Egg whites power drug delivery devices of the future

Egg whites, magnesium and tungsten have been used by scientists to create a piece of dissolvable circuitry that could help power drug delivery devices

Scientists from Zhejiang University in China, in collaboration with Cambridge University developed a tiny component used in electrical circuitry from the three materials and published their research in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

The Zhejiang/Cambridge team, led by Jikui Luo and Xiaozhi Wang, wanted to develop a transient memory resistor with dissolvable components, according to the American Chemical Society (ACS).

This electronic component, also called a memristor, is a new type of resistor that regulates the flow of electric current and also can “remember” charges.

To create the component, the researchers rapidly spun diluted egg albumin, the white part of an egg, on a silicon wafer to turn it into an ultra-thin film. Then they incorporated electrodes made out of magnesium and tungsten.

Testing showed that the device’s performance matched that of non-degradable memristors and under dry conditions in the lab, the components worked reliably for more than three months.

In water, the electrodes and albumin dissolved in two to ten hours in the lab. The rest of the chip took about three days to break down, leaving minimal residues behind, according to ACS.

The study said it: “Demonstrates a new way to fabricate biocompatible and dissolvable electronic devices by using cheap, abundant and 100% natural materials for the forthcoming bioelectronics era as well as for environmental sensors when the Internet of Things takes off.”