《中英對照讀新聞》 Scientists develop bendy circuit boards 科學家開發出可彎式電路板

◎陳成良

US scientists have developed flexible silicon circuit boards, which they claim will pave the way to wearable computers and other biomedical devices.

美國科學家已開發出彈性矽電路板，他們聲稱，這種電路板將有助於研發出穿戴式的電腦和其他生物醫療儀器。

The boards are created from "nanoribbons", ultra-thin sheets of silicon bonded to sheets of rubber. The sheets are so thin that a complete circuit is just one and a half microns thick, hundreds of times thinner than conventional silicon circuits found in PCs.

該電路板是由「奈米帶」製成，奈米帶是一種與橡膠片結合的超薄型矽片。這種膜片非常細薄，一個完整電路厚度只有1又1/2微米，比個人電腦的傳統矽電路要薄數百倍。

"The notion that silicon cannot be used in such applications because it is intrinsically brittle and rigid has been tossed out the window," says John Rogers, a founder professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois.

「有關矽因其易碎且僵固的特質，以致不能運用在這種用途的觀念，已經被推翻了，」伊利諾大學材料科學與工程系的創系教授羅傑斯說。

"Through carefully optimized mechanical layouts and structural configurations, we can use silicon in integrated circuits that are fully foldable and stretchable."

「透過嚴密最佳化的機械佈線設計與結構配置，我們可把矽用在可完全折疊並延展的積體電路上。」

While bendable electronics have been seen before, those breakthroughs depended on organic semiconductor materials, which made them too slow to be used in complex computing tasks. However, as the method employed by Rogers utilises traditional silicon, he claims they’re capable of similar performance to solid wafers.

雖然可彎曲電子產品以前也見過，但那些突破仰賴有機半導體材料，致使它們速度太慢，不能用來從事複雜運算任務。然而，羅傑斯採行的方法是利用傳統的矽，他聲稱它們能達到近似固體晶片的效能。

新聞辭典

pave the way for someone/something：片語，為…做好準備，以便日後更有可能發生。例句：His study could pave the way for new lung cancer treatments.（他的研究可能有助於研發新的肺癌療法。）

be tossed out the window：直譯是「被丟出窗外」，引申為「被淘汰、推翻」的意思。

來源：自由時報

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