PLASTIC ELECTRONICS

A SEMINAR REPORT

Submitted by

SURYAKANT MEHTA : [18BEEC30022]

In submission of Seminar
of
BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
in
Electronics & Communication Department

LDRP Institute of Technology and Research, Gandhinagar

Kadi Sarva Vishwavidyalaya, Gandhinagar
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Oct-Nov 2019
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 LDRP INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
GANDHINAGAR

Electronics & Communication Engineering Department

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the Seminar entitled “PLASTIC ELECTRONICS“ has been carried out by
SURYAKANT MEHTA (18BEEC30022) under my guidance in submission of Seminar of
Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics & Communication (3rd Semester) of Kadi Sarva
Vishwavidyalaya University, Gandhinagar during the academic year 2019.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ch. No. Chapter Name Page No.

1. What is Plastic Electronics? 05-06

1.1 Definition

2. Comparison with Silicon Based Industry 07-08

2.1 Challenges and Future of Plastic
Electronics

3. Plastic Electronic Materials 09-13

3.1 Conductors
3.2 Semiconductors
3.3 Dielectrics
3.4 Substrates

4. Printing Process 14-17

4.1 Micro Contact Printing
4.2 Screen Printing

5. Paperlike Display Systems 18-20

5.1 Overview
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6. Applications of Plastic Electronics 21-22
6.1 Sensors
6.2 Actuators

7. Benefits and Obstacles 23

8. References 24

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 Chapter : 1
What is Plastic Electronics ?

1.1 Definition
Plastic electronics, Organic electronics, or polymer electronics, is
a branch of electronics that deals with conductive polymers,
plastics, or small molecules. It is called 'organic' electronics
because the polymers and small molecules are carbon-based, like
the molecules of living things. This is as opposed to traditional
electronics (or metal electronics) which relies on inorganic
conductors such as copper or silicon.

Plastic Electronics allows circuits to be produced at relatively low

cost by printing electronic materials onto any surface, whether
rigid or flexible. It is very different from the assembly of
conventional silicon-based electronics. It will lead to the creation
of a whole new range of products such as conformable and
rollable electronic displays, ultra-efficient lighting and low-cost,
long-life solar cells. its market value is forecast to rise from $2
billion today to $120 billion in 2020.

Plastic electronic materials and high-resolution printing methods

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may be important technologies for new classes of consumer

electronic devices that are lightweight, mechanically flexible and
bendable, and that can cover large areas at low cost.

This area will be important (at least initially) not because of its
potential for achieving high speed, density, and so forth but
because the circuits can be rugged and bendable, and they can be
printed rapidly over large areas at low cost. These features can be
difficult to achieve with the brittle inorganic materials and
sophisticated processing techniques that are used for conventional
electronics. Bendable plastic circuits will enable new devices—
electronic paper, wearable computers or sensors, disposable
wireless identification tags, and so forth—that complement the
types of systems that existing silicon-based electronics supports
well (e.g., microprocessors, high-density RAM, etc).

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 Chapter : 2
Comparision with Silicon Based Industry

2.1 Challenges and Future of Plastic Electronics

The silicon-based electronics world is, of course, a very well
entrenched, multi-billion dollar industry that offers increasingly
impressive levels of processing power. But it also has the
characteristics of very high capital needs (multi-billion dollars for
silicon chip manufacture), potential over-specification for a
number of applications, and design limitations in respect of
flexible or conformable devices.

Another advantage is its processing at low-temperatures. The

substrate is a solution which is printable and coatable enabling
also flexible products. The additive processes might prove to be
more environmentally friendly.

Despite its many benefits, to date the performance of plastic

electronics in terms of the actual function and performance is
reduced compared to that of conventional electronics.
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Figure 1: Samples of Silicon and Carbon

It is therefore believed that Plastic electronics will, on the whole,

become a winning technology platform not by ‘beating’ silicon
but by complementing silicon technologies or by facilitating the
development of new products (like rollable displays) where
silicon just cannot be used.

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 Chapter : 3
Plastic Electronics Materials

The components of Plastic electronics are organic molecules and

polymers that give semiconducting or light-emitting properties.
For active organic electronics, materials ranging from conductors
(electrodes), semiconductors, to insulators (dielectric materials)
are required.

