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Flexible electronic futures

Nature volume 412, pages 489–490 (2001)Cite this article

Microelectronic devices incorporating organic materials could find a host of applications. That prospect inches nearer with the development of a strategy for growing thin films of the organic semiconductor pentacene.

Virtually all of today's microelectronic devices are made from inorganic materials — silicon and gallium arsenide, for instance. But in the past few years there has been an explosion of interest in devices made from organic molecules for application in devices such as mechanically flexible computers and displays, and even truly 'molecular' computers in which individual molecules replace today's transistors1,2,3. Organic semiconductors have been known for more than 20 years4, and last year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry5 was awarded for work in the area. But achieving electronic properties comparable to those of inorganic materials requires high-quality crystals6,7, and these cannot easily be made in the necessary thin-film form by the vapour-deposition methods typically used in microelectronics fabrication. Thin films are needed because they are especially amenable to large-scale circuit fabrication.

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Figure 1: How to make thin-film crystals of pentacene, an organic semiconductor.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1101 University Avenue, Madison, 53706, Wisconsin, USA

    Robert J. Hamers

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  1. Robert J. Hamers
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Correspondence to Robert J. Hamers.

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Hamers, R. Flexible electronic futures. Nature 412, 489–490 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35087682

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