I think one of the biggest problems that humanity will face in the not–too–distant future is a lack of synthetic biodegradeable semiconductors.
Okay, so I’ve put that thought out there into cyberspace and now I suppose I should explain it. Why do I think this is going to be such a problem?
As we are all too much aware, human civilisation is fast becoming dependent on technology. You might say that the 1st world is already highly dependent on technology. And a big part of current technology includes electronics devices. Electronics drive everything from robots to computers. Without electronics, we go back to the analogue era. I’m sure that I don’t even need to explain that any further, do I? Without electronics, we’re screwed.
So earlier this year, I asked two questions on Quora:
- What are the main semiconductor compounds used today?
- What elements are used in the manufacturing of circuit boards and electronic components for consumer electronic devices?
It doesn’t make any sense to totally rely on something that we can only make in limited quantities, yet we are doing just that. Because the trouble is this: the way in which we produce electronic devices today is completely unsustainable. We mine the Earth for new minerals and the only element we recover from all of our electronic waste is gold (well, okay, we do sometimes also recycle lead and copper). But what about recycling all of the other elements that are used in electronic components?
Are we recycling tantalum? No. Are we recycling indium? No. Are we recycling gallium? No. Are we recycling arsenic? No. Are we recycling cadmium? No. Are we recycling selenium? No. Are we recycling tellurium? No. Are we recycling germanium? No. Are we recycling samarium? No. Are we recycling neodymium? No. Are we recycling niobium? No. Are we recycling antimony? No.
Some of these elements have unique electrical, thermal and magnetic properties that we cannot find elsewhere. There are no [known] replacements. The Earth is only so big. Worse, electronic devices are turning over at unprecedented rates. Therefore sooner or later, we are going to have to do one of three things:
- Start extracting more semiconductors from all of that electronic waste, to make it a more sustainable industry.
- Reduce the production and consumption of electronic devices.
- Invent new kinds of renewable electronic semiconductor materials.
We’re doing the complete opposite of option 2, aren’t we? The complete fucking opposite. We’re making more electronic crap than ever before, right? I like to promote minimalism on this blog, I really do, but unfortunately minimalism is not in vogue at the moment, is it? In case you’re wondering, here is one of the only minimalist blogs that I follow on any regular basis.
Option three looks very promising, doesn’t it? It looks like we can have our cake and eat it too! Wait a minute. Not so fast!
The problem with option three is that in order to create new biodegradeable electronic circuitboards and other compostable electronic components, we will have to study nature a lot more. A lot more.
Because the way I see it, from purely a materials science perspective, natural organisms already utilise “compostable electronics”. Nature already manages to create the following “electronic devices”, with completely renewable resources and no toxicity whatsoever: power & motion (muscles); computers (brains); vision (eyes); loudpeakers (voice); microphones (hearing); pressure sensitive panels (touch); gas detectors (nose); even crude televisions (adaptive camouflage). From the point of view of a materials scientist, all of these materials are biodegradeable, compostable, self-powering, self-assembling, self-organising, self-regenerating and self-reproductive.
Every property we wish to reproduce already has a naturally ocurring equivalent. I think we have a very long way to go to catch up. A long way.
And that’s where the second problem is: nature, in terms of biodiversity, as we know, is fast disappearing. I personally think that this is one of the best cases for biodiversity conservation that there is. And I am yet to read much about it.
One of the reasons that I believe biodiversity is so important: if there are two very similar organisms and one exhibits certain traits and the other doesn’t, that can be tracked back to genes. Then we can compare the genes and work out which ones are responsible for the observed differences.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could nano-engineer buildings (for example) that assembled themselves using the most effecient low-temperature processes that we know of? What if one species of termites displayed a certain type of behavior that the rest didn’t? What if we needed to replicate that type of behaviour one day? We don’t even know yet what genes we will need and what we don’t.
I believe that if this 6th great extinction event happens, that is going to make it much harder for us. Because if there are only 10,000 species on Earth, that is going to make it that much harder to unlock nature’s secrets.
One day, we are going to realise that we need nature just to be able to survive. We need biodegradeable elastomers, foams and adhesives. We need biodegradeable electronic components and devices. Nature already produces these, we just have to prevent all of these species from going extinct long enough to research them.
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