Organic opto-electronics: Present status and future prospects

In recent years, organic semiconductors have been studied extensively because of their potential applications in light emitting diodes, field effect transistors, memory devices and solar cells. Attractive characteristics of organic semiconductors include low temperature processing, mechanical flexibility, low cost and light weight. Already products based on active thin-film organic devices are in the market place, most notably the displays of several mobile electronic appliances. Yet the future holds even greater promise for this technology, with an entirely new generation of ultra lowcost, light-weight and even flexible electronic devices, which will perform functions traditionally accomplished using much more expensive components based on conventional semiconductor materials.