In an effort to mollify the environmental laden of electronic devices, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has collaborated with researchers in the Madison-based U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) to develop a surprising solution: A semiconductor chip made almost entirely of wood.

The inventors assert that the new chip could help address the global problem of rapidly amassing electronic waste, some of which contains conceivably toxic materials. The outcomes additionally demonstrate that a transparent, wood-inferred material called Nano-cellulose or Cellulose Nano-Fibrils (CNF) paper is a fairly captivating alternate to plastic as a surface for flexible electronics.

[In Picture: Electronic Components made of Gallium Arsenide embedded on a surface made of CNF Paper, which is made from wood.]

In conventional chip manufacturing, electronic components like transistors are made on the surface of a rigid wafer made of a semiconductor material such as silicon. A team of researchers led by Professor Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Wisconsin USA made the chip in a similar manner however; he then utilized an elastic stamp to lift them up from the wafer and transferred them to a new surface made of Nano-Cellulose - the CNF Paper. This drastically reduced the amount of semiconductor material used in the chip fabrication without compromising on the performance. The chip manufactured using this process are not harmful for the environment when dumped after use. If you throw them in forest or grassland, with the passage of time fungus will decompose them.

It should be understood clearly that Nano-cellulose doesn't replace the electronic components of the chip, it just replace the base on which the components lie. In any chip, it is the base that constitutes the major section of the chip in comparison to electronic components.

In recent years, researchers have demonstrated that Nano-cellulose, which is made by breaking wood fibers down to nano-scale, can be used as viable support material for a variety of electronic devices, including solar cells. However, recent demonstrations are the first to reveal properties of Nano-cellulose that make the material promising for use in efficient, high-performing radio frequency circuits.

Today we find electronics, semiconductor everywhere around us. Over the years we have witnessed the use of electronics increasing manifolds. However this is boon on end, on the other end it is adding to an unwanted and unavoidable problem of managing e-waste (waste comprises of used electronics goods). The solution like bio-degradable chip could prove to be a good breakthrough invention that will help manage the e-waste with less of hassles or problems.

By Rishu Chhabra - Assistant Professor, Shubham Mehta & Shubham Sharma-Students
Chitkara University Punjab

Source: MIT Technology Review