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posted by martyb on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the biodegradable-chips-give-new-meaning-to-"computer-virus" dept.

Technicians from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory (FPL), have demonstrated the feasibility of replacing the substrate of a computer chip with cellulose nanofibril (CNF), a flexible, biodegradable material made from wood.

The full paper is available. From the abstract:

Today's consumer electronics, such as cell phones, tablets and other portable electronic devices, are typically made of non-renewable, non-biodegradable, and sometimes potentially toxic (for example, gallium arsenide) materials. These consumer electronics are frequently upgraded or discarded, leading to serious environmental contamination. Thus, electronic systems consisting of renewable and biodegradable materials and minimal amount of potentially toxic materials are desirable. Here we report high-performance flexible microwave and digital electronics that consume the smallest amount of potentially toxic materials on biobased, biodegradable and flexible cellulose nanofibril papers. Furthermore, we demonstrate gallium arsenide microwave devices, the consumer wireless workhorse, in a transferrable[sic] thin-film form. Successful fabrication of key electrical components on the flexible cellulose nanofibril paper with comparable performance to their rigid counterparts and clear demonstration of fungal biodegradation of the cellulose-nanofibril-based electronics suggest that it is feasible to fabricate high-performance flexible electronics using ecofriendly materials.


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:39PM (#189245)

    Very free and easy.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @10:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @10:20PM (#189358)

    Won't you try some of my purple berries?