SciTechDaily reports that transistors are one of the greatest inventions in the recent human history and they facilitated the apparition of smartphones and EVs, among other things. A transistor's role in an electronic device is to regulate current flow, but it can also behave like a power switch, if needed.

Isak Engquist, senior associate professor at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Linköping University, said that "we’ve come up with an unprecedented principle. Yes, the wood transistor is slow and bulky, but it does work, and has huge development potential."

Previously-developed wood transistors were only able to transport ions, but current generation ones made by scientists at Linköping University can function indefinitely and they can regulate the flow of current without any sort of degradation.

While the transistor has been proven to function, it only serves as a demonstration and has no actual use case yet.

"We didn’t create the wood transistor with any specific application in mind. We did it because we could. This is basic research, showing that it’s possible, and we hope it will inspire further research that can lead to applications in the future", Engquist added.