Organic Electronics for Large Area Electronic Devices
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ORGANIC ELECTRONICS FOR LARGE AREA ELECTRONIC DEVICES Marc Chason Motorola, Inc., Motorola Laboratories, Advanced Technology Center 1301 E. Algonquin Road, Schaumburg, IL, 60196, USA ABSTRACT With market opportunities continuing to drive electronic products to smaller size, significant research efforts continue to shrink semiconductor devices in accordance with Moore’s Law. However, a new set of market opportunities is emerging for which the significant driver is not semiconductor complexity, but rather lower product cost arising from the novel integration of technologies making use of organic and flexible substrates. These new technologies present opportunities for research into new materials and fabrication processes. These new research opportunities extend from embedding passive devices, microfluidics, and polymeric optical waveguides in printed wiring boards, to organic transistors. This paper will discuss these new technologies and present some of the market forces driving these efforts. INTRODUCTION Electronic products are becoming more commodity-like as consumers differentiate their purchases more often than not by price. As the consumer takes it for granted that new features will be introduced into a product for the same or a decreased price, the ability of the manufacturer to secure a premium profit (predicated on novel consumer oriented functions alone) has been severely reduced. Consequently, the ability to manufacture a product cost effectively is becoming even more important than in the past. To realize these new product opportunities and to achieve them in new form factors, the telecommunications design community is pushing to higher operating frequencies and striving for higher levels of integration. As already noted, adding to this technical challenge is the requirement of competing in a global marketplace with commodity type cost structures. These telecommunications products employ numerous substrate materials in their production. Silicon forms the basis for many of the IC devices in these products, along with various types of ceramic materials such as aluminum oxide, piezoelectric ceramics, and Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic (LTCC) materials. The Printed Wiring Board (PWB), however, is the foundation upon which these electronic products are manufactured. Product manufacturing is rarely considered as an area for novel materials research. While manufacturing engineering may focus on optimizing processes to reduce costly process steps, rarely is materials research used to drive these processes. Materials research, however, is driving the PWB substrate to increased levels of integration in addition to higher operating frequencies. When successful, the result is reduced product part count, increased levels of modular integration, new product form factors, and ultimately lower cost products. In recent years, novel material systems have been developed that expand the value of the PWB. At Motorola, these new material systems have been utilized to incorporate embedded
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