Submission + - New way to alleviate the environmental burden of discarded electronics
jan_jes writes: A report published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 showed that about 152 million mobile devices are discarded every year, of which only 10 percent is recycled — a legacy of waste that consumes a tremendous amount of natural resources and produces a lot of trash made from expensive and non-biodegradable materials like highly purified silicon. Now researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a new solution to alleviate the environmental burden of discarded electronics. They have developed a new biodegradable silicon transistor based on a material derived from wood, opening the door for green, flexible, low-cost portable electronics in future. They published this research in the Applied Physics Letters.