Living flowers, bushes and trees can grow both analog and digital electronic circuits using semi-conductive polymers, a new study from Sweden finds.

Researchers at Linköping University Laboratory for Organic Electronics have built the key components of electronic circuits with the help of the channels that distribute water and nutrients in plants. In an article in Science Advances, they show how roses can produce both analog and digital electronic circuits, which over the long term could be used, for example, to regulate the plant’s physiology.

While traditional electronics send and process electronic signals, plants transport and handle ions and growth hormones. In organic electronics, based on semi-conductive polymers, both ions and electrons can serve as signal carriers. With the help of organic electronics, it becomes possible to combine electric signals with the plant’s own, as if translating the plant’s signals into traditional electronics.

Integrating inexpensive organic electronics into plants opens up a long range of possibilities, according to the team, such as utilising energy from photosynthesis in a fuel cell, or reading and regulating the growth and other inner functions of plants.

“Previously, we had no good tools for measuring the concentration of various molecules in living plants. Now we’ll be able to influence the concentration of the various substances in the plant that regulate growth and development. Here, I see great possibilities for learning more,” says Ove Nilsson, professor of plant reproduction biology at the Umeå Plant Science Center and co-author of the study.

The team found that the polymer PEDOT-S is soluble in water. When it was absorbed into a rose, for example, it was converted into a hydrogel, which forms a thin film along the channel through which the flower absorbs water and nutrients. They succeeded in getting the plants to produce ten-centimeter segments, 50 cm thick, of membranes of the conductive polymer. With an electrode at each end and a gate in the middle, an analog transistor was created.

The conductive ability of the polymer was measured from 0.13 siemens/cm all the way up to 1 siemens/cm.

“Now we can really start talking about ‘power plants’ – we can place sensors in plants and use the energy formed in the chlorophyll, produce green antennas or produce new materials. Everything occurs naturally, and we use the plants’ own very advanced, unique systems,” says Magnus Berggren, professor of Organic Electronics at Linköping University’s Norrköping campus, who has been researching printed electronics on paper.

As far as they know, no previously published research results have been done regarding electronics produced in plants, Berggren adds.

In May 2013, researchers at the University of Georgia reported that they are exploring how to harvest electricity directly from the plant. The researchers claim that they have developed a way to interrupt photosynthesis so that we can capture the electrons before the plant uses them to make these sugars.

According to the team, plants are the undisputed champions of solar power, since most of them operate at nearly 100 per cent quantum efficiency. This means that for every photon of sunlight a plant captures, it produces an equal number of electrons. Converting even a fraction of this into electricity would improve upon the efficiency seen with solar panels, which generally operate at efficiency levels between 12 and 17 per cent.

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