Transistor Made From Cotton Yarn

MrSeb writes "Altering the very fabric of technophilic society, a multinational team of material scientists have created electric circuits and transistors out of cotton fibers (abstract). Two kinds of transistor were created: a field-effect transistor (FET), much like the transistors found in your computer's CPU; and an electrochemical transistor, which is similar but capable of switching at lower voltages, and thus better suited for wearable computers. Cotton itself is an insulator, but by using various coatings, the team from Italy, France, and the United States was able to make conductor and semiconductor cotton 'wires' that retained most of their flexibility. The immediate use-cases are clothes with built-in sensors (think radiation or heartbeat monitors), but ultimately, think of how many thousands of interconnections are in every piece of cotton clothing — you could make a fairly powerful computer!"

Comments

Overclocking Risk?

[El Torico]

If I overclock a CPU made from this would it burst into flame?

Re:Overclocking Risk?

[Samantha Wright]

This one's kind of obvious—yes, of course it would. Oily, greasy cotton that's been wrapped around your sweaty butt all day autoignites at a mere 120 degrees Celsius.

Re:"You could make a fairly powerful computer"

[walkerp1]

The only logical thing I could think of for that would be one of those "@Home" projects but on a different crowd sourcing scale though even then battery life would suck.

Since you're fully integrated into the Matrix, I think battery life represents an entirely different problem.

A cotton transistor takes the prize

[cold fjord]

Over the years I've spoken with many electrical engineers and software engineers, and heard much technical lore, but a cotton transistor? That is a yarn worthy of a prize.

Re:A cotton transistor takes the prize

[Samantha Wright]

Now just wait a cotton-picking minute. Anything that yields a crop of puns this good must surely be fabricated.

Re:A cotton transistor takes the prize

[cold fjord]

Anything that yields a crop of puns this good must surely be fabricated.

I'm not sure that I fully take your meaning. Are you suggesting that they need to spin up manufacturing? Or are you trying to gin up a controversy because you think this yarn about cotton transistors is made up out of whole cloth? If it really works, there could be enormous potential in high-speed communications and backplanes, interfacing to fibre, and switching fabrics, for example. This could be an interesting investment opportunity. If it takes off, they'll need some good marketing, and a spokesman. I think that guy from the Matrix would be perfect! What was his name..... Agent Smith.... Hugo something?

perfect for

[cold fjord]

foldingclothes@home*

*With apologies

Re:Punchcards

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually predates Turing all the way back to Hollerith taking his inspiration from the Jacquard Loom

Do you mean Jean Loom Jacquard, Captain of the USS Interweave?

Re:Will this be the beginning of the end...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, but expect the wet t-shirt to be worn by overclockers instead of cute chicks.

Re:Oh no, my motherboard is caught in the door.

[Romberg]

What happens, is that you now enabled hyper-threading .