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Polymer Electronics
The basis of the PolyIC technology are new electrically conducting and semi- conducting organic polymers. For this reason, this kind of electronics is called polymer electronics.
Nobel Prize for the discovery of conducting organic materials
In dependence on their chemical structure plastics may exhibit electrically conductive, semi-conductive or insulating properties. The insulating quality of organic materials, especially of polymers, has long been deployed in the field of electrical engineering, for example as an insulating wrapping of cables. Since the seventies of the 20th century, electrically conducting organic materials and semiconducting polymers were investigated. For the merits in this research area, the Nobel Prize 2000 for Chemistry was awarded to Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid und Hideki Shirakawa.
With the deployment of such materials for electronic applications, the words "polymer electronics" were shaped.
Polymers
 The electronic properties of these plastics - also called functional polymers - are, at first sight, quite astonishing. They are derived from their chemical structure, which contains so-called "conjugated polymer main chains", consisting of a strictly alternating sequence of single and double bonds. Consequently, these polymers possess a delocalised -electron system giving it semi-conducting properties, and after chemical doping can even be made conductive.
Additionally to their conducting or semi conducting features, these materials can - under certain circumstances - emit light and therefore be used in organic light-emitting diodes, so called OLEDs or they can absorb light and transform the light into energy and therefore be used in organic photovoltaic cells, so called OPVs. Moreover, they can be used as sensors or organic memory. Concluding one can say that polymer electronics opens up the comprehensive field of electrical engineering that is still dominated by silicon-based devices.
Organic electronics
Although the generic term "polymer electronics" is often used, the electronic features are not limited to polymers - which means to large molecule chains - but also include "small molecules". Therefore, the more general term "organic electronics" is also used. The main difference between polymers and small molecules is the way of how they are treated in the production process of electronic devices. When using small molecules, you normally use a vacuum process and coat it. However, it is more advantageous to use dissolved polymers, which can be used in a printing process as electronic ink. With this, printed electronics can be realized and this process has the potential to revolutionize the production of electronics. With this process, it will be possible to fabricate low-cost electronics in a continuous printing process on flexible substrate, more or less similar to the printing process of newspapers. However, it needs to be noted that the requirements on the printing quality are very high, for example for the resolution or the thickness of the layers. This is because it not only depends on the optical quality, but also on the electrical functionality.
Consequently, a lot of work has still to be invested into the development to realize low-cost and high-volume printed electronics. This concerns the development of materials, the physics of the devices as well as the electrical and mechanical engineering.
With these materials and processes, several devices and products can be built that can all be classified into the field of polymer electronics.
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