Low-cost interactive labels now a reality

Transistors consisting entirely of 2D nanomaterials have been printed for the first time, making the advent of economic, interactive labels a reality.

Printed electronic circuitry will allow consumer products to gather, process, display and transmit information.

These printed devices can easily be incorporated into labels and packaging. In the food industry, packaging could include a digital countdown of time until spoilage, wine labels that say when the wine is at quaffing temperature or milk cartons send messages to your phone warning that the milk is about to go out of date.

Led by Professor Jonathan Coleman, in collaboration with the groups of Professor Georg Duesberg (AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre at Trinity College Dublin) and Professor Laurens Siebbeles (TU Delft, the Netherlands), the team used standard printing techniques to combine graphene nanosheets as the electrodes with two other nanomaterials, tungsten diselenide and boron nitride, as the channel and separator (two important parts of a transistor) to form an all-printed, all-nanosheet, working transistor. The AMBER team’s findings have been published in the journal Science.