CircuiTree - July 2008 - (Page 36)

[ BPA Growth Curves ] By Mark Hutton Plastic Electronics: Key Players and Drivers, Part 2 lastic electronics technology will be best placed to open up new applications that in the main cannot technically and commercially be addressed with current electronics technology. A good example is rollable displays. Organic light emitting displays (OLEDs), particularly polymer OLEDs, are one candidate technology to enable low-cost rollable displays. The driving force for this type of display is that it can be larger than the body of the unit itself. The demonstrator (see Figure 1) illustrates this application driver. the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot. Figure 2 summarizes the technology progression for the plastic electronics industry. The tables that follow state the requirements for various applications and technologies required for the continued development of the plastic electronics industry. The Holy Grail is to print organic semiconducting materials onto paper as this is the lowest cost option, particularly when taking into account high-volume low-cost printing techniques. The substrate’s CTE, surface energy, roughness, and absorbency are critical for production of components and subassemblies that utilize printable organic conductor and semiconductor chemical systems. The ﬁrst stage will be to utilize stable substrates such as glass and stainless steel (SS) but as the technology and particularly the printing processes are improved, the optimum (from a cost-performance perspective) will be realized. BPA’s view of the evolution of these critical elements is illustrated in Figure 2. By and large, over the last 12 to 24 months, materials for printable electronics, particularly in the area of plastic OLEDs, have improved with regard to their efﬁciency and also their stability. This is not the case with regard to organic systems for replacing integrated circuits in the area of memory technology, but for applications that are disposable in nature, such as primary packaging for retail items, especially consumables, this is not an issue. Integrated circuits for RF-ID are very speciﬁc and are one of the ﬁrst applications to use this technology for simple memories for storing data. Table 1 shows the technological progression for the next ﬁve years. To broaden the applications that can use organic semiconductors, they will also need to function at higher frequencies, as indicated in Table 1. However, that is technically not feasible over the next ﬁve years. Table 2 illustrates some of the current status of materials for OLED displays. It can be seen that the power requirement is about 60 percent less than for a comparable LCD display. Threshold voltages can be reduced as shown by the current development status and demonstrator status of around two and a half and seven, respectively. Of course, the lower voltage that is required will greatly Figure 1 Philips’ Rollable Display Demonstrator (Source: Philips) Another major driver for ﬂexible displays is for electronic books and electronic newspapers. It is estimated that 400 million newspapers worldwide are sold every day and, of course, it is a major industry with powerful players. Here, electronic ink (EI) has been targeted as a key enabling technology. EI is a proprietary material that is processed into a ﬁlm for integration into electronic displays. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear ﬂuid. When a negative electric ﬁeld is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric ﬁeld pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of 36 July 2008 • circuitree.com Figure 2 Technology Progression for the Plastic Electronics Industry (Source: BPA) Table 1 RF-ID Printable Integrated Circuit Technology Progression Year Frequency Technology Source: BPA 2007 MHz 4 bit 2012 and Beyond GHz 16 bit Table 2 Current Material Status for OLED Emissive Materials Brightness (cd/m2) Current Status (Development) Demonstrator (OLED and Backplane) 100 100 Voltage (V) 2.68 7 Lm/W 75 Power Consumption 240mW* Source: BPA * This is 60 percent of the power requirement for comparable LCD. http://circuitree.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CircuiTree - July 2008

CircuiTree - July 2008 Contents My Line Industry Review Tech Talk Flexible Thinking Toward a PCB Production Floor Metric for Go/No Go Testing of Lossy High-Speed Transmission Lines Intelligent Design 20-Year Retrospective Ask the Flexperts Environmentally Speaking BPA Growth Curves Considering Design Variants to Maximize Process Efficiency Market Outlook Technical Product Spotlights Classified Ads Upcoming Events Ad Index

CircuiTree - July 2008

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