A couple of neat new advances in computing this week. The first is an amazing flexible silicon chip designed by US researchers. The components of the chip are applied onto a thin layer of plastic, at first glued down to a substrate. When the circuit is completed, the glue is disolved and the plastic peels away a flexible chip. The researchers think that removing the traditional blocky form of a chip allows the bendable material to be used in many new applications such as brain implants or smart clothing.

“Silicon microelectronics has been a spectacularly successful technology that has touched virtually every part of our lives,” said Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “In many cases you’d like to integrate electronics conformably in a variety of ways in the human body – but the human body does not have the shape of a silicon wafer.”

Meanwhile, Japanese scientists working on the developing technology of printing circuitry like an inkjet printer have developed a technique they believe is good enough to print TFT computer monitors. With all the components of a computer getting smaller and easier to manipulate, the days of the traditional shape of a desktop tower are surely numbered…

[ image and stories via BBC technology]