Plastic electronics based on semiconducting polymers

Plastic electronics are set to be one of the next applications of semiconducting polymers appearing on the market. The electronics are constructed from integrated plastic circuits (IPC) based on organic field effect transistors (OFETs). The aim of this technology is to create low cost electronics using inexpensive standard polymer technologies in combination with laser and/or printing technologies which allow mass production for low cost mass products like ident tags, electronic watermarks, smart cards, electronic labels. Although many improvements have been achieved during the last few years, numerous problems still must be solved. The authors present recent results for OFETs with conjugated polymers like polythiophenes as active semiconducting material. The performance of the OFETs strongly depends on the quality of the semiconducting layer, i.e. molecular ordering, homogeneity, purity and doping level. Several aspects of preparing OFETs with special emphasis on the effect of the properties of the semiconducting polymer on the transistor parameters are discussed.