WECT or wood electrochemical transistor is the worlds first wooden transistor. yep you hard it right, the Swedish researchers created and tested the first wooden transistors. Electrical current modulation in wood electrochemical transistors is a paper published by teams at Linköping University in Norrköping and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm that discusses the creation, capabilities, and potential of the wood electrochemical transistor (WECT) they recently developed.
This WECT could pave the way for more sustainable and biodegradable wood-based electronics.
Regular readers will be well-versed in the most recent advances in silicon transistor technology. Almost every day, we read about how Intel, Samsung, and TSMC are competing to develop cutting-edge processes with transistors measured in nanometers and running at multi-gigahertz speeds. But brace yourself, because the Swedish researchers’ WECT measured 3cm across and had a switching frequency of less than one hertz.
The researchers needed conductive wood (CW) to build the WECT. The lignin in wood is removed using a chemical solvent process. Following that, the lignin-containing channels are replaced with a mixed electron-ion conducting polymer. Balsa (for its desirable inner channel structure) and the conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS were used in this project. Three pieces of CW were used to build the WECT: one as the central transistor channel and one each as the top and bottom gates.
Also Read:
