Wooden computer chips can contribute towards biodegradable gadgets

We're one step closer to biodegradable gadgets. These computer chips are made almost entirely out of wood. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, teamed up with the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory to fashion the new semiconductor chip.

The paper was published recently in Nature Communications. Most of a computer chip is composed of a 'support' layer that cradles the actual chip. The research team replaced that support layer’s non-biodegradable material with something called cellulose nanofibril ( CNF), which is flexible, wood-based, biodegradable — all things that can make a device way less hazardous.

"Now the chips are so safe you can put them in the forest and fungus will degrade it," says Professor Zhenqiang Ma, who led the team. "They become as safe as fertiliser." A possible roadblock was the fact that wood can expand or shrink based on how much moisture it sucks in from the air. The fix? Glaze the CNF film with an epoxy coating, a substance that makes CNF more resistant to water.

In addition to wicking away moisture, the coating also made the CNF smoother. The result: a sustainable 'green chip' that's cheaper and less toxic than the materials currently used in electronics. Every little bit helps when we're piling landfills with thrown out phones, especially when dangerous chemicals in existing computer chips, like gallium arsenide, can leak into the ground.