This wooden computer chip could make recycling electronics a lot easier

In our quest for the next new thing in gadgets, we throw away a lot of old electronics—millions of tons of the stuff. But now there may be a biodegradable alternative for at least one part of all those devices: the chip.

Researchers at University of Wisconsin have developed a chip made mostly from wood. And, what's more, they claim it works as well as a silicon-based chip. According to MIT Technology Review:

In conventional chip manufacturing, electronic components like transistors are made on the surface of a rigid wafer made of a semiconducting material such as silicon. [The researchers] made the electronic components in a similar way but then used a rubber stamp to lift them from the wafer and transfer them to a new surface made of nanocellulose. This reduced the amount of semiconducting material used by a factor of up to 5,000, without sacrificing performance.