by Michael A. Fury, Techcet Group

July 20, 2011 – About 70 researchers from around the world are gathered this week at The Westin San Francisco for this 7^th Organic Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Workshop, co-sponsored by ACS, MRS, IEEE, and IEEE CPMT. The attendee distribution reflects the early research stage of these technologies: 60% university, 20% government labs, and the remainder split between device and materials manufacturers.

John Rogers of UIUC gave the opening talk. Although his group does not deal with organic electronics per se, the applications he targets do indeed overlap quite nicely with those of the organic electronics development programs underway. Semprius, a Rogers Lab spin out, now has an equity investment from Siemens following the successful implementation of a utility scale solar power pilot plant near Tucson using thin flex GaAs cells with optical concentrators. Physiological interfaces to silicon electronics suffer from a severe mismatch in mechanical properties. Flexible silicon on stretchable membranes enables a more highly functional, data-rich interface to the conventional electronics that does not damage living tissue.

Flexible displays using organic TFTs was the topic addressed by Iwao Yagi of Sony. The simplest OLED display circuit is 2T-1C (2 TFT and 1 capacitor) with the single OLED pixel. Different device configurations are used for a flexible design vs. a rollable design to minimize the cumulative mechanical stress on the display components.

Richard McCreery of the National Institute of Nanotechnology (U. of Alberta, Canada) talked about a robust molecular tunnel junction with high temperature stability (to 150