A research team in Taiwan has found a way to make high-performance transistors using silk, in what some believe is a breakthrough technology that could one day make flexible e-books widely and cheaply available.
“The process works by first extracting protein from ordinary silk, which is obtained from the cocoons of the mulberry silk worm,” Hwang Jenn-chang, professor of materials science at National Tsing Hua University and a leading researcher on the team, said March 2.
“Silk fibroin, as the protein is called, is then made into silk film, which can be used as a material for dielectric layers and pentacene organic thin-film transistors,” he said. This property, combined with the low cost and light weight of silk, gives silk fibroin great potential for high-speed flexible electronics applications.
Silk-fibroin transistors have a field-effect mobility 20 times as effective as ordinary transistors made from silica, according to Hwang. In addition to e-books, the patent-pending technology could be used to make organic light-emitting-diode screens.
Like many other scientific breakthroughs, the latest findings were a combination of hard work and serendipity, Hwang said. The initial discovery of the uses of silk came two years ago, when some of his graduate students discovered certain unknown properties of the fiber.
The findings were published online March 1 by the science journal Advanced Materials. (HZW)
Write to Grace Kuo at morningk@mail.gio.gov.tw