Researchers at an American university have found a way to make
computers faster by filling the guts of the machines with chicken
feathers and vegetable oil.
The two commodities are being used to create circuit boards that are
zippier than current ones made of epoxy and silicone dioxide.
Richard Wool, the University of Delaware chemical engineer heading the
project, said the ideal circuit board would be made out of air. Chicken
feathers are the next best thing because they are 50 percent air.
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Materials that compose circuit boards can react with electrons running
down tiny wires imprinted on the boards and that can slow down those
connections. The phenomenon is called electron rubbernecking.
“If the board were made of pure air, then the electrons would ignore
it,” said Wool.
“Guess what? Chicken feathers are largely composed of air. The fibres
are hollow.”
His team has successfully manufactured boards made out of matted
chicken feathers held together with a chemically modified soybean oil
that hardens like an epoxy.
The soybean oil has a low dielectric constant, which means it causes
little interference with the travelling electrons.
“You end up with these beautiful new circuit boards that are all made
with bio-based materials. They are very light and they’re very cheap
and they have some of the lowest dielectric constants in the world,
which promotes the fastest speeds,” said the researcher.
The process has been patented by the university but is yet to be
commercialized by a computer board manufacturer.
“I’m talking to one company that finds this interesting right now. It’s
a company whose name I can’t mention, but their first letter is ‘I,’
OK,” said Wool.
He also has a commitment from Tyson Foods Inc. to supply 900 million
kilograms of chicken feathers a year if the project takes off.
Tyson Foods has licensed a process patented by the United States
Department of Agriculture that strips the hairs of the feather from the
quill. The hairs are used to make the fibrous mats that are the
backbone of the plant-based circuit boards. The quills are discarded.
A manufacturer would need approximately 40 million bushels of soybeans
or canola to make enough epoxy to keep pace with the volume of chicken
feathers that Tyson Foods is willing to provide.
Wool said the circuit boards are a good sales opportunity for chicken
farmers who don’t have much of a commercial market for feathers.
Bob Anderson, chief executive officer of the Canadian Poultry and Egg
Processors Council, said there is really only one market for chicken
feathers right now. They are rendered into an animal feed called
feather meal, but that is a low value market.
“I’m sure our members would be delighted to find any other use for
chicken feathers that has higher value than the current use,” said
Anderson.
Wool said a company could conceivably be mass producing the circuit
boards within five years.
Other examples of innovative bio-based products developed by the
university’s Affordable Composites from Renewable Sources program are a
John Deere hay baler side panel made out of soy-based resins and chairs
built with flax fibre.
