Printed electronics with 1,000 times more charge could detect spoiled milk, food

Researchers have developed a new technology to detect if food has gone bad without opening the package, revolutionizing the food and beverage industry.

Imagine knowing your milk has gone bad without having to open your fridge.

A technology called printed electronics could one day make innovations like this possible.

Printed electronics refers to electronic circuits in thin and bendable sheets.

This technology is already used to make everything from solar cells for vehicle roofs to flexible smartphone displays.

Canadian Light Source

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USASK), a team of researchers from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and USASK developed a material that stores up to 1,000 times more charge than current forms of printed electronics.

The group’s work could move the concept of the Internet of Things closer to reality.

The Internet of Things involves adding printed electronics to everyday objects—for example, milk cartons and fridges—to enable communication between these objects and our smartphones and computers.

Such an advance could open up a world of technological possibilities. For the food industry alone, this would minimize waste and spoilage at all levels of the supply chain.

Internet of Things

Making the Internet of Things a reality will require circuitry and advanced operations only possible with electronics that can function in positive and negative voltage modes.

Loren Kaake, an associate professor in SFU’s Department of Chemistry, developed the material there, and his team shows promise.

“That is a place where it definitely outperforms even the most cutting-edge materials,” Kaake said. “I think this material enables and really gives a much stronger case for the commercial potential of printed electronics.”

The team used the intensely bright synchrotron light at the CLS to analyze their material and improve its performance.

They published their findings in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Nanoscale particles identification

Kaake said the CLS allowed us to understand the nanoscale structure of our material, which enables good performance and what hinders it.

“The data we collected at the synchrotron provides some ways to better engineer the materials further.”

Kaake expects printed electronics to enter the marketplace in about seven years. When the time comes, their material could be readily implemented when the prototypes are being created.

“Developing new materials is a very important line of research because one can always use a better material in an application if it’s discovered,” he said. “If our material is amenable to future electronic printing techniques, they’re very much a ‘plug and play’ type of replacement.”

Grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering experiments suggest that the zwitterions adopt a lamellar ordering at their surface above a critical concentration.

The observed ordering is correlated with a 1000-fold increase in capacitance.

The behavior suggests that the zwitterions exhibit strong electrostatic correlations throughout the film bulk, pointing toward a novel class of organic dielectric materials.