PragmatIC and Netherlands research lab Holst Centre will jointly develop qualified processes and materials for the Cambridge firm's imprint lithograph process - which forms micron-scale organic transistors on polymer substrates using force rather than light.
"It will make the technology readily accessible to Holst Centre programme partners and other PragmatIC licensees," said PragmatIC. "The collaboration will also extend existing joint research activities in materials, processes and circuit design, which have already provided invaluable support for technology commercialisation."
Originally announced in July 2011, the earlier joint research covers oxide
semiconductors, transistors and circuits.
In November, PragmatIC began commercial imprint-based integrated circuit production at the Centre for Process Innovation in Sedgefield.
The firm's transistors are constructed in a single layer of thin-film semiconductor using a single force-based patterning step.
A single step avoids the potential for inter-step misalignment, and so avoids the need to over-size transistors to tolerate miss-alignment.
"Avoiding the multi-layer structures required for conventional thin-film transistors dramatically simplifies manufacturing as well as eliminating the need to register successive material or process steps on a flexible plastic substrate," said PragmatIC.
Source:
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2013/01/16/55383/pragmatic-to-qualify-flexible-transistor-process.htm
