Archimedes is said to have had his eureka moment while taking a bath. Henning Sirringhaus's inspiration came in the shower.

As water droplets rained down on him, the University of Cambridge physicist came up with the idea that by dripping beads of conducting liquid polymer onto a surface, they could be made to slide off each other and align themselves a fraction of a micrometre apart. This simple trick solved a problem that Sirringhaus, in his role as chief scientist at Cambridge company Plastic Logic, had been wrestling with: how to build plastic transistors small enough and fast enough to use in electronic devices.

Plastic Logic is just one of a number of companies developing polymer-based or "organic" electronic devices. Building transistors from polymer instead of silicon will allow today's rigid chips to be replaced by flexible plastic ones. This will open the way to cheaper, lighter and more flexible ...