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Putting it on plastic

Nature volume 393, pages 619–620 (1998)Cite this article

The quest to make integrated circuits entirely out of plastic has reached a landmark: functioning wafers have now been made that contain many such circuits. Their main advantages over much faster silicon electronics are simple — all-polymer devices are cheap and bendy.

The electronic properties of conjugated polymers fall well below the expectations and requirements of most of the traditional microelectronics industry, where crystalline silicon of high purity and structural integrity dominates. So it is most unlikely that we will see a plastic revolution in, for example, microprocessor development. But new markets are opening up for which the performance criteria are very different, and it is here that the polymers may find a niche. In particular, the combination of potentially low cost and mechanical flexibility makes these materials ideal for disposable, high-volume, electronic products — such as ‘smart’ labelling of consumer items, or electronic watermarks on paper documents.

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Figure 1: Flexible friend — a pattern of circuits and test structures is repeated about 50 times over the surface of this polymer wafer.

PHILIPS RESEARCH

Figure 2: Slice through a plastic transistor.

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  1. Physical Sciences Editor of Nature,

    Karl Ziemelis

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  1. Karl Ziemelis
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Ziemelis, K. Putting it on plastic. Nature 393, 619–620 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/31333

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