Scientist create biodegradable circuitry that can be dissolved with vinegar
One of the fastest-growing environmental problems of the 21st century is electronic waste, as old devices end up on landfills. Scientists in California found a possible way to solve the issue, producing a lightweight, flexible circuitry that’s also biodegradable.
The scientists say they have created a semiconductor built on a base of cellulose, while the rest of the device is made of carbon-based compounds, with ordinary iron providing the electrodes. And when it served its purpose and needs to be discarded, the device can be dissolved with the use of vinegar.
“Using an ultrathin biodegradable substrate, we successfully fabricated polymer transistors and logic circuits that show high performance and are ultra lightweight, but they can be fully disintegrable,” the scientists recently wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Live Science reports.
loading...
While the semiconductor can be cheaper than a conventional circuitry, scientists say they need about four years to improve the performance in order for it to be useful in devices such as smartphones or tablets.
The team behind the biodegradable circuitry included chemists, engineers, and materials experts from Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard.
The United Nations estimates that tens of millions of tons of old devices containing plastics and heavy metals like mercury and cadmium end up in the garbage bin every year.
Loading...