New biodegradable computer chip is made from trees

As a way to combat the potentially toxic, metallic waste created by computer components that are thrown away, researchers from the University of Wisconson-Madison (UWM) have come up with a new kind of semiconducting chip–created from trees.

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It turns out that the actual conductive materials on a chip don’t take up nearly as much space as the supporting materials, which are usually non-biodegradable plastics and metal. The researchers developed a method to create biodegradable chips from wood pulp, similar to paper. The chip’s substrate, supporting base-layer is made from the wood-derivative cellulose nanofibril (CNF).

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