A cellulose transistor has been created, which is already biocompatible.

Electronics

Technological Innovation Website Editorial Team - August 7, 2025

(a) Micrograph of the cellulose transistor. (b) Molecular structure of cellulose (C ₆ H ₁₀ O ₅ ) - green is carbon, pink is oxygen, and light blue is hydrogen. [Image: Mikio Fukuhara et al. - 10.1063/5.0279007 ]

Wooden electronics

The transistor is one of the most fundamental building blocks of modern electronics, the basic component of all computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. Almost all transistors are made of silicon, a smaller number are made of germanium, and only more recently have transistors begun to be made of organic semiconductors , essentially polymers.

Now, Miko Fukuhara and colleagues at Tohoku University in Japan have designed and built a transistor using cellulose, demonstrating the first prototype of a fully functional transistor made from plant-derived materials.

Cellulose is a natural polymer, an organic compound produced naturally by most plants, making it an important carbon-neutral material. Cellulose's properties also make it an ideal semiconductor material for biocompatible and biomedical applications.

"Cellulose is a lightweight, renewable material that has a higher affinity for living organisms than conventional artificial semiconductor materials, so it is likely to find wide application as a novel biosensor," Fukuhara said. "Because its energy band gap and voltage resistance are large, and its on/off ratio is relatively high, it can also be used in high-speed applications and light-related fields."

Wooden transistor: Schematic of the transistor (MESFET) fabrication process from cellulose nanoparticles. [Image: Mikio Fukuhara et al. - 10.1063/5.0279007 ]

Cellulose transistor

Despite being derived from plants, cellulose is an intrinsic semiconductor, meaning that other elements cannot be introduced into the material to alter its energy bandgap. However, the structure of cellulose molecules can be altered by the addition of functional groups, similar to doping, the standard technique used in semiconductor materials.

The team demonstrated this by building a type of transistor called a metal- semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MESFET—more technically, it's a Schottky barrier transistor .

The experiments showed that the conventional cellulose nanofiber structure did not have the necessary density to produce a transistor, so instead, amorphous cellulose nanoparticles containing short-axis cellulose fibers were used.

The researchers now plan to evaluate different plant species to identify the best candidates for mass-producing cellulose with the desired characteristics for electronics. While the fully functional nanocellulose transistor is a first, it's not the first time cellulose and electronics have collided ; an authentic wooden transistor has even been manufactured.

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