Printed half-wave and full-wave rectifier circuits based on organic diodes

Presently, most circuits fabricated using organic materials and printing methods have been adopted directly from solid-state inorganic electronics. However, the characteristics of organic electronic devices can differ remarkably from their inorganic equivalents, and therefore, the performance assumptions made about inorganic devices may not be applicable in organic electronics. In this paper, we report a printed diode-based half-wave rectifier having high yield, good air stability, and 3.5-V dc output at 13.56 MHz. Due to the high yield and good performance of the individual diodes, fabrication of more complex devices is possible. In order to achieve higher output power and lower ripple voltage, a printed full-wave bridge rectifier is reported. In addition, the half-wave and the full-wave rectifier circuits are consistently compared with each other. The output waveforms, voltages, and power values are presented for both rectifying circuits. The output measurement results show that the full-wave rectifier has lower output power and lower output voltage due to the high voltage drop of the printed diodes. Therefore, the full-wave rectifier would be most useful in low-frequency applications where low ripple voltage or small capacitor area is required.