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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]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 29 2015, @04:13PM
I personally have never thrown away old computers. I keep them around for hobby tinkering.
But I can see applications for biodegradeable stuff. Sensors that you put out in nature to monitor wildlife or something represent one such use; you don't want to have to hike back out and collect them after you've gotten the data set you want for your study. I can see it being fun to make it, too, because if you know the process you can grow the raw material yourself and roll your own. I remember reading here or somewhere else recently that somebody had molded mycelium fiber into drones, and it sounded exceptionally cool. Who wouldn't want to be able to replicate all the modern conveniences using renewable, commonly available materials instead of specialized elements you have to own a mine in the Gobi desert to get? It's partly why I follow news about graphene and carbon nanotubes so closely, since carbon's ubiquitous.
Washington DC delenda est.