Bendable devices may still be a little way off, but a new kind of ceramic that is flexible in the same way as paper could certainly help speed things along.
A startup called Eurekite has created a new kind of ceramic that’s able to fold and crumple. That’s unusual: Ceramics are usually highly crystalline, which makes them strong, heat resistant… and brittle. Eurekite, however, claims that their new material retains the positive qualities of ceramics — particularly that of heat insulation — while also being flexible.
The company reckons that it could be used as a replacement for the plastics used in normal printed circuit boards. Details about how the material is actually made are scant, though the company does claim that it can be manufactured in thicknesses ranging from “a few micrometres to over a millimetre”. We’ll have to wait and see just how useful it turns out to be.