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Two professors from the University of Illinois; one specializing in materials science, the other in electrical engineering, have combined their talents to take the idea of printing circuits onto non-standard materials one step further by developing a conductive ink that can be used in a traditional rollerball ink pen to draw circuits by hand onto paper and other porous materials. In their paper published in Advanced Materials, team leads Jennifer Lewis, Jennifer Bernhard and colleagues describe how they were able to make a type of ink from silver nanoparticles that would remain a liquid while in the pen, but would dry like regular ink once applied. The pen could was then used to draw a functioning LCD display and an antenna.

"Bicyclean, a pedal-powered grindstone that pulverizes entire circuit boards inside a polycarbonate enclosure, capturing the dust. Though Field is now a year out of college, her project recently won the silver award at the Acer Foundation's Incredible Green Contest in Taiwan and was displayed for three days at COMPUTEX Taipei, one of the world's largest computer industry expositions. The $35,000 prize will enable her to return to Ghana to test a second-generation prototype and to seek non-profit status for the endeavor, a significant milestone in a project she was afraid might fall by the wayside after graduation."