Flower power

摘要

It's all coming up roses. The worlds of botany and consumer electronics don't typically overlap. But now a device has taken a step towards a world in which plants and computers are intertwined. Magnus Berggren at Linkoping University in Sweden and his team have built a working electronic circuit from a garden rose by filling its veins with a conductive polymer. The experiment opens the door to electronics that can plug in to plants. Living tissues are known to be conductive - with slime moulds already finding their way into gadgets. Plants are no exception, and propositions include fuel cells powered by photosynthesis and crops that keep tabs on their own physiological properties. But first, the Linkoping team had to figure out whether it was even possible to weave electronics into the flesh of a plant - and the group struggled to find a suitable conductive material. It had to be water-soluble, with decent electrical conductivity and be able to travel through a plant's vascular system and form wires. Many materials that the researchers tried were toxic to the rose, clogging up at the opening of the stem or failing to stick to the inner surface of the plant's veins - the xylem.