A Transistor That Can Be Controlled With Heat Signals

Professor Xavier Crispin from the Linkoping University’s Laboratory of Organic Electronics, says, “We are the first in the world to present a logic circuit, in this case a transistor, that is controlled by a heat signal instead of an electrical signal.” a heat-driven transistor that opens up several new possibilities for several new applications like detection of small temperature changes or to be used in functional medical dressings that can help in monitoring of healing process.

It is possible to make circuits that can be administered with the heat emitted by infrared light which means these can be used in several other applications including thermal cameras. With high sensitivity which is almost 100 times over the customary thermoelectric materials it is strong enough to borrow a single connector from a heat-sensitive electrolyte that works like sensor for the transistor circuit. A single sensor can be easily combined with a single transistor to form a “smart pixel”.

Transistor That Can Be Controlled With Heat Signals

So, we can make use of a smart pixel matrix that can then be used in thermal cameras to detect infrared radiations. With further developments, this new technique can enhance the potential of thermal cameras in smartphones at a very low cost as the materials needed for this are neither harmful nor expensive. The research team working at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics investigated in conducting polymers and generated a liquid electrolyte whose ability to change temperature gradient into electric voltage almost a hundred times better as compared to electrolytes that were used previously.

The liquid electrolyte has ions with conductive polymer molecules. The positively charged ions happen to be the smaller and speedier ones. The negatively charged ones, on the other hand, are very large in size and heavier than others. When a side of this substance is heated, the smaller sized ions start moving towards the cold size rapidly and a difference of voltage comes to surface. Crispin says, “When we had shown that the capacitor worked, we started to look for other applications of the new electrolyte.”