Egg based Electronics to Save the Environment

Recently, the organic electronic devices have attracted considerable interest, since they give many benefits including simple system layout, low cost potential and low power consumption. Currently, researchers are working with egg white to produce organic electronics, readily available and at lower cost.

Durability is often seen as a hallmark of high-quality electronic systems, but often components are required that don’t last long. It would be useful, for example, if microelectronic systems which distributed drugs to various parts of the body were dissolved after their tasks had been completed. Similarly, there are many electronic devices such as sensors that should actually be discarded after their job is done, rather than contaminating the atmosphere. The use of electronic devices has risen exponentially, and the UN reports that every year people throw away about 50 million metric tonnes of electronics.

One way to mitigate the problem is to use biological materials to create biodegradable and biocompatible products. It would be environmentally sustainable to use biological materials to create electronics, since their ability to biodegrade would result in less waste piling up. In addition, the biodegradable compounds are non-toxic.

In recent years, these materials have gained significant interest. Biomaterials have the ability to reduce the organic electronics costs and improve production processes.

Biomaterials are already used in bio-organic field-effect transistors (BioFETs) as semiconductors, dielectrics and substrates. However, these materials require numerous steps for extraction. Egg, a well-known dietary and cosmetic supplement is now advocated for bio electronics as a biodegradable, biocompatible and environmentally friendly resource.

So egg albumen can be a viable alternative to traditional non-volatile memory systems based on silicon. It may also have future applications due to the strong compatibility in imitating artificial intelligence, brain-like intelligence and biological memory behaviour.

Recently, researchers have found out how to make one such chip out of eggs. They showed that resistive memory based on the egg albumen compares favourably with other memories, viewing the ratio of the resistance as well as strong hold back and replacing the strength level.

Organic electronics

Recently the potential applications in lighting systems like organic-based optoelectronics, backlight modules, flat panel displays, flexible sensors and flexible displays, radio frequency identification tags and automated strategies have fascinated with excessive attention.

These devices comprise abundant rewards such as favourable scalability, possibly low cost, simple device structure, three-dimensional stacking capability and multiple state property. However, these harmful environment and human health consequences of hazardous materials rise significant concerns for the application of these products.

To solve such issues, over the past two decades, researchers and scientists have researched extensively possible non-toxic biomaterials as replacements. Biomaterials are environmentally safe, biodegradable, bioresorbable and biocompatible.  More significantly, the preparation of natural biomaterials does not require a complicated chemical synthesis.

Previous studies showed few promising biomaterials for the research on optoelectronic devices and organic electronic with deoxyribonucleic acid, which can perform the tremendous electron blocking layers in both green and blue organic light-emitting diodes.

Some rather materials have exciting, multiple-time write-once read-once and non-volatile transistor memory applications. Moreover researchers made an effort to practice various natural biomaterials such as cysteine, mosaic virus, enzymes and protein which include ferritin to shape the retention devices with distinct novel structures. These studies show that natural biomaterials can effectively simplify the manufacturing procedure.

Appropriately utilized a number of protein-based materials to create the type of resistive memories. Example – (PAH)/ferritine nanoproduct and cationic poly (allamine hydrochloride) has multilayer structure.

The electrochemical properties of redox proteins have been identified as the principal cause of resistance-switching reversibility. Often uses an energetic component of transparent bio-memristors derives the natural silk fibroin protein from Bombyx Mori (silkworm) coconuts. The Gold (Au) nanoparticles implanted in silk fibroin protein has used to make the switching process more effective.

Almost all of these techniques require complicated chemical processes such as extraction or purification which ultimately increase the cost of production and the complexity of the method.

Researchers have come up with the concept of creating and characterizing non-volatile resistive memory switches by using chicken egg albumen attained directly from fresh eggs without further cleaning or extraction to solve many of these problems with biomaterial process.

Compared with most previous methods, the planned device features a simplified production development by using the switching properties and reliability.

Researchers used cellulose in an inverter circuit as a dielectric layer, and shellac in OFETs as the dielectric. Many other biological materials, including aloe, silk and egg whites that can be converted to suitable dielectrics. Some other dielectrics are also made from beeswax and carnauba wax with more unusual properties such as hydrophobicity.

