Polymer chip that bill customers replacing bar code

Wednesday, 15 December 2004, 20:30 IST
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THIRUVANATHAPURAM: Advanced plastic chips embedded in merchandise replacing bar code are now allowing bills to be ready by the time a consumer walks to the super market counter, a Nobel laureate said here Wednesday. These embedded radio tagging chips make it possible to bill a customer as soon as he or she picks up an item from the store shelf, said Alan G MacDiarmid of the University of Pennsylvania, US, here This has been made possible by advances in polymer technology, MacDiarmid, who shared the Nobel prize for Chemistry, told "Macro 2004", an international conference on polymers. Synthesis of new kinds of polymers using nanoscience helped usher in this new era in electronics leading to the invention of "throwaway plastic chips" and nanofibres, several times thinner than human hair, MacDiarmid told the meet organised by the Society for Polymer Science, India. "Synthesizing and studying of electronic and conducting polymers have led to the development of several electronic and technological applications that we use in every day life such as light emitting diodes (LEDs), anti-static coating on photographic paper, rechargeable batteries and several others," he said.' Tracing the milestones in the growth of polymers from pre-1977 electrically insulating polymers to the development of electronic and conducting polymers, he said if the previous century was called the age of the silicons (used in semiconductors), the 21st century would be the age of polymers. MacDiarmid was the chemist credited with the discovery that conductivity can be increased in electronic polymers (polyaniline) by doping. He described doping as the unique, central, underlying and unifying theme in conducting polymers.
Source: IANS
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