Silk worms its way into Electronic Applications

When I think of silk, my first thought of luxurious garments. A second distant thought the parachute or reticles. The mood was greatly surprised to have a weekend press report on the development of scientists at Tsing Hua University (Hsinchu, Taiwan) way to use silk in the manufacture of semiconductor components.

The research began as a project funded by the government in August 2009. By March 2011, Jenn-Chang Hwang, a Professor of Materials Engineering and graduate student team decided that silk membrane could be used as a flexible insulator material, in Organic Thin film transistors (OTFTs). The potential of such transistors used in applications including electronic paper, radio frequency identification tags and LCD TFT module.

For the material needed, the researchers silkworm cocoons boiled in sodium chloride solution to remove proteins called fibroin. The proteins were dissolved from the production of phosphoric acid liquid silk. liquid silk forms the membrane was shown to be an excellent gate material for dielectric pentacene OTFTs. The resulting OTFTs exhibited a high field-effect mobility values ??of 23.2 cm2/Vs and low voltage operating -3 V

The silk fibroin flexibility combined with other expected benefits such as low cost and low weight, resulting in the potential for high speed, flexible electronics applications. The scientists said, "The speed can be improved by at least twenty times."

Hwang is in the process to apply for patents worldwide, and expects to commercialize the technology within three years.

A video discussing the development of silk-based electronics Tsing Hua University here. Information on the scientific article published by the researchers to get here.

After unaware of the latest developments relating to the use of silk in electronics and, wanting to learn more, I did a fast Google search. Again, I was surprised. I found other instances of research on the use of silk in electronics, especially in academia.

One particularly intriguing example of a collaborative research project by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. The team made arrays of silicon transistors on flexible substrates silk. Allows the use of electronics silk adhere to biological tissue and melt away over time. The thin silicon circuits left without cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

Applications under development can benefit the new types of devices. A class one medical devices that could interact with tissues entirely new ways. As might be "show" for example, associated with silk-silicon LCD module that act as photonic tattoos with the ability to show blood sugar reading.

At the early stage of development, of course, difficult to get out of silk-based technology can live up to its promise or if an application in which it will be successful. I know that will look at developing the technology to be very interesting. Newsletters will gain insight into the media's reporting on developments.