Researchers Build World's First Wooden Transistor (ieee.org) 46
An anonymous reader shared this report from IEEE Spectrum:
Transistors inside modern computer chips are several nanometers across, and switch on and off at hundreds of gigahertz. Organic electrochemical transistors, made for biodegradable applications, are milimeters in size and switch at kilohertz rates. The world's first wooden transistor, made by a collaboration of researchers through the Wallenberg Wood Science Center and reported this week in Publications of the National Academy of Sciences, is 3 centimeters across and switches at less than one Hertz. While it may not be powering any wood-based supercomputers anytime soon, it does hold out promise for specialized applications including biodegradable computing and implanting in into living plant material.
"It was very curiosity-driven," says Isak Engquist, a professor at Linköping University who led the effort. "We thought: 'Can we do it? Let's do it, let's put it out there to the scientific community and hope that someone else has something where they see these could actually be of use in reality...'"
Wood has great structural stability while being highly porous and efficiently transporting water and nutrients. The researchers leveraged these properties to create conducting channels inside the wood's pores and electrochemically modulate their conductivity with the help of a penetrating electrolyte. Of the 60,000 species, the team chose balsa wood for its strength, even when one of the components of its structure — lignin — was largely removed to make more room for conducting materials. To remove much of the lignin, pieces of balsa wood were treated with heat and chemicals for five hours. Then, the remaining cellulose-based structure was coated with a conducting polymer...
Since the pores inside wood are made for transporting water, the PEDOT:PSS solution readily spread through the tubes. Electron microscopy and X-ray imaging of the result revealed that the polymer decorated the insides of the tube structures. The resulting wood chunks conducted electricity along their fibers.
"It was very curiosity-driven," says Isak Engquist, a professor at Linköping University who led the effort. "We thought: 'Can we do it? Let's do it, let's put it out there to the scientific community and hope that someone else has something where they see these could actually be of use in reality...'"
Wood has great structural stability while being highly porous and efficiently transporting water and nutrients. The researchers leveraged these properties to create conducting channels inside the wood's pores and electrochemically modulate their conductivity with the help of a penetrating electrolyte. Of the 60,000 species, the team chose balsa wood for its strength, even when one of the components of its structure — lignin — was largely removed to make more room for conducting materials. To remove much of the lignin, pieces of balsa wood were treated with heat and chemicals for five hours. Then, the remaining cellulose-based structure was coated with a conducting polymer...
Since the pores inside wood are made for transporting water, the PEDOT:PSS solution readily spread through the tubes. Electron microscopy and X-ray imaging of the result revealed that the polymer decorated the insides of the tube structures. The resulting wood chunks conducted electricity along their fibers.
Re: Swedes love wood! (Score:2)
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> The most boring thing you can do
How about spending some time alone in a white room? It is so boring that your brain starts making up stuff just to get something to do.
Here is an example of what it does to you (experiment starts around 17:25 if you want to skip the intro)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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How about spending some time alone in a white room? It is so boring that your brain starts making up stuff just to get something to do.
This is slashdot, so you probably got some guys really excited with the idea.
Rocks and Trees (Score:2)
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And then there's Texas: nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles. You can spend all morning watching a mountain get closer, pass it at about noon and spend the rest of the day watching it gradually getting smaller and smaller.
"You drive and you drive and you're still in Texas tomorrow night."
--- Jack Kerouac, _On The Road_
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Wait, you guys have mountains [google.com]?
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Wait, you guys have trees [google.com]?
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oh no, miles and miles of nothing but forested wilderness, the sickening lack of diversity, pollution and grenade attacks sound just awful compared to Malmo.
Re: Swedes love wood! (Score:1)
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Oh no, you would definitely read it; but i need not write anything.
That said, you'd come up with some virtue signaling post showing that you're brave and progressive -- an ally through and through.
But we can save some some time and settle on disagreeing with one another, confident in the opinion that the other party is a fuckwit.
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It allegedly sounds just like a tree falling in a forest. I wouldn't know, though, as I wasn't around to hear it.
Re: What's that sound like? (Score:3)
I mean, at 1hz, I guess elephants could use it as an amp?
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The audiophiles will buy it and argue endlessly how much better it sounds.
And the best thing about it is that it doesn't even have to.
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Don't encourage them. We all know how this is going to end [nocookie.net].
It's more like a wooden vacuum tube (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: It's more like a wooden vacuum tube (Score:1)
Wow good point!
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Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get that they published in PNAS by calling it a wood based transistor (no puns there) .. but it's not really correct to call it wood-based is it? The wood was infused with PEDOT:PSS which is a known organic electrochemical transistor substance. The wood isn't doing the transistoring, it's the PEDOT:PSS. You could infuse any porous material with it and claim you made a transistor of the material you infused?
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Interesting. Here I thought someone made some relays out of wood, good old mechanical transistor equivalents.
In old sci fi, that's the clicking sounds you hear coming out of computers. Digital logic was already a thing long before transistors or integrated circuits.
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Damn, forgot to finish.
And I was looking forward to the harsh clicking being replaced by sweet wooden timbre. So to speak.
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"Digital logic was already a thing long before transistors or integrated circuits."
True, but until transistors revolutionized everything, most experts were convinced the future was in analog computing, not digital.
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I get that they published in PNAS by calling it a wood based transistor (no puns there) .. but it's not really correct to call it wood-based is it? The wood was infused with PEDOT:PSS which is a known organic electrochemical transistor substance. The wood isn't doing the transistoring, it's the PEDOT:PSS. You could infuse any porous material with it and claim you made a transistor of the material you infused?
Correct. The wood is just the structure holding the transistor. And it has been modified to the point where it is a stretch to even call it wood after everything is removed except for the cellulose.
Anyhow, it makes for fun discussion at parties.
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"wood framed resin transistor" ?
So... (Score:2)
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HCF (Score:2)
My life's dream may come true (Score:3)
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Just keep it away from Gilligan.
This story is Obsoletely Fabulous (Score:2)
We're going to stage an attack on technology worthy of being chronicled in an anthem by Rush!
the inevitable outcome (Score:2)
You can run DooM on 600,000,000 pieces of wood (Score:1)
You can run DooM on 600,000,000 pieces of wood
I, for one, welcome our new Geranium overlords (Score:2)
Heat dissipation? (Score:3)
When you build a wooden transistor, you wouldn't want to make an ash out of yourself.
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Bug in the system (Score:2)
So what if it is big? (Score:2)
Some applications are perfectly okay with a one square inch chip running at 100 kHz. The Intel 4004 was only 2300 transistors and the 6502 was only 3500.
Who cares (Score:2)
You can build transistors out of a lot of things and more general switching elements out of even more. Does not mean a thing, almost all of these are useless. They almost universally have bad properties all around.
I am Groot! (Score:2)
I am Groot!