INDUSTRY News
Green electronics project will create compostable crop sensors
An international research collaboration aims to fi nd new ways of monitoring crop growth with biodegradable sensors that can be composted at their end of life. The £1.8m CHIST-ERA project, called
“Transient Electronics for Sustainable ICT in DigitaL Agriculture”, is led by researchers from the University of Glasgow and supported by teams in Canada, Finland, Poland and Switzerland. Over the next three years, the project partners will work together to develop a new type of environmentally-friendly modular sensor system. They will fi nd ways to create devices built from sustainable and degradable materials with the aim of cutting down on the growing problem of electronic waste.
The devices will have two parts: a solar-
powered patch that can be applied to the surface of the leaves of crops to measure key indicators of their growth, and an electronic module that will wirelessly transmit that information to a central computer.
The team aims to make the patch completely biodegradable, capable of nourishing the soil once it reaches the end of its period of usefulness. To do so, they will investigate how compostable
Devices will be small enough to fit on the surface of plant leaves
electronic components might be made from everyday materials like rice husks, fi brous proteins like wool, or biodegradable polymers like starch and cellulose, combined with conductive metal nanoparticles made from materials like copper and zinc. They will also explore how those compostable components could be powered by similarly biodegradable organic photovoltaic materials to support the patch’s tasks of monitoring pH, temperature and bioimpedance, with energy stored in a biodegradable supercapacitor. Supercapacitors provide a sustainable, non-toxic alternative for conventional batteries.
The team also plans to develop an electronic module equipped with wireless
communication technology, with key priority being reusable and repairable to further minimise waste. “The proliferation of digital devices that underpin the Internet of Things will lead to a massive expansion in digital waste – as much as 80% of our electronic devices currently end up as waste. As potentially dangerous materials in components like batteries and printed circuit boards degrade, they create hazards to the environment and human and animal health, which can last for decades,” said Professor Ravinder Dahiya of the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering, the project’s coordinator. “Our undertaking to build hardware designed to be disposable without creating problematic waste is an ambitious one, but it brings together some of the leading experts in the fi eld of sensor and material development from across Europe and North America. I’m confi dent that we can create prototypes with the potential to make real change and take us closer to achieving a zero-waste world.” The research is funded by URKI in the UK, FRQNT in Canada, Academy of Finland in Finland, NCN in Poland and SNSF in Switzerland.
Robot skin will ‘see’ a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum
A team of engineers from the University of Glasgow have developed a new device that could form the base for an electronic skin to use on robots, capable of ‘seeing’ light beyond the range of human vision. It was made by printing microscale gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors onto a fl exible plastic surface, capable of withstanding hundreds of bending and fl exing cycles.
The scientists printed GaAs electronics
onto a fl exible surface using arrays of wires that are 15 micrometres wide. The new type of fl exible photodetector can sense light from the ultraviolet range, through the visible portion of the spectrum, to the infrared – at extremely low power. The team believes this type of light-
6 September 2022 | Automation
Robots will soon have electronic ‘skin’ to see beyond the human vision
sensitive fl exible material could give robots new abilities: Mechanical arms used for manufacturing in light-sensitive environments, for example, could become capable of detecting when conditions change and the safety or eff ectiveness of their work is put at risk. Flexible,
broad-spectrum photodetectors could also be used in a wide range of wireless communication technologies, where the fast transmission and response speeds are always in demand. “We’ve been working for many years to advance the capabilities of fl exible electronics. We’ve found new ways to print electronics directly onto fl exible surfaces, built electronic skin capable of feeling ‘pain’, and developed bendable electronics that can be powered by the sun or human sweat,” said Professor Ravinder Dahiya of the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering, who is also the leader of the Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) research group.
automationmagazine.co.uk
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