bis(trimethylstannyl)-2,29-dithiophene.

Naturally.

I am glad there are people out there who figure this stuff out and can understand it, because I don't.

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