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The path to ubiquitous and low-cost organic electronic appliances on plastic

Nature volume 428, pages 911–918 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Organic electronics are beginning to make significant inroads into the commercial world, and if the field continues to progress at its current, rapid pace, electronics based on organic thin-film materials will soon become a mainstay of our technological existence. Already products based on active thin-film organic devices are in the market place, most notably the displays of several mobile electronic appliances. Yet the future holds even greater promise for this technology, with an entirely new generation of ultralow-cost, lightweight and even flexible electronic devices in the offing, which will perform functions traditionally accomplished using much more expensive components based on conventional semiconductor materials such as silicon.

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Figure 1: Various types of organic electronic materials, ranged in order of increasing complexity from left (simplest) to right (most complex).
Figure 2: Ink-jet printing and the fabrication of full-colour polymer organic light-emitting device (OLED) displays.
Figure 3: Organic emissive displays in the present and the future.
Figure 4: The process of organic vapour-phase deposition (OVPD) for the growth of organic electronic devices.
Figure 5: Laser-induced thermal imaging transfer of active organic semiconductor materials to a substrate.
Figure 6: Direct micro/nanopatterning of an organic electronic device by cold welding.
Figure 7: Conceptual diagram of continuous and very-low-cost manufacture of organic electronic devices.

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Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to his many students, and in particular M. Thompson, for many discussions over the years. He is also grateful to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and Universal Display Corporation for their financial support of this work.

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  1. Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM), Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, New Jersey, 08544, Princeton, USA

    Stephen R. Forrest

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Forrest, S. The path to ubiquitous and low-cost organic electronic appliances on plastic. Nature 428, 911–918 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02498

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