Bioinspired and Bio-Based Materials For Electronic Applications

Yoav Eichen Department of Chemistry and Solid State Institute, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Technion City, 32000 Haifa, Israel e-mail: chryoav@tx.technion.ac.il URL: http://www.technion.ac.il/technion/chemistry/staff/eichen/

In recent years there is an increasing interest in carbon based electronics and nanoelectronics. This is driven by the realization that conventional inorganic electronics, which relays mostly on collective phenomena, is meeting its limits as the size is reduced. Intensive research is directed towards the development of appropriate molecular alternatives to traditional basic electronic components such as wires, electronic elements logics devices.

Nevertheless, to date, progress in the direction of developing molecular scale functional circuitry is impeded due to the absence of electrically functional molecules that are easy to make either via conventional synthesis or through self-assembly of simple components into complex functional devices.

The biological realm deals very successfully with two of the most basic and essential tasks for future carbon-based systems, namely making huge libraries of useful molecules out of a rather limited arsenal of building blocks and using self-assembly of such systems for creating useful and functional systems.

The talk will focus on some of the work that is performed in our laboratory which takes advantage of biological and bio-like processes for making electronically useful systems.