Critical communications component made on a flexible wooden film

In the not-too-distant future, flexible electronics will open the door to new products like foldable phones, tablets that can be rolled, paper-thin displays and wearable sensors that monitor health data. Developing these new bendy products, however, means using materials like new plastics and thin films to replace the rigid circuit boards and bulky electronic components that currently occupy the interiors of cell phones and other gadgets. New research by a University of Wisconsin-Madison engineer leverages a surprising and inexpensive substance - wood - to make the flexible microwave circuits that power modern communications. In a paper published today Communications , Zhenqiang "Jack" Ma , a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering, explains how he and his collaborators constructed a functional microwave amplifier circuit on a substrate of cellulose nanofibril paper, a wood product. UW-Madison engineers and collaborators have constructed a functional microwave amplifier circuit - a common piece of electronics used in wireless communications - on a flexible substrate made of wood fiber. Image byHuilong Zhang Microwave components, which are used in wireless communication, have proved difficult to produce in a flexible form and are typically constructed on integrated semiconductor chips or printed on circuit boards. But flexible versions, including thin-film transistors and other components Ma has been creating for more than a decade, could have widespread applications in wearable devices, drones and as part of large-area microwave arrays used in 5G wireless networks and advanced communication systems.