Silk: A recent topic I was working on in the lab

Tomorrow, Fiorenzo Omenetto will give a seminar in our department. I was looking forward to attending it since I learned about it. Almost two months ago I started working on the idea of having smart textiles usings silk as the skeleton. The first experiment was a complete trial and needs to be redone with care. Preliminary results are promising and the objective was to produce an organic semiconductor based field effect transistor which will be followed by oxide semiconductors by sol-gel based techniques. 

In a study by Müller et al. (2011)[1], an electrochemical transistor on silk fibers was demonstrated. Very low operating potentials were enough to operate the transistor  which also proves that this kind of devices have a future in electronics sector.

Thinking about the bio-compatible and bio-degradable properties of silk and devices that can work in electrolytic (aqueous) mediums one can consider manufacturing electronic devices that can be delivered to the body. The change in pH or the amount of chemical species can lead to a modulation in the current that enables the self powering of the devices in a closed loop.  Of-course this depends on the magnitude of the current modulation and the materials (biocompatibility). 

[1] C. Müller, M. Hamedi, R. Karlsson, R. Jansson, R. Marcilla, M. Hedhammar, and O. Inganäs, “Woven Electrochemical Transistors on Silk Fibers,” Advanced Materials, vol. 23, no. 7, pp. 898–901, 2011.
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Here is a video I embedded from TED talks by Fiorenzo Omenetto. In a 10 minute talk he shows and presents some of the applications they worked on like packing(storage) materials for medicament, holograms, optical fibers and so on. You can find more on his research group website.