3.1 Conductors
The materials used for conductors fall mainly into three
categories – those based on: -
 Metals
 Organic Compounds
 Metal Oxides

Metallic features can be printed in a number of different ways.

The most common technique is to use inks that contain metal
particles. For conductors, conducting polymers are most desirable
because of their mechanical flexibility and processability.
However, the conductivities of conducting polymers are still
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lower than required.

Even though certain polymers can conduct electricity, they are
still 1000 times less conductive than metals. The compounds that
are most used for conductive polymers in printed are
heteroaromatic polymers, based upon aniline, thiophene, and
pyrole and their derivatives. Of all of the conducting polymers,
the one that has been used the most as a conductor is probably
PEDOT: PSS (also known as PEDT: PSS), which is
commercially available.

Figure 2: Chemical structure of PEDOT: PSS

Dispersions of PEDOT: PSS have good film forming properties,

high conductivity (< 400 S/cm), high visible light transmission,
and excellent stability. Films of PEDOT:PSS can be heated in air
at > 100 ˚C for > 1000 hours with only minimal change in
conductivity.

Another class of conductive materials that is often used for

electrodes are metal oxides, particularly Indium Tin Oxide
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(ITO). These materials are used primarily because of their

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transparency. They are used where transparent electrodes are
needed, particularly for light emitting or optoelectronic devices.

3.2 Semiconductors
Organic semiconductors can be soluble and solution processable,
hence they lend them-selves to printing. The charge transport in
organic semiconductors is highly dependent upon the deposition
conditions, and can be influenced by many factors, including
solvent, concentration, deposition technique, deposition
temperature, surface treatment, surface roughness, etc.

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Figure 3: Chemical structures of typical organic semiconductors: (a)–(g) are p-channel materials, and (h)-(j) are n-channel
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materials.
Matching combinations of p and n-type semiconductors are
required for CMOS circuits.
They are chemically synthesized and formulated as printing inks.

Figure 4: Electronic Inks

3.3 Dielectrics
A variety of materials can be used as dielectrics. While much
work has been done using inorganic (silica, alumina, and high
dielectric constant oxides) dielectrics, these are not generally
printable. A variety of organic polymers including polypropylene,
polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinyl phenol, poly methyl methacrylate,
and polyethylene terephthalate can also be used as dielectrics.
Most of these are polymers that are widely used for non-
electronic purposes, and available in bulk quantities quite
inexpensively.
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3.4 Substrates
For organic electronics, flexible polymeric substrates are
generally used. Flexible substrates pose a number of challenges,
however. Flexible substrates are usually not completely
dimensionally stable, and this can greatly affect the resolution and
registration of features printed on them. The surfaces of flexible
substrates are usually too rough for device fabrication. Flexible
substrates can melt or deform when exposed to high temperatures,
which limits the kinds of processing that can be applied to them.

Many types of flexible substrates are also incompatible with some

solvents used for organic electronic components. When exposed
to such solvents, the substrates may either dissolve or swell. The
flexible polymeric substrates that have been used the most in
organic electronics are the polyesters polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) and polyethylene naphthalate (PEN).

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 Chapter : 4
Printing Processes

In organic electronics, Printing Techniques are chosen based

upon their suitability for printing the desired materials
(viscoelastic properties), as well as by their capability to print the
desired feature sizes (lateral resolution, ink thickness, surface
uniformity) required by the device. Some important printing
methods used today are: -
4.1 Micro Contact Printing (µCP)
Figure 5 illustrates how the µCP process is performed. First, a
master is created using micro-fabrication processes. Second, the
liquid prepolymer is applied to the surface of the master. Third,
the prepolymer is cured (by heating), and removed from the
master. Now, ink needs to be applied to the surface of the
stamp. This can be done by either applying the ink directly to the
stamp (4) or by using an ink pad (5). Most often, the inks used
are molecules which form self-assembled monolayers (typically
thiols) on the surface (typically gold). Sixth, the stamp is brought
into contact with the surface to be patterned. Seventh, upon
removal of the stamp, a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of ink
is formed on the substrate surface. Finally, this SAM is used as an
etch resist to selectively etch the underlying substrate surface.
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Figure 5: Diagram of the microcontact printing process

