Editor's Summary
14 December 2006
Flexible electronics
Organic flexible electronics are being developed for computer displays, radio frequency identification tags, sensors and devices that have not been dreamt of yet. Practical applications so far are few, as their electrical performance is poor compared with conventional electronics. In terms of charge carrier mobility, however, field-effect transistors made of organic single crystals have a very high performance. The obstacle to the use of single-crystal devices is that they have to be individually hand-made. The report of a method of fabricating large arrays of high performance transistor devices by direct patterning of single crystals onto clean silicon surfaces or flexible plastics may help to change that. The new method retains the high performance of field-effect transistors even after significant bending.
News and Views: Semiconductor electronics: Organic crystals at large
Fabricating large-scale semiconducting surfaces for the flexible screens of the future is a bothersome business. A simple technique for growing single-crystal organic semiconductors brings new vision to the field.
Paul Heremans
doi:10.1038/444828a
Letter: Patterning organic single-crystal transistor arrays
Alejandro L. Briseno, Stefan C. B. Mannsfeld, Mang M. Ling, Shuhong Liu, Ricky J. Tseng, Colin Reese, Mark E. Roberts, Yang Yang, Fred Wudl and Zhenan Bao
doi:10.1038/nature05427
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