Printable, organic and large-area realisation of integrated circuits

To date the use of organic thin film transistors and circuits in industrial products has been limited. The main obstacle for substantial market penetration of such organic electronic components has been the inability to achieve sufficient device performance using high-volume production methods such as printing. This has delayed the commercially viable implementation of organic transistors in complex electronic circuits and system development. In response to this, European Union funded POLARIC project aims to revolutionise the way printed electronic circuits are made and simultaneously, take a major step forward in the device performance. As a result, high-performance organic electronic circuits will be realised using large-area fabrication methods. The high performance of the organic circuits referred to here means high speed (kHz-MHz range), low operating voltage (below 5 V), low power consumption, and low parasitic capacitance. The organic transistor fabrication development will be focused to enable a high resolution step, which will be compatible with roll-to-roll printing. This high resolution step will enable smaller transistor channel length (below 1 µm) and thereby an increase in the performance of the device. Also complementary transistor technology will be developed, enabled by availability of both n- and p-type organic semiconducting materials. The high performance organic transistors will be tested in basic electronic building blocks such as inverters and ring oscillators. After this, more complex circuits will be used in the technology demonstrators. The main demonstrators will be printed active matrix liquid crystal display and radio-frequency identification tag. The figure gives an artistic rendering of the vision of a flexible display based on solution processing. In addition to showing that sufficient performance can be reached without sacrificing the mass fabrication approach, solutions for the fabrication of roll-to-roll tools in order to make serial replication viable will be provided. Finally, the circuit design, modelling, and characterisation of organic electronics will be developed to offer a toolbox similar to that of silicon-based microelectronics. The presentation covers the overview of activities of the project in the way towards printable, organic and large-area realisation of integrated circuits.