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: also seem reliable. Fortunato and Martins tested their prototypes for two months without detecting any fall in performance.

Paper transistors, and circuits based on them, are not, it must be said, going to replace silicon chips as the microprocessors in computers any time soon—if only because they are nowhere near as miniaturised. But the two researchers have already used them to make a simple, disposable memory circuit, which they will describe in a forthcoming issue of Applied Physics Letters. Such paper-based ‘chips’ would be much cheaper than the cheapest chips available today, and could be used in radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags on such things as packets of food on supermarket shelves—the cost of RFID chips is one of the factors preventing their widespread adoption. Baggage tags, banknotes with electronics embedded for security and even postage stamps that can be read by smart franking machines are other possible uses. Electronics may even come to rely on paper, rather than eliminating it.