By Rakesh Adhikesavan Boobalan Thiru

Since the seventies of the 20th century, electrically conducting organic materials and semiconducting polymers were investigated. For the merits in this research area, the Nobel Prize 2000 for Chemistry was awarded to Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid und Hideki Shirakawa. With the deployment of such materials for electronic applications, the words "polymer electronics" were shaped.

The electronic properties of these plastics also called functional polymers - are, at first sight, quite astonishing. They are derived from their chemical structure, which contains so-called "conjugated polymer main chains", consisting of a strictly alternating sequence of single and double bonds

Printed electronics consists of a combination of different devices, just as classical electronics. The most important devices are: