Printed Electronics Seeks New Territories
Chris Edwards, Contributing Editor -- Semiconductor International, 4/9/2008 9:33:00 AM
 |
In his keynote at the Printed Electronics Europe 2008 conference being held in Dresden, Germany, this week, Harrop said, “Printed electronics won’t be competing much with the silicon chip or even competing with silicon photovoltaics: the focus will be on new markets.”
 |
| Sony Corp.'s flexible display is among the new products driving printed electronics. |
Over the next decade, Harrop said, “Most people will be working on flexible displays because they can go almost anywhere.” The second market will be in photovoltaics, supported by heavy government subsidies. “As we approach 2018, one of the most exciting things will be conformal electronics," he said, including wearable products and other flexible materials.
One problem is the focus on existing markets. “There are too many people doing work to improve the mobile phone a bit with a better display. There needs to be people doing more innovative products.”
He pointed to work by companies such as GSI Technologies LLC (Burr Ridge, Ill.) in opening up new markets with products such as printed sensors, with one product now shipping billions of units a year.
Companies working on printed electronics are dispensing with the distinctions between organic and inorganic materials in their attempts to drive performance to manufacturable levels. Hybrid materials are making inroads as researchers find that they provide them with the level of control needed to produce higher-speed printed transistors.
“We are going to see the distinction between organic and inorganic completely broken down. There is no point in arguing about the semantics: Is it organic or inorganic? The question is: 'Will it sell?'”
 |
| Henning Sirringhaus, Co-founder, Plastic Logic |
“ The conventional approach is to use a solution-processable polymer,” Sirringhaus said. A number of materials that can reach somewhere between 0.1 and 1 cm2/Vs. But people have realized that solution processing does not necessarily mean polymers. People have attached soluble side chains to a crystalline core and use those.”
 |
| Jiro Kasahara, Director, Sony Fusion Domain Laboratory |
“This was not expected,” acknowledged Jiro Kasahara, head of the Fusion Domain Laboratory at Sony R&D, adding that the work shows that combining metals with organic materials can be used to tune workfunctions.
 |
| Sony researchers are learning to tune workfunctions by combining metals with organic materials. |
Bonwon Koo, a researcher at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (Seoul, South Korea), said the company used hybrid materials at a number of points in its most recent organic thin-film transistors for displays. The team used organic molecules to improve the performance of copper S/D electrodes in an attempt to replace the original gold contacts. Hybrids are also now used in the gate dielectric and even some versions of the channel material.
 |
| Researchers are combining materials to provide inks with electronic properties. (Source: Samsung) |
