Quansan Yang

Quansan Yang, 28, is developing eco-friendlier chips. Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) are a type of tiny chip commonly used in sensors like blood pressure monitors and accelerometers. Since they are built to be durable, they often become electronic waste once they have served their purpose. Yang is the first person to find materials and chip architectures that make MEMS chips degradable yet still highly effective. This work has significant implications in the biomedicine field. After patients get MEMS surgical implants that monitor certain biological indicators, they don’t have to go through another surgery to have it removed. Instead, the device will degrade and be absorbed by the body in a few months. The innovation can also be used to produce agricultural and environmental sensors that degrade after their intended use, eliminating the need for manual removal and preventing the devices from polluting the environment. 

Yang didn’t stop there. He also invented a new laser-based manufacturing process that enables biodegradable chips to be made efficiently, at a low cost, and with minimum waste. “Many people want to make the fabrication [of chips] sustainable; other people are trying to make degradable electronics, but their fabrication is actually not sustainable,” he says. His work lays the foundation for a more holistic approach: “If we can make the entire life cycle of the devices sustainable, from fabrication to operation to post-processing, that will be very cool.”