Advanced Materials

Only RFID offers the electronic printing industry the potential of ten trillion devices yearly, in this case replacing barcodes.

Organic materials are of great interest for electronics applications, as they have many advantages over their inorganic counterparts.

Using room-temperature processing, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have fabricated high-performance field effect transistors with thin films of Carbon 60, also known as fullerene.

Inorganic semiconductor technologies with conventional patterning offer immediate solutions, according to Kodak, which offers Chemical Vapor Deposition CVD to make it happen.

This two day meeting was organised by the Organic Materials Innovation Centre (OMIC) and the UK Displays & Lighting KTN and focused on research activities that address the major challenges in the chemistry, processing and physics of organic transistors, sensors, OLEDS and photovoltaic devices.

We are increasingly seeing demonstrations, samples and first products of printed electronic transistors and other products. Companies are focusing on yield improvements and a necessary part of this is adequate inspection of devices, preferably at high speed.

By laser-treating ink consisting of coated nano-particles of metal, scientists in Switzerland are able to manufacture a wide variety of printed microelectronics.

Transistors are the engine of the new electronics just as the silicon chip is the engine of the traditional electronics.

Products like the flexible transistor will account for 10 percent of the information technology (IT) device market within the next 10 years say researchers at KIST.

Procurement of equipment is already underway for printing conductive inks, metallised circuits and novel barrier layers onto flexible substrates and further R&D programmes for new customers will be introduced in the coming months.

Stretchability is needed in electronics if it is to be foldable, tightly conformal or following the form of something that changes in shape, like the human body.