Applications of Organic and Printed Electronics

The roadmap for organic and printed electronics is a key activity of the OE-A, the industrial organisation for the young organic, printed and large area electronics industry. Organic electronics is a platform technology that enables multiple applications, which vary widely in their specifications. Since the technology is still in its early stage—and is in the transition from lab-scale and prototype activities to production—it is important to develop a common opinion about what kind of products, processes and materials will be available and when. This chapter is based on the third version of the OE-A Roadmap for organic and printed electronics, developed as a joint activity by key teams of experts in 9 applications and 3 technology areas, informed by further discussions with other OE-A members during association meetings. The resulting roadmap is a synthesis of these results representing common perspectives of the different OE-A forums. Through comparison of expected product needs in the application areas with the expected technology development paths, potential roadblocks or “red brick walls” such as resolution, registration and complementary circuitry are identified.

The technology of organic solar cells has matured to an extent that commercialization of first products has already started. However, with the first products pushing into the market, the research community realizes that a qualified product requires more than only high efficiency and good stability. Cost is of course as important as efficiency and lifetime, but to achieve high productivity, multiple technologic challenges have still to be solved. To reduce production costs, printing of functional layers from solution has evolved to a promising manufacturing technology for flexible organic electronics. Current processing of organic photovoltaic devices is mainly based on traditional methods like spin coating or doctor blading. However, these techniques have several disadvantages such as the incompatibility with a roll-to-roll setup and the processing of only small areas at laboratory scale. Enormous benefits in the manufacturing of organic photovoltaics are achieved by using low-cost roll-to-roll capable technologies including screen printing, spray coating, inkjet printing, gravure/flexographic printing and curtain/slot die coating. This review will shed some light on the role and importance of production technologies for organic photovoltaics and give an update on the most recent achievements in the field.

The development of new display devices for the interactive communication between computers and people has accelerated over the past decade and considerable progress has recently been made in the area of organic displays. Organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) are the most suitable candidate to satisfy the demands of next generation displays among the technological options available so far, owing to simple device configuration, high power efficiency and efficient driving schemes, together with solid state encapsulation and excellent user experience. Efficient OLED structures, processes for OLED fabrication, various driving schemes for OLED displays, the current status of fluorescent and phosphorescent OLEDs, top emitting active matrix OLED (AMOLED), passive matrix driving schemes, white OLEDs for high resolution display applications, and thin film transistor (TFT) backplane technology for active matrix OLEDs are discussed here. Finally, the future scope and directions of the high-performance OLED display in mobile display technology and large area TVs are presented.

Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology is developing as a promising option for large area lighting applications, with basic properties such as efficiency, color stability and lifetime which approach or even exceed those of conventional lighting and inorganic LED technology and with various interesting additional complementing features. In this Chapter, an introduction is given on the development of OLED technology for lighting applications. We discuss the working principles of efficient white multilayer OLEDs, the factors which determine the efficiency, several key elements of the fabrication technology including encapsulation methods, and the state-of-the-art as realized in various institutes and companies.

Organic electronics is attracting a lot of attention for large-area pervasive electronics applications, because organic transistors can be fabricated using printing technologies on arbitrary substrates and this enables both high-throughput and low-cost production. In this chapter, some examples of large area electronics based on organic transistors including an EMI measurement sheet, a wireless power transmission sheet, and a communication sheet are presented. Challenges for future large area electronics are also described.

Printed electronics opens up completely new application fields for electronics, where there is no electronics today. By printing conductive, semi conductive, dielectric and other functional materials in roll-to-roll processes on plastic films it is possible to realize electronic devices that are thin, flexible, low cost and available in very high volumes. Even though the overall performance of such printed electronic devices is typically lower compared to standard silicon based electronics, printed electronics could be integrated directly into packaging, to make consumer goods smart: e.g. integrated radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that transmit information in an electronic way or so called Smart Objects that enable, for example, dynamical optical elements to appear on packages, tickets or brand products. The technology of printed electronics is young and still not mature, therefore it is important to start with first products in niche markets where the advantages of printed electronics are obvious and where both the manufacturer and the user can learn about the use of such devices. To enter mass markets, some challenges still need to be faced, especially in the field of material and process optimization, but also at the system level, in order to find the best ways to integrate printed electronics with low cost goods. This chapter describes the status quo, first products and market outlook for printed electronics with a focus on printed RFID and printed Smart Objects.

Organic RFID tags are increasingly gaining credibility as a possible low-cost barcode replacement for product identification. This will only happen if organic RFID tags can operate in the frequency range defined by well-accepted EPC standards. This chapter evaluates the performance of existing organic RFID demonstrators and confirms that, based on lab scale demonstration of organic RFID tags, performance comparable to the EPC standards can be obtained. Moreover, the integration of sensors with the tags will enable added functionality and applications beyond pure identification.

Printed and organic electronics has tremendous potential for the realization of new classes of very low-cost, ubiquitously deployable chemical sensors. The ability to cheaply integrate diverse materials through printing of appropriately formulated inks offers the possibility to realize highly integrated electronic nose sensors for such diverse applications as product quality checking, environmental monitoring, and other consumer-focused sensing applications. We review the state of the art in printed organic electronic sensors, discuss the major issues to be resolved, and identify potential pathways to success for this dynamic and rapidly emerging field.