Chips technology promising to change household chores

Verena Wolff, Deutsche Presse-Agenture, Berlin

Your empty milk cartons may in future tell your electronic shopping list to buy a fresh supply

"Imagine the milk carton reporting that it is nearly empty, and the next time you go into the supermarket, the shopping cart's integrated chip leads you to the milk refrigerator," says Carsten Nieland, an engineer from Berlin's Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Computer Integration (IZM).

It may sound like science fiction, but the engineer says it could soon become reality.

Nieland works in the field of polymer technology, microelectronics and photonics whose latest developments have just been shown at the "Polytronic 2001" exhibition in Potsdam, just outside Berlin.

So-called polymers, experts believe, are tomorrow's favourite material for electronic chips.

Today, the electronic industry uses polymers mostly as an isolator and protective coating of the silicon-based chips now in use in computers, household appliances and automobile electronics.

However, since specially-made polymers can conduct electricity and can be molded precisely for their intended use, they are seen as an ideal future material for certain electronic components.

"The 'intelligent household' is no longer just a future vision," says Nieland. "If you recall the fears that surrounded the millennium changeover, you realize how many household appliances already contain electronic components that could have been affected."

The fact that milk cartons do not yet incorporate electronics is due to the high cost of components which today are still silicon-based.

But research and development into conductive polymers aimed at making low-cost polymer-based chips, currently has a high priority.

Future "polytronic systems" based on plastic chips have potentially unlimited applications. For instance, pictures in magazines and books could be made to show motion.

Medical scientists are experimenting with intelligent sticking plasters that could supply patients with the exact dose of a required medicine. The plaster's "brain" sits on a thin foil integrated into the material.

Still in the planning stage is a flexible chip for clothing material that will tell tomorrow's intelligent washing machine exactly how to treat it.