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Electronics put it on plastic

Oct 1, 1998

There is a memorable scene in The Graduate where Benjamin, the title character played by a young Dustin Hoffman, is given advice as he faces a career after college. He is told a single word: "plastics".

Thirty years later, the soundness of that advice is being revealed in ways undreamt of by the cinema audiences of the time, even the scientists among them. Plastic materials are now being created with increasingly useful electronic and optical properties. These developments extend the application of plastics beyond the familiar garden furniture, toys and plumbing, and into "smart" electronic devices such as identification tags, programmable credit cards and flat-panel displays.

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