4.2 Screen Printing

The screen printing process is shown in Figure 7. In screen
printing, the mask (emulsion) is supported by a screen (usually
made of polyester or stainless steel). The screen support allows
the use of areas which are not connected, which would fall
through a regular stencil or mask. In screen printing, a wide
variety of different screen parameters are available.
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Figure 6: Screen printing process

When practiced appropriately, screen printing is a non-contact

printing process. The screen itself should not touch the substrate.
The ink is spread out over the screen and forced through it with a
squeegee. Although screen printing is not normally considered a
high volume printing process, the volume can be increased
considerably by using rotary screen printing. The rotary screen
printing process is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 7: Rotary screen printing process

In rotary screen printing, the screen is wrapped around a cylinder,

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and the ink is contained inside the cylinder. The cylinder rotates
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continuously, and the ink is fed through it. In this way, rotary
screen printing can operate continuously, and increase the
throughput considerably over flatbed screen printing.

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 Chapter : 5
Paperlike Display Systems

5.1 Overview
We use interconnected arrays of transistors to drive circuits in
flexible paper like displays that use a type of microencapsulated
electro-phoretic ink. The backplane circuits of these prototype
devices consist of square arrays of 256 suitably interconnected p-
channel transistors. Figure-8 illustrates an image of one of these
circuits, and Figure-9 shows the various components of the
display.

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Figure 8: Image of a printed plastic backplane circuit designed for an electronic paper like display. The circuit incorporates several
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hundred interconnected organic transistors.

Figure 9: Exploded view of a paper like display

A completed display (total thickness: 1mm) consists of a

transparent front-plane electrode of ITO on PET and a thin,
unpatterned layer of flexible electronic ‘ink’ mounted against a
sheet that supports square pixel electrode pads and pin-outs; these
pixel pads attach, via a conductive adhesive, to the backplanes.
Each transistor functions as a switch that locally controls the
colour of the ‘ink’ that consists of small spheres which are filled
with smaller (white) charged spheres and a coloured (black)
liquid (Figure 9).

Transistors in a given column have connected gates, and those in

a given row have connected source electrodes. Applying a voltage
to a column (gate) and a row (source) electrode turns on the
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transistor located at this column and row position. Activating the

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transistor generates an electric field between the front-plane ITO

and the corresponding pixel electrode. Upon application of an
appropriate electric field, the charged (white) spheres move either
toward the top or the bottom of the liquid. When the (white)
spheres are toward the observer, the display looks (white). When
the (white) spheres are at the other side (bottom) of the display,
the colour of the liquid (black) is seen. The spheres and liquid can
be made to be any colour. The contrast is independent of viewing
angle, and significantly better than newsprint.

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 Chapter : 6
Applications

6.1 Sensors
Many different stimuli can be sensed using organic electronics,
including temperature, pressure, light, and chemical identity.
temperature and pressure sensors integrated into an artificial skin
(Figure 10).

Figure 10: “Artificial skin” flexible integrated pressure and temperature sensors
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6.2 Actuators
Actuators have also been made using organic electronics. An
electronic Braille actuator was recently demonstrated (Figure 11),
which provided sufficient stimulus to be read by a blind person.

Figure 11: Braille actuator

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 Chapter : 7
Benefits and Obstacles

 Organic electronics are lighter, more flexible, and less

expensive than their inorganic counterparts.
 They are also biodegradable (being made from carbon).
 This opens the door to many exciting and advanced new
applications that would be impossible using copper or
silicon.
 However, conductive polymers have high resistance and
therefore are not good conductors of electricity.
 In many cases, they also have shorter lifetimes and are much
more dependent on stable environment conditions than
inorganic electronics would be.

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 Chapter : 8
References

 For the topic of seminar

(1) http://www.plastic-electronics2010.com/

 For the figure

(1) http://www.frontiernet.net/Organic%20Electronics
%20Technology/
(2) www.printedelectronics.net/
(3) http://www.plasticlogic.com/

 For the content

(1) http://www.plasticlogic.com/
(2) http://www.frontiernet.net/Organic%20Electronics
%20Technology/
(3) www.printedelectronics.net/
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