Wood Templated Organic Electronics

In today’s digital era, electronics are integral to most activities in our daily lives, offering swift and global communication, powerful data processing tools, and advanced sensor devices. However, there are drawbacks to the exponentially growing demand for electronics, such as the depletion of fossil resources, and the complexities surrounding recycling electronic waste (E-waste). As we gradually step into the era of sustainability, it is necessary to explore alternative resources and develop greener electronic technologies. For this purpose, organic electronics (OE) has emerged as an interesting alternative, owning to its potential for low-energy fabrication and use of organic materials composed of Earth-abundant elements. The term "organic electronics" has been used widely to refer to electrical devices crafted from organic materials, typically semiconducting polymers (sCPs). This arises from the fact that most developed OE devices such as solar cells, transistors, supercapacitors, and batteries are centered around such materials. Along with the development of different semiconducting polymer varieties, materials from various natural resources have also been explored for devices’ electrodes, binders, and electrolytes. Among them, materials from the forest have emerged as abundant, renewable, and valuable options. For many years, wood has been tailored and utilized as a device template, while its components including cellulose fibrils and lignin have been widely used as structural or active components in OE. Lignin has now become an important electrode and electrolyte active material in energy storage devices. This thesis presents new approaches and findings in the utilization of wood and lignin as active components in different OE applications. The thesis centers around two primary themes, in which the first involves the development and utilization of conductive wood (CW), containing lignin, and lignin nanoparticles (LNPs) for supercapacitors and battery applica