Applications

The flat panel display market for TV's, smartphones, tablet PC's is the first to benefit from organic semiconductors which enable radical, new form-factor products.

The market for ultra-thin, lightweight, and large-area printed electronics is growing rapidly with current estimates at over $5 billion for 2012 and with the global market expected to be $45 billion by 2016.

Continued growth will be driven by markets disrupted by the use of flexible substrates. This offers opportunities enabled by the low-cost solution printing of full-feature electronics at ambient temperatures and from electronic devices integrated into novel systems or form factors. These opportunities for printed and organic electronics include;

  • Organic TFT backplanes for EPD, OLED and LCD displays

  • Organic photovoltaic cells (OPV) for mobile and stationary use

  • Printed RFID for brand protection, logistics and NFC

  • Organic memory devices for consumer goods

  • Flexible batteries to power mobile devices

  • Organic sensors for single use devices

The most significant area of opportunity for Smartkem and printed organic electronics is the manufacture of backplane circuits for flexible displays, where the development of a new class of organic semiconductor formulations and their use in organic TFT (OTFT) arrays will allow a new class of display backplane technology with the potential for integration into a low temperature manufacturing processes suitable for low cost, large area and flexible, robust substrates.

Smartkem’s new high performance OSC materials and resultant devices will open up new possibilities by offering the required backplane drive performance for a range of display frontplane modes such as OLED, LCD and e-paper. Display manufacturers such as Panasonic, LG, Sony and Samsung have stated their intent to move to printed OTFT backplanes and make the transition to lower cost and conformal displays.