Transistor Made of Wood

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2218380120

by tlubinski • 3 years ago

97 22 3 years ago

Transistor made of *electron-ion conducting polymer* mixed with wood:

"The CW is prepared using a two-step strategy of wood delignification followed by wood amalgamation with a mixed electron-ion conducting polymer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)–polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS)."

hypertele-Xii• 3 years ago

Similar to the "transparent wood!" story that made rounds a while back, where they took the wood out of the wood and replaced it with transparent plastic. Incredibly dishonest.

its_ethan• 3 years ago

Here's a YouTube link to anyone curious about transparent wood: https://youtu.be/uUU3jW7Y9Ak

I don't know if I agree with it being "incredibly dishonest" - I think it's a bit misleading (like most popular science), but it comes from a place of wanting to get clicks/ be more mass-appeal, rather than to actually deceive.

Animats3• 3 years ago

Right. Once you take the lignite out of wood, you have a porous structure into which you can put other liquids. There are other variations on this theme - super strong wood, conductive wood, etc.[1] Some of those tricks work on cellulose agricultural waste.

Probably the most useful idea in this direction is oriented-strand board from bagasse, the long strands left after sugar is remove from sugar cane. Layers oriented in different directions are glued together, like plywood, to make something like particleboard, but with better tensile strength. It's a low-end composite material.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stronger-than-ste...

lordnacho• 3 years ago

So if the ship's planks were replaced by carbon fibre and the ropes by composites, is it not the same ship?

ChuckMcM• 3 years ago

Would you read a paper on "wood coated transistors" ? :-)

I completely agree that the phrasing of the topic is misleading at best. However, the paper does add to the growing body of work on "organic" electronics. The journey of organic LEDs from concept to product is, to me, an interesting corollary. How much "metal" can you remove from electronics? How many of the elements that make electronics "toxic"? How many of the properties of the underlying organic base can you retain while still having a signal carrying capacity?

As an example;

E-"paper", made from cellulose hosted transistors, that are configured not to "switch" but to change the chemical composition of a "pixel" that changes is light absorption characteristics (and thus its "color" with respect to non-activated pixels.

Clearly a sci-fi "dream" or construction at this point, but understanding how to make cellulose a conductor while retaining the ability to make it into paper is a step toward possible realization of such an idea.

The bottom line for me is that "organic" electronics is one of those black swan type ideas that could really change a lot of things. So I collect papers like this one to track what people with time to research the questions find out. :-)

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

wood coated transistors

Definitely a market for those with the audiophool crowd.

dmurray• 3 years ago

Wood delignification

For those of you who are not up to speed on your Latin, the Saxon version of this word would be "unwooding".

Joker_vD• 3 years ago

So is this like taking a chunk of wood out of the piece of wood by cutting a hole in it so you get a window (which is both wooden and, technically, transparent, well, mostly), or like taking a piece of wood and then running it through a chain of chemical reactions ending up with some transparent substance which, in its chemical structure, may not even resemble wood at all?

djha-skin• 3 years ago

Yeah, anytime someone applies "delignification" to wood, you're left with rayon (synthetic cotton). Then they added polymers back. So it's like they mixed some plastic and some cotton together and called it wood.

hinkley2• 3 years ago

Supercapacitors are made of charcoal, and it looks like charcoal is mainly lignin, so the exact opposite.

apienx• 3 years ago

The FTIR data is far from convincing (wrt the wood-PEDOT:PSS interaction), but cool demo.

Bra jobbat, Isak!

tombert• 3 years ago

This is interesting; maybe the "organic semiconductors" that Jan Hendrik Schön was working on were plausible.

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

I was suddenly picturing a sleek gamer desktop with unsubtle RGB lighting and acrylic panels highlighting sumptuous walnut veneers on the motherboard, cabling insulated with the smoothest silk, and a delicate aroma of apple pipe tobacco emanating from the heat sink.

martin1b• 3 years ago

Very nice. Looks to be more of a FET.

Transistor Made of Wood

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