Why did the professor cross the road? To get to the university lab where he's exploring an offbeat, but potentially groundbreaking, method of making microchips. Never mind that Richard Wool's concept resembles the business plan for a health-food restaurant. The professor of chemical engineering from the University of Delaware may be on the road to a recipe for an inexpensive and environmentally friendly replacement for silicon-based chips. The chief ingredient? Chicken feathers.

The idea arose out of a five-year-old program that Wool oversees. The Affordable Composites from Renewable Sources program explores the use of raw materials such as soybeans and olives to make everyday products. Given the industry's concerted search for new low-k dielectric materials, the decision to try chicken feathers is not so birdbrained, Wool insists. Feathers contain enough air to allow electrons to move approximately twice as fast as they do in silicon, he notes.

So Wool and postdoctoral research associate Chang Kook Hong molded soybean resin and feathers into a composite with the consistency of silicon. The feather fibers stiffen the soy oil–based composites. Successful results in an early test startled Wool, but three rechecks confirmed that, indeed, the electrical signals zipped through the composite device.

Whether the patent-pending concept flies or not may depend on the researchers' ability to smooth the bumps in the organic substrate. Should they prove successful, the professor then must convince a patently skeptical semiconductor industry to cross the road with him.