By Samuel K. Moore,
Associate Editor
Counting the number
of plastic items around you is an exercise only
a plastics industry executive could love. The
material is ubiquitous — which is just what
electronics manufacturers want their products
to be when they talk of putting intelligence everywhere.
Quite possibly, organic electronics
could make ICs as hard to avoid as plastic, because
the devices can be constructed on, and to some
degree are made of, plastic. These use semiconducting
and sometimes conducting materials that are made
of molecules containing carbon, mostly in combination
with hydrogen and oxygen. Slower than silicon,
but more flexible and potentially much cheaper,
organic electronics has already produced circuits
with hundreds of transistors printed on plastic,
experimental sensors and memories, and displays
that bend like paper. ..."
"While industry
insiders cannot predict whether polymers or small
molecules will rule the organic electronics universe
in the end, all agree that the deciding factor
will be manufacturing costs. Because polymers
can be solution-printed like ink, researchers
are looking to the printing industry for technology.
Small molecules, however, must be evaporated onto
a substrate in a vacuum process, akin to those
used to make dry-food packaging. Either way circuits
will be cheap when future electronics price battles
hinge on the technologies that make junk mail
and potato chip bags, notes Raj Apte. He heads
up organics research at Palo
Alto Research Center Inc. (PARC), a recent
spinoff from Xerox Corp. [ranked (73) among the
Top 100 R&D Spenders in 2001]."
