Bendable materials are changing how we think of and use substrates. R&D announcements are made nearly daily on new scientific research that will help enable flexible electronics (electronic products that are bendable or those that can be flexed). It is an exciting time to be in materials science, and the collaborations between chemists, physicists, and electrical engineers are sure to yield inspiring results.
One place where cutting-edge work is always done is the PARC Electronic Materials and Devices Lab. Gregory Whiting, a researcher there, reports that there are many materials being used for flexible electronics, ranging from soft organics to thin amorphous and crystalline semiconductors. Currently PARC is working on thin-film transistors (TFT) and p-i-n photodiodes for flat panel display and image sensor backplanes.
Researchers at PARC have demonstrated low-temperature amorphous silicon on plastic, laser-crystallized p-Si on metal foil and quartz, and fabrication techniques including laser recrystallization and jet-printed, mask-less digital lithography.
The use of new materials is requiring a step back from traditional processing techniques, which may incorporate too much heat for bendable materials. Whiting notes that printing techniques to deposit solution-based materials, low-temperature deposition processes for conventional large-area semiconductors, and transfer of preformed small and/or thin microfabricated electronic devices are all working to make it possible to integrate electronics on to flexible plastic substrates.
We'veVolumetric Efficiency certainly seen the rise of 3D printing this year and with it the potential to rapidly prototype flexible circuits. I recently spoke with a trio of students/recent graduates from Australia who launched a PCB desktop printer on Kickstarter. Priced at $1,199, their printer can quickly create circuit boards on paper, plastic, glass, wood, ceramic, silicone, and fabric. Their company, Cartesian, was looking to raise $30,000 on their entire campaign and instead raised $120,000 in just their first week. (At press time, they had nearly $130,000.)
In addition to developing new processing techniques, scientists, and engineers are performing R&D on the materials used in flexible electronics, and their work continues at a rapid pace. Papers on new materials for printed flexible electronics are now regular features at conferences such as this year's 223rd meeting of the Electrochemical Society (ECS) held in Toronto, as well as for organizations such as the Society of Plastics Engineers and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
Bendable electronics are not new, but the opportunity for new materials and accessibility makes them poised for greatness. So, what else makes them a hot technology for 2014? In a word, growth.
We can expect flexible electronics to make incredible inroads into consumer electronics markets in the coming year. Frost & Sullivan estimates that the current flexible electronics market is around $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion and is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 40% until the year 2018.
The company's research pinpoints the consumer electronics market (especially the Asia-Pacific region) and a worldwide demand for smaller form-factor products. These products will mainly be enabled by bio-degradable organic materials, notes the semiconductor research group's program manager Aravind Seshagiri and research analyst Priya Venkatraman. In other words, the world's desire to go green may also accelerate the growth of this technology.
Some leading applications for bendable electronics include displays, photovoltaics, flexible batteries, sensors, memories, and radio-frequencyThe number of complete cycles or vibrations per unit of time. Rate of alternation in an AC current. Expressed in cycles per second or hertz (Hz). identification devices (RFIDs). The way flexible electronics are used will change over time, and Frost & Sullivan has outlined its projections in this roadmap.
