Growing Organic Mobile Phones

[Applause]

good evening ladies and gentlemen

thank you for such a nice introduction

and it’s actually a pleasure

to be talking today about a topic that

is very close to me both personally and

professionally

which is climate change and i’ll

probably try and talk about it from a

very

very very nerd point of view if the

glasses have not given it away by now i

don’t know what will i am a nerd

so let’s start with that so

let me ask a question how many of you

remember the first thing you did

when you woke up this morning i know

what i did

i checked my mobile phone actually have

a confession to make i check it even

before i brush my teeth

let me be honest i actually do it while

brushing my teeth sometimes if i’m

running late

even if you did not check it the first

thing in the morning i’m sure you use it

to

navigate to work order food or just

check news

even the pandemic was a little more

bearable for all of us because we were

able to connect with our loved ones

and of course the hilarious social media

videos are always

a plus technology is highly integrated

into our lives

right and according to a research there

are about 50.1 billion electronic

devices that are connected and are

online at the moment

that is more than seven times the number

of human beings on this planet

and out of those 50.1 billion 3.5

billion are smartphones

just in 2020 and that number

will go up by another 300 million next

year

now that’s a lot of mobile phones as i

was coming in

to get mic’d up and start with my talk i

actually counted the number of

electronic devices the tech support team

had

i counted 21 and that is just the

devices they have now

how many of these devices they would

have had in the last 10 years

how many of these devices all of us

would have had in the last 10 years

just extrapolate that number globally

now

right and that is electronic technology

it’s surrounding us

we use it for everything from doing

simple things like taking photographs

to analyzing complex data at work we use

it for literally everything

what has led to this and i started

asking like

why this has happened why do we feel the

need to keep upgrading our technology

very quickly and in some cases even

every year

the answer is here sorry for the very

technical graph but what it shows

is the increasing processing power of

our electronic devices these days

that we have the most high-tech

processors in

electronic devices today can actually do

10 trillion calculations per second

and that number was only at a million 50

years ago we have

doubled our processing capabilities

every year and that has allowed us to do

amazing things

stream high quality videos take even

better pictures

analyze all the data that is coming from

satellites we have been able to do that

but look at this picture a bit more

closely in 2020 it actually tells a

different story

we are at the cusp of the next

technological evolution in the

electronic industry

self-driving cars are almost here humans

are trying to go to mars

medical practitioners are trying to have

better technology to detect diseases

the current computing technology is

saturated and will not be able to

support that

what would be the next quantum leap in

technology

will it be dna computing quantum

computing

or finally will we have singularity

where the robots take over the world and

we don’t know what to do with it

but before i try and answer that

question tonight let’s just park that

problem for a second

let’s just take a step back let’s just

have a think

about all the steps we have taken to be

where we are today

let’s just think of all the devices we

have already made

how many of you know where your old

phones are lying in a closet somewhere

i have a bottom drawer everybody has a

bottom drawer where all the old mobile

phones go

right have you ever thought what happens

to all your discarded electronic devices

when they are outdated and old they all

end up

here and then here

electronic waste according to some

research

the second most dangerous waste in the

world after nuclear waste

and we have no idea how to get rid of it

let’s just put some numbers on it just

in 2019

all of us collectively around the globe

produced about 55

million tons of electronic waste

increased urbanization

increased spending capabilities shorter

lifespan of electronic devices just to

make them cheap

have all been contributing to massive

amounts of electronic waste that we

produce around

the globe that number will go up to 75

million just in the next decade and

what’s baffling

is only eight percent of that is

recycled

the rest of the amount is unaccounted

for

or goes into landfill now let me just

put a context to that number i really

like this picture

just in 2016 we produced about 45

million tons of electronic waste that is

4500 eiffel towers made out of

electronic waste

that was just produced that year now

that means

every country on this planet can have 20

of these eiffel towers

i’m not sure if they will look as pretty

as the actual one in paris

but each country had to have 21 of those

some of it is recycled but recycling

requires even more energy

we have to invest energy to recycle some

of the products that are already in

there

so putting them into landfill is no

option in fact some of the states and

territories in australia

have actually had legislations where you

cannot dump electronic waste into

landfill

why because of harmful materials like

cadmium

arsenic lead mercury silicons and other

plastics

which go into the soil and then into a

waterways and come back to us

as food and cause chronic diseases of

the mind heart and central nervous

system and so on and so forth

so dumping electronic waste is not an

option for us anymore

so now we have a two-phase problem

how do we go to the next evolution of

technology

but at the same time how do we do it

without generating all the waste we have

so far

and that’s a problem that inspired me to

undertake the research i do

in my early years of studying

nanomaterial science and quantum physics

i was inspired by a lot of scientists

who were very very inspiring to

promote sustainable research a

technology that supports

the next leap of human evolution but at

the same time is not harming the

environment

