Organic electronics is a field of materials science centered around organic materials with desirable electronic properties such as conductivity.
It’s the presence of carbon that makes an organic material, and therefore organic electronics, “organic.”
In contrast with conventional electronics made from inorganic materials such as silicon or metals, organic electronics are made up of carbon-based molecules and polymers.
The use of organic materials gives electronics designers access to a wider range of material properties such as flexibility or high thermal stability. As manufacturing techniques improve, the inherently lower cost of carbon promises cheaper electronics in the long run.
Organic semiconductors (OSCs) are receiving increasing attention these days because they have many attractive properties – including light weight, low-cost production, low-temperature processing, mechanical flexibility, and abundant availability – that distinguish them from their conventional inorganic counterparts.
Another attractive property of OSCs is that they can be processed using simple solution processing techniques (e.g., ink-jet printing, reel-to-reel fabrication), making the fabrication of electronic devices much easier and cheaper.
Experts in this field believe that organic electronics could be a technological revolution for the production of more ecological and cheaper semiconductors, equipped with more properties, notably for energy recovery, display (which has begun in televisions and flexible computer screens and smartphones) and lighting.
In the automotive market, in particular, flexible hybrid electronics, combining printed and traditional ultrathin, silicon-based electronics, are making major inroads.
Cadillac’s Escalade was fitted with the first curved OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display in the automotive industry. Featuring twice the pixel density of a 4K television and supplied by LG Electronics, this major technology breakthrough used plastic OLED-based digital technology to provide two infotainment screens and an instrument panel to display a wealth of audio, video and navigation content.
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