Background

Natural silk produced by silkworms has been used to make fabrics for thousands of years. More recently, silkworm silk has been used to fabricate biodegradable medical implants, protective fabrics, and biodegradable wearable electronics. However, existing techniques for manufacturing electrical circuit components from silkworm silk require post processing to incorporate functional properties into the silkworm silk and can be non-scalable and/or cost prohibitive.

Technology Overview

Functionalized natural silk fibers have been fabricated by feeding silkworms with the material of interest. Specifically, this work highlights the possibility of using natural silk fibers as super‑capacitor electrodes upon feeding the worms with high capacitive materials such as graphite, Monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2) , Titanium dioxide (TiO 2) , and Potassium permanganate (KMnO4) / Manganese(II) chloride (MnCl 2).

Benefits

One-step fabrication
Tuned distribution of the additives
Full control of the amount incorporated

Applications

Electrical Circuit components made from Silkworm-Silk with numerous applications including:

Wearable devices/sensors
Biodegradable medical implants
Durable protective fabrics
Eco-friendly wearable electronics
Super‑capacitors

Publications : Basant A. Ali & Nageh K. Allam. (2019) “Silkworms as a factory of functional wearable energy storage fabrics”‑ Scientific Reports, volume 9, Article number: 12649 ‑ Nature.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49193-y

Opportunity

Available for exclusive and non-exclusive licensing
Exclusive/non-exclusive evaluation for defined period (set up for options).
Collaborative/supportive research

Electrical Circuit Components made from Silkworm-Silk with Silkworm-Digested Structured Materials

Patents

IP Status

Seeking