Researchers are exploring the construction of OFETs for biomedical applications in hard gelatin capsules or on caramelized sugar. They are working on conductive, 3D-printable gelatins that could be used to create circuits that could be swallowed for sensors. They are working with conductive, 3D-printable gelatin that could be used to create circuits that could be swallowed for sensors.

Egg-based electronics

Egg white also called egg albumen. Along with high transparency and high elasticity, it has very good dielectric properties and it has a suitable material for the organic electronics because it is simple to handle, easily available at a reduced cost.

Heat transforms albumen converts a soluble liquid into an insoluble solid as the proteins experience irreversible heat denaturation to form networks of linear chains. The connections among the amino acids on dissimilar protein chains hold these networks together.

The new research marks that egg albumen can be used to create resistive memories that are operated by means of the next generation auxiliary for the silicon-based memories that direct microchip technology based on changes in resistance rather than electric current. These resistive memories will have potential benefits like higher velocities, higher densities, and smaller sizes.

The dielectric constant of Albumen is equivalent to one of the majority of polymers cast-off in OFETs are potentially one, which makes an insulating material. It is not the core time that egg albumen has incorporated into electronic devices already, but in transistors and other structures like the dielectric (isolating) plate, the albumen from chicken and duck eggs were used.

In a recent study, researchers have found that a series of chemical reactions occur when mixing egg albumen with hydrogen peroxide, which transform the biomaterial into an active film that is useful for making resistive memory devices transparent and flexible. Scientists have already developed an easy and inexpensive manufacturing method to construct a dielectric layer of an albumen for OFETs. Initially, they distinct egg yolk and egg white by means of a mesh comb. Spin-coating on a pre-patterned Indium tin oxide substratum procedures thin albumen film.

To make the dielectric film smooth and dense, the substratum is heated after 80 to 140 degrees Celsius gradually in the vacuum chamber by inserting a coating of organic materials and depositing a film of metal done via shadow masks.

Dielectric film is one of the key components of resistive memories and egg albumen-based film is used, which is usually insulating but can be made by applying voltage to conduct it. Switching between the high and low electrical resistance states corresponds to switching between the ‘off’ and ‘on’ states of the brain, respectively.

The researchers have said that the resistance of the egg albumen content can be made switchable by combining it with a solution of ten per cent hydrogen peroxide. Egg albumen contains more than forty different proteins that are bound together by weak chemical bonds, and great numbers of iron, sodium and potassium ions are deep within these proteins.

These ions such as Fe3 +, Na+ and K+ are still linked in the chicken egg albumen with protein chains, so when charges are inserted, they cannot function efficiently. But ions are released outside of protein chains when they are treated with ten per cent hydrogen peroxide solution. Thus, hydrogen peroxide-modified egg albumen film’s resistive switching memory properties are improved effectively compared to those of pure egg albumen. Hydrogen peroxide breaks the bonds which hold proteins together easily.

These ions, which are charged positively, then serve as traps trapping negatively charged electrons which are injected while applying a voltage. The dielectric material serves as an insulator when the trap levels are low (some or no electrons), and the memory is in ‘off’ mode.This causes the traps to fill with electrons when a negative voltage is applied, the material becomes conductive and the memory switches to ‘on’ mode. A positive voltage is applied to reset the memory, which frees the electrons from the traps and returns the memory to its ‘off’ state.

Research teams have experimented with various materials for creating dissolvable electronics, including DNA, other protein types and metals, but now researchers are designing the egg-based memristor. Researchers have developed an electronic device made of egg protein albumin which paves the way for dissolvable sensors that can be used inside the human body.

The device known as the memristor or memory resistor, is used to control electrical current flow, and charges can be remembered too. It has magnesium and tungsten-based electrodes that are integrated into a thin albumin film, a protein found in egg whites.

The device, known as the memristor or memory resistor, is used to regulate the flow of electric current and can also remember charges. It has magnesium and tungsten-based electrodes that are incorporated on a thin film of albumin, a protein found in egg whites.

Used under dry laboratory conditions, the output of the system remained stable for more than three months but dissolved almost fully within three days in water. This bio material’s ability to dissolve without any trace shows promise for future medical applications.