Printed Organic and Molecular Electronics

During the 1980s, functional organic devices were born. For nearly twenty years, organic semiconductor technology has largely been the domain of traditional players within the microelectronics world, involving semiconductor companies, research laboratories, and government organizations. The print industry, a well-established community who shaped much of the Second Millennium, has joined the organic electronics quest during these first few years of the Third Millennium. This seemingly unlikely marriage of two worlds, the microelectronics and graphic print industries, shows incredible promise to spawn an entirely new method of electronics manufacture and, ultimately, whole new industries. The enhancements of organic semiconductor materials seen during the late 1990s and early 2000s have resulted in the fabrication of organic electronics in laboratory environments with impressive performance. Since the early 2000s, scientists have succeeded in applying printing-related technologies to create organic field effect transistors (OFETs) with micron-sized features. This has led to a widespread vision of developing printed electronic products, especially displays, sensors, and simple wireless products (such as RFID tags). The development of high-volume manufacturing platforms based on traditional graphic arts printing platforms naturally addresses demands on product cost and throughput. Moreover, graphics art printing technologies allow one to fabricate organic circuits directly onto low-cost sheet or roll substrates, including plastics and paper. Printed Organic And Molecular Electronics was compiled to create a reference that included existing knowledge from the most renowned industry, academic, and government experts in the fields of organic semiconductor technology, graphic arts printing, micro-contact printing, and molecular electronics. It is divided into sections that consist of the most critical topics required for one to develop a strong understanding of the states of these technologies and the paths for taking them from R&D to the hands of consumers on a massive scale. As such, the book provides both theory as well as technology development results and trends.