Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall (refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Jack Zhenqiang, UW Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Abstract: Electronics industry helps sustain the GDP growth in developed countries. However, consumer electronics, such as cell phones, tablets and other portable electronic devices, are made with the consumption of large amount of precious non-renewable natural resources, such as indium and gallium etc. These consumer electronics are frequently upgraded or discarded, leading to serious environmental contamination. Thus, electronic systems consuming the minimum amount of natural resource that could also naturally degrade over a period of time are desirable which can potentially reduce the accumulation of persistent electronic waste disposed of daily. We demonstrate high performance flexible microwave and digital electronics that consume the smallest amount of natural resources on a biobased, biodegradable and microwave compatible cellulose nanofibril (CNF) paper, along with degradation of these electronic systems. With rapid technological advances leading to significant decrease in the lifetime of consumer electronics, such green chip technology with high-performance would be ideal replacement for future electronic chips where nonrenewable resources are consumed.