{"id":649,"date":"2018-06-24T14:50:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T14:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/?p=649"},"modified":"2018-06-24T14:50:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T14:50:31","slug":"osu-press-release-fungi-produced-pigment-shows-promise-as-semiconductor-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/2018\/06\/24\/osu-press-release-fungi-produced-pigment-shows-promise-as-semiconductor-material\/","title":{"rendered":"OSU press release: Fungi-produced pigment shows promise as semiconductor material"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ostraverkhova group’s work on xylindein, an organic semiconductor produced naturally by fungi, has been featured in a press release.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/today.oregonstate.edu\/news\/fungi-produced-pigment-shows-promise-semiconductor-material<\/a><\/p>\n

June 5, 2018<\/div>\n
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CORVALLIS, Ore. \u2013 Researchers at Oregon State University are looking at a highly durable organic pigment, used by humans in artwork for hundreds of years, as a promising possibility as a semiconductor material.<\/div>\n
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Findings suggest it could become a sustainable, low-cost, easily fabricated alternative to silicon in electronic or optoelectronic applications where the high-performance capabilities of silicon aren\u2019t required.<\/div>\n
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Optoelectronics is technology working with the combined use of light and electronics, such as solar cells, and the pigment being studied is xylindein.<\/div>\n
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\u201cXylindein is pretty, but can it also be useful? How much can we squeeze out of it?\u201d said Oregon State University physicist Oksana Ostroverkhova. \u201cIt functions as an electronic material but not a great one, but there\u2019s optimism we can make it better.\u201d<\/div>\n
Xylindien is secreted by two wood-eating fungi in the Chlorociboria genus. Any wood that\u2019s infected by the fungi is stained a blue-green color, and artisans have prized xylindein-affected wood for centuries.<\/div>\n
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The pigment is so stable that decorative products made half a millennium ago still exhibit its distinctive hue. It holds up against prolonged exposure to heat, ultraviolet light and electrical stress.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIf we can learn the secret for why those fungi-produced pigments are so stable, we could solve a problem that exists with organic electronics,\u201d Ostroverkhova said. \u201cAlso, many organic electronic materials are too expensive to produce, so we\u2019re looking to do something inexpensively in an ecologically friendly way that\u2019s good for the economy.\u201d<\/div>\n
With current fabrication techniques, xylindein tends to form non-uniform films with a porous, irregular, \u201crocky\u201d structure.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of performance variation,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can tinker with it in the lab, but you can\u2019t really make a technologically relevant device out of it on a large scale. But we found a way to make it more easily processed and to get a decent film quality.\u201d<\/div>\n
Ostroverkhova and collaborators in OSU\u2019s colleges of Science and Forestry blended xylindein with a transparent, non-conductive polymer, poly(methyl methacrylate), abbreviated to PMMA and sometimes known as acrylic glass. They drop-cast solutions both of pristine xylindein and a xlyindein-PMMA blend onto electrodes on a glass substrate for testing.<\/div>\n
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They found the non-conducting polymer greatly improved the film structure without a detrimental effect on xylindein\u2019s electrical properties. And the blended films actually showed better photosensitivity.<\/div>\n
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\u201cExactly why that happened, and its potential value in solar cells, is something we\u2019ll be investigating in future research,\u201d Ostroverkhova said. \u201cWe\u2019ll also look into replacing the polymer with a natural product \u2013 something sustainable made from cellulose. We could grow the pigment from the cellulose and be able to make a device that\u2019s all ready to go.<\/div>\n
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\u201cXylindein will never beat silicon, but for many applications, it doesn\u2019t need to beat silicon,\u201d she said. \u201cIt could work well for depositing onto large, flexible substrates, like for making wearable electronics.\u201d<\/div>\n
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This research, whose findings were recently published in MRS Advances, represents the first use of a fungus-produced material in a thin-film electrical device.<\/div>\n
\u201cAnd there are a lot more of the materials,\u201d Ostroverkhova said. \u201cThis is just first one we\u2019ve explored. It could be the beginning of a whole new class of organic electronic materials.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The National Science Foundation supported this research.<\/div>\n
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About the OSU College of Science:\u00a0 As one of the largest academic units at OSU, the College of Science has seven departments and 12 pre-professional programs. It provides the basic science courses essential to the education of every OSU student, builds future leaders in science, and its faculty are international leaders in scientific research.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Ostraverkhova group’s work on xylindein, an organic semiconductor produced naturally by fungi, has been featured in a press release. http:\/\/today.oregonstate.edu\/news\/fungi-produced-pigment-shows-promise-semiconductor-material June 5, 2018 CORVALLIS, Ore. \u2013 Researchers at Oregon State University are looking at a highly durable organic pigment, used by humans in artwork for hundreds of years, as a promising possibility as a… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6866,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2368,523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6866"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/spectrometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}