Dr Paul Meredith

Electrical parts made of soft, durable plastic, and even a flexible television screen, could soon replace silicon chips and toxic metals in consumer goods if Dr Paul Meredith has his way.

Many plastics and polymers are better known as insulators. But Dr Meredith, a senior lecturer in UQ’s School of Physical Sciences, has won an $80,000 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award to learn more about bio-organic polymers that conduct electricity.

Dr Meredith’s research focuses on melanin, a pigment in humans that colours skin, eyes and hair, and is also found in squid ink.

Melanin, in its purest form as a black, odourless powder, conducts electricity and can also be made to generate electricity from sunlight.

“If you extract this material from pigment-containing tissue and make a solid pellet, it conducts electricity,” Dr Meredith said.

The ultimate goal of Dr Meredith’s Soft Condensed Matter Physics Group is to understand more about the physics and chemistry of this biological material and build low-cost, environmentally friendly electrical devices from it.

The group has already built a prototype sensor with melanin that measures water content. They are also building an organic chemical sensor and transistor.

Dr Meredith said there was a move to use plastic electronic materials instead of expensive silica and toxic gallium arsenide for electrical componentry.

“There is a realisation that we should move on from the inorganic semiconductors. We need cheaper, safer electronic materials with greener credentials,” he said.

• Dr Paul Meredith www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/meredithp.html

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