"On the left is a colored photo of the UW device overlaid on a graphic of the other components. On the right is a magnified image of the chitosan fibers. The white scale bar is 200 nanometers." (via University of Washington)
The human body has a fully connected electrical network. For years, science has been exploring how to interface that network with traditional electronics. However, the systems are different. Electronics as we know it works by shuttling electron to and fro. The human body uses protons (positively charged hydrogen atoms, aka ions) as a base component of energy transfer. For example, ions are used to open and close channels in cellular membranes and to flex muscles. The University of Washington (UW) now has a way to bridge from electrons to ions.
UW Professor of materials science and engineering Marco Rolandi stated the problem and solution his team tackled, "So there's always this issue, a challenge, at the interface – how does an electronic signal translate into an ionic signal, or vice versa? We found a biomaterial that is very good at conducting protons, and allows the potential to interface with living systems."
The solution is a field-effect transistor that can move a proton current, and switched on/off like traditional transistors. The material used in the proton transistor comes from a compound called "chitosan," which comes from a squid pen (the left-over shell material from crabs and squid, easily harvested from the food industry.)
Paper authors Chao Zhong and Yingxin Deng, from UW, discovered that chitosan is able to absorb water and form hydrogen bonds that the protons are able to travel between. Computer simulation models by UW's professor of electrical engineering M.P. Anatram and University of Waterloo's Anita Fadavi Roudsari validated the discovery. (It is surprising that engineers and scientists so far apart, are able to work together on major projects so efficiently.)
Rolandi said, "We now have a protonic parallel to electronic circuitry that we actually start to understand rather well." He also said that practical use of the proton transistor may happen in the next decade.
Eavesdropper
