Metallic Paper Touchpads Make Debut

[Catbird]

I'm sure that some company somewhere will find some way to muck it up so that it isn't cheap anymore. But still, it's pretty neat and could lead to all kinds of applications.


Discovery News:

"Computer touchscreens are nearly ubiquitous on laptops, tablets and smartphones. But those are often made of glass or plastic, which is heavy, inflexible and even breakable. Now there's a way to make them out of paper, which is lightweight, flexible and cheap. Use of paper touchscreens could extend from electronic devices to to nutritional labels and price tags.

The paper, created by a team of researchers led by Aaron Mazzeo, a mechanical engineer at Harvard, starts with a process already used to make shiny labels for beer bottles: Paper is coated with a very thin layer of aluminum, which is then covered in a thin film of transparent polymer.

...The paper is quite cheap, about 25 cents per square meter, which means a nine-digit keypad the size of those on a calculator could be made for a few cents."