Optical sensor array platform based on polymer electronic devices (original) (raw)

POLYMER ELECTRONICS -FANCY OR THE FUTURE OF ELECTRONICS

At present, the electronic world is very much dominated by inorganic materials, in particular silicon. Organic materials in electronic devices were mostly used as insulators, so far. The history of polymer electronics started 25 years ago – firstly conductors, than semiconductors, transistors and fully functional polymer ICs. But the mobility of charge carriers in polymers is limited and incomparable to silicon. Nevertheless, polymer electronics plays more and more important role nowadays, especially in flexible electronic. Freedom of design, compact portable products, cost-effective assembly, environment friendly materials, software based printed ICs, flexible polymer transistors – there are unquestionable advantages of flexible electronics. Key Applications Scenarios for the polymer electronics predict fully applicable displays in use (8-10 years), embedded MEMS (2-10 years), labels for broadband wireless communication (8-10 years), polymer batteries (now – 5 years), photovoltaic cells (10 years). Probably in the future we will use Wearable Ultra Micro Computers.