{"id":445732,"date":"2023-05-07T15:12:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T13:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?p=445732"},"modified":"2023-05-07T15:12:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T13:12:00","slug":"fred-flintstone-in-2023-these-swedish-scientists-built-the-worlds-first-wood-transistor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/fred-flintstone-in-2023-these-swedish-scientists-built-the-worlds-first-wood-transistor\/","title":{"rendered":"Fred Flintstone in 2023? These Swedish scientists built the world\u2019s first wood transistor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It sounds like something from a different era or even from worlds that technically can’t be united: electronics from the stone age. It’s like Fred Flintstone building his own computer. But no, this is for real: researchers at Link\u00f6ping University<\/a> and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology<\/a> have developed the world\u2019s first transistor made of wood. Their study, published in the journal PNAS<\/a>, paves the way for further development of wood-based electronics and control of electronic plants, the researchers claim<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transistors, invented almost one hundred years ago, are considered by some to be an invention just as important to humanity as the telephone, the light bulb, or the bicycle. Today, they are a crucial component in modern electronic devices, and are manufactured at nanoscale. A transistor regulates the current that passes through it and can also function as a power switch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Link\u00f6ping
Isak Engquist, senior associate professor and Van Chinh Tran, PhD student at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Link\u00f6ping University.\n\u00a9 THOR BALKHED<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Researchers at Link\u00f6ping University and colleagues from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have now developed the world\u2019s first electrical transistor made of wood. \u201cWe\u2019ve come up with an unprecedented principle. Yes, the wood transistor is slow and bulky, but it does work and has huge development potential,\u201d says Isak Engquist, senior associate professor at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Link\u00f6ping University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balsa wood<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Link\u00f6ping
Isak Engquist \u00a9 Thor Balkhed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In previous trials, transistors made of wood have been able to regulate ion transport only. And when the ions run out, the transistor stops functioning. However, the transistor developed by the Link\u00f6ping researchers can function continuously and regulate electricity flow without deteriorating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers used balsa wood to create their transistor, as the technology involved requires a grainless wood that is evenly structured throughout. They removed the lignin, leaving only long cellulose fibers with channels where the lignin had been. These channels were then filled with a conductive plastic, or polymer, called PEDOT:PSS, resulting in an electrically conductive wood material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers used this to build the wood transistor and could show that it can regulate electric current and provide continuous function at a selected output level. It could also switch the power on and off, albeit with a certain delay \u2013 switching it off took about a second; on, about five seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regulation of electronic plants<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Link\u00f6ping
The components of the wood transistor.\n\u00a9 Thor Balkhed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Possible applications could include regulating electronic plants, which is another strong research area at Link\u00f6ping University. One advantage of the transistor channel being so large is that it could potentially tolerate a higher current than regular organic transistors, which could be important for certain future applications. But Isak Engquist wants to stress something:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t create the wood transistor with any specific application in mind. We did it because we could. This is basic research, showing that it\u2019s possible, and we hope it will inspire further research that can lead to applications in the future,\u201d says Isak Engquist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One question remains: what would Fred Flintstone (or one of his contemporaries) have done with these transistors? We asked MidJourney’s AI, and this is the result:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fred Flintstone contemporary, using transistors, AI-generated picture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Article:<\/strong> Electrical current modulation in wood electrochemical transistor<\/a>; Van Chinh Tran, Gabriella G. Mastantuoni, Marzieh Zabihipour, Lengwan Li, Lars Berglund, Magnus Berggren, Qi Zhou, Isak Engquist; PNAS Volume 120, published online on 24 April 2023. DOI: 10.1073\/pnas.2218380120<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It sounds like something from a different era or even from worlds that technically can’t be united: electronics from the stone age. It’s like Fred Flintstone building his own computer. But no, this is for real: researchers at Link\u00f6ping University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed the world\u2019s first transistor made of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":495208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[70591,77792],"location":[54353],"article_type":[36684],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[],"class_list":["post-445732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability-nl","tag-timber","tag-transistor","location-sweden","article_type-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"Possible applications could include regulating electronic plants. \u201cBut we didn\u2019t create the wood transistor with any specific application in mind.\"","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Bart Brouwers","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/brewbart\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Tra-transistor-2023-04-26-TB-_DSC1694.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Sustainability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Sustainability<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["timber<\/a>","transistor<\/a>"],"unlinked":["timber<\/span>","transistor<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 3 years ago","modified":"Updated 3 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on May 7, 2023","modified":"Updated on May 7, 2023"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on May 7, 2023 3:12 pm","modified":"Updated on May 7, 2023 3:12 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=445732"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=445732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}