that’s where my team and i we turned

towards nature for inspiration

we started looking at naturally

occurring materials

that would probably serve as

semiconductors and we can make our

electronic devices out of those

so that they might not harm the

environment and that’s where we came

across the concept of organic

semiconductors

we started developing a new class of

organic semiconductors

made from just naturally occurring

carbon and hydrogen

these materials can be recycled several

times and are naturally biodegradable

and can replace all of the electronic

devices in this room

the way we grow them is a very

interesting concept which i’m going to

talk about but i want you to have a look

at

the molecular structure of the material

called pentascene on the screen to your

left

we were able to grow these materials

after several years of optimizations

doing several permutations and

combinations where we came across this

material

which we were able to grow with the

precise thickness of one

carbon atom and that

was one of the things that we were

actually working hard for the last five

years to achieve

we started growing them by a process

called chemical vapor deposition

which is physically stacking one atom

over the other one molecule over the

other in a controlled environment in a

furnace

just like 3d printing but we did it with

atoms

and this gives them the flexibility to

be bent into any shape

like this and this was one of the very

interesting properties we started

discovering with these materials

because they’re so thin they can be bent

into any shape like a flexible piece of

paper

that you might have the thickness of

these materials as you saw

is actually only three nanometers that

is 100 times

thinner than a single strand of human

hair

as strong as steel and they can hold

about a million circuits

in the size of your fingernail

while we were growing and optimizing

these semiconductors

we actually came across a very

interesting property because i still

haven’t answered the question

whether this will be the next

technological leap i can’t claim so at

all

i don’t think it would be i have a lot

of things to do but

we have a lab scale prototype this is an

actual image from my lab

where these organic semiconductors have

been made into a lab scale prototype

or a transistor which is the processing

unit in any of the electronic devices

that we use today

it’s too hard to be seen you would need

a microscope to see it uh we used a

pretty good camera to get the image

but you would need a microscope to see

what an actual semiconductor looks like

because it’s only one carbon atom thick

but this does not answer the question i

started my talk with earlier in the

evening

will this be the next leap which takes

us to the next generation of computing

and in order to find this answer we were

doing a lot of experiments we were

trying to discover the properties of

these materials see if they have

something interesting

because they had the biodegradable

aspect to them and that’s where we came

across this

these materials actually have an amazing

property

they can convert electricity into light

and light into electricity

in about one trillionth of a second

that’s how fast they can convert light

into electricity

and this opened a whole new plethora of

opportunities and avenues for start

using these materials

in a lot of interesting things we have

already started prototyping and building

leds

which would serve as flexible displays

foldable e-papers or even solar cells

that can be integrated onto your clothes

or onto your backpack

and that can start to charge your

devices the flexibility of these

materials gives us an

opportunity to start developing

electronic devices

that have the capability to do what we

need them to do

but are they powerful enough think back

about it

why do we call the devices we use today

electronics

we call them electronics because they

run on electricity to process

information and carry data

these materials on the other hand they

use light

or photons and light travels much faster

than electricity

making the performance of these devices

a thousand times faster

than the best computers we have out

today and that’s why

the devices that would be made out of

these materials will actually not be

called electronic devices

they would be called photonic devices

this is just a figurative representation

of what a photonic circuit looks like

where we can control the photons or the

light as they move across the material

and have

memory work as transistors do the

processing for us

and everything around an electronic

device and this was particularly

interesting

for mobile phones because that’s

something i’m very passionate about as

well

because do you remember the time when

you had your first mobile phone

i remember was probably 12 years ago

when my parents actually allowed me to

have one

i have bought eight since then not to

mention

three computers two laptops a tablet a

smartphone and a kindle

if you count that as an electronic

device so lots of electronic devices

so we thought this material can emit

light

and this material can emit as a

processing unit and that’s what your

phone is

your phone is a screen which is emitting

light and a processing chip

sitting behind this material can act as

both

and that’s where we have the opportunity

to develop fully flexible organic mobile

phones

that would be completely biodegradable

now imagine

having a mobile phone like this wrapped

around your wrist in a few years

made from completely organic

semiconductors

can do processing as quick as a

supercomputer you can literally be

carrying a supercomputer folded like

a pocket square with you at all times

and when this one gets outdated

you can throw it away with your garden

waste or use it for fertilizer

and more importantly you will never have

to worry about a cracked screen

on your mobile phone mobile phones and

electronic devices made from these

organic semiconductors

are one of the ways are one of the few

attempts that we are trying to achieve

the next level of technological

evolution

so that it can keep supporting our human

lives as we know it

but at the same time does not harm the

environment

this is my attempt thank you so much

ladies and gentlemen

you