Richard Wool has recently developed a circuit board made from soybeans and chicken feathers. A professor of chemical engineering who directs the Affordable Composites from Renewable Sources (ACRES) program at the University of Delaware, Dr. Wool seeks creative, locally-available substitutes for petroleum-based resources.
“With the demise of the oil business in about 25 years and the ever increasing utilization of electronic materials, it makes excellent green engineering sense to pursue new materials that are derived from renewable resources,” Wool said. “The biobased materials are derived from renewable plant and animal feedstock, which use carbon dioxide from the air and help minimize global warming, as compared to petroleum feedstock.”
A novel bio-based composite material developed from soybean oils and keratin feather fibers (KF), Feather Circuit Boards are suitable for electronic as well as automotive and aeronautical applications. Keratin fibers are a hollow, light, and tough material and are compatible with several soybean (S) resins, such as acrylated epoxidized soybean oil (AESO). Not only is the material lighter than that of conventional circuit boards, but electrons also move at twice the speed through the feather-based printed version as well. Moreover, these materials are both bountiful in Delaware.
Contact: Center for Composite Materials, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.
“electrons also move at twice the speed through the feather-based printed version as well”.
Uh, electrons move at the speed of light in ANY conducting material, and the fact that feathers come from flying birds will not help them fly any faster!
“electrons also move at twice the speed through the feather-based printed version as well”
What is the basis for this comment? Trying to sell the idea that these chips would somehow outperform traditional conducting materials? Or did you mean to say something about the drift velocity? Which would have no bearing on this product, methinks…
This excerpt from Lance Frazer’s article in Environmental Health Perspectives sheds some light here:
“When you’re dealing with signals sent within a computer, speed is critical, but electricity is a finicky thing, and easily distracted. In a phenomenon Wool refers to as “electron rubbernecking,” the negatively charged electrons can easily be lured down side streets if a material carrying too great an attractive charge is nearby (a situation further complicated by the diminishing size and increasing proximity of the components that end up on the circuit board). Wool’s goal, then, was to find something noninteractive to serve as the basis for a new breed of circuit board.
The best end product so far, using 30% keratin by weight, has a lower dielectric constant than conventional semiconductor insulator materials such as silicon dioxide or polyimides. For comparison, Wool says, whereas the dielectric constant of air is 1.0 and that of silicon dioxide is 3.8–4.2, keratin fibers have a dielectric constant of 1.6. That means electrons can move on the feather-based printed circuit boards at twice the speed as traditional circuit boards.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1247399/
Good call, Blaine! Still, the velocity claim is clearly wrong and the researcher named Wool does nothing for clarity (in several ways). The charge can move with twice the ease, and for the benefit of the person who said electrons (not photons) always move at C…that is the limit but no, they move as a fleet in great numbers as little as possible, with hiccups (tunneling or other thermal loss, usually) when they hit a dislocation or such.
n.b. nothing on Arxiv from Richard, but the application areas are selected fine; too bad that’s running things backwards.
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