So is the idea of silicon transistors and processors. . 2022. Swedish researchers designed and tested the first wooden transistor.team Linköping University Norrköping and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm have published a paper entitled Current modulation in wood electrochemical transistorsdescribe the creation, function, and potential of their recently developed wood electrochemical transistor (WECT).
This WECT could pave the way for more sustainable and biodegradable wood-based electronics. In addition, wood electronics have the potential to realize electronic control of living plants.
centimeters instead of nanometers
Regular readers will be familiar with the latest advances in silicon transistor technology. Nearly every day, news headlines relaying advances from Intel, Samsung, and TSMC battle to create cutting-edge processes using transistors that measure in nanometers and operate at speeds of several gigahertz. I’m here. However, the WECT designed and tested by Swedish researchers had a diameter of 3 cm and a switching frequency of less than 1 Hertz.
Not all electronics need the fastest and smallest transistors. Admittedly, his WECT as described is quite large and doesn’t like being rushed. “We came up with an unprecedented principle. press release“Certainly, wooden transistors are slow and bulky, but they work and have great development potential.”
How a tree became a transistor
To illustrate how wood can be used to make a transistor, let’s look at a conventional transistor that is widely used in electronic devices. Field effect transistors are important building blocks of modern electronics and are most commonly manufactured from semiconductors such as silicon and germanium.
Due to the inherent nature of these elements, transistors act as amplifiers or switches when a voltage or current is applied to their terminals. Since the first of his FETs were manufactured in his mid-twentieth century, R&D has continually miniaturized them and tuned them to operate at unusual frequencies.
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To create WECT, researchers needed conductive wood (CW). It is made by removing lignin from wood through a chemical solvent process. Subsequently, the channels where lignin was present are replaced with a mixed-electron-ion-conducting polymer. The woods chosen for this project were balsa (due to its desirable internal channel structure) and the conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS. Three CWs were used to construct the WECT. One is used as the central transistor channel and the other as the top and bottom gates.
WECT transistors are noteworthy, but do not have specifications that are usually discussed. tom’s hardwareRather than being an end in itself, the researchers say they provided evidence of the potential of the Wood transistor, which they hope will inspire future research and applications.
