THE ELECTRONIC Material Research Group at the James Cook University is researching using essential oils to create organic thin-films for flexible electronics.
The Group is led by Dr. Mohan Jacob, and comprises of members drawn from the Engineering, Chemistry, Physics and Medicine faculties.
Certain modified plastics can transmit electricity, opening up the potential to develop electronic devices such as organic light-emitting devices (LEDs), organic thin-film transistors and organic photo detectors via fabrication at relatively low temperatures and using simple techniques like ink-jet printing.
According to the researchers, these advantages will lead to the use of organic electronic devices in applications that are currently difficult or costly to achieve, like displays and sensor arrays on flexible or curved surfaces, such as e-books with roll-out screens.
Organic polymer thin-films are also resistant to heat and to aggressive chemicals, and can attain extreme thinness, typically between 200 and 800 nanometres.
To create semiconductor membranes, the Electronic Material Research Group designed a “plasma polymerisation” facility to create organic polymer thin-films.
Plasma polymerisation is a method for laying down a uniform thin layer of organic materials whose structure can be adjusted by changing a range of deposition parameters.
With support from the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation, the research group is attempting to fabricate high quality plasma polymerised thin-films using Australian essential oils as natural sources.
The researchers tested pinene from pine resin, limonene from citrus peel and tea tree oil to see if they were suitable for polymerisation.
The cheaper pine and citrus oils produced membranes under the most ideal laboratory conditions, although their surface remained too rough. The polymer thin-films derived from tea tree oil, on the other hand, attained the smooth consistency of glass.