72
nanotimes EU-Projects
Development of High-Performance Organic Electronic Circuits
The Heterogeneous Technology Alliance (HTA), a team of leading European technology institutes (VTT, Fraunhofer, CSEM and CEA-Leti) announced that it strongly contributes to develop high-performance organic electronic circuits. It is possible due to their extensive efforts in processing, circuit design, model- ling, and characterisation.
So far the appearance of organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) and circuits in industrial products has been limited. The main obstacle for substantial market pe- netration of such organic electronic components has been the inability to achieve the necessary device performance combined with the necessary high- volume production methods. In response to this, two European Union funded research projects, COSMIC and POLARIC, aim to revolutionize the way printed electronic circuits are made.
One of the key elements making such progress possible is the recent progress in air-stable, printa- ble, n-type semiconductor materials, which have not been previously available. Thus, it is now possible to combine p- and n-type thin film transistors into complementary logic, which offers many advantages in terms of performance of the printed electronic circuits. The related technology in the silicon based electronics, Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semicon- ductor or simply CMOS technology has proven to be very competent in terms of noise and power con- sumption.
The main target in the COSMIC project is the deve- lopment of p- and n-type OTFTs and their integra- tion to complementary logic. This adds processing tolerance to organic integrated circuits, improves the noise margins, allows higher complexity, increases yield, and allows lower supply voltage demand. In COSMIC an analogue to digital converter coupled to a temperature sensor will be demonstrated, show- ing for the first time the potential of OTFTs in the sensors and actuator market. A silent authentication tag comprising a first organic RF receiver will also be build, to show organic electronics’ potential in the field of item-level, secure tracking of goods using realistic protocols.
The POLARIC project has extensive activities in organic complementary technology development as well. However, the main focus in the project is in increasing the electronic performance by mini- mizing the critical dimensions of the OTFTs. It is important to do this maintaining compatibility to high throughput fabrication methods. The enabling tech- nique here is to apply roll-to-roll compatible nanoim- print lithography in the transistor fabrication. This high resolution method will enable smaller transistor channel length (below 1µm) and thereby an increase in the performance of the device. The demonstrati- on applications in POLARIC are active matrix liquid display and radio-frequency identification tag.
12-04 :: April/May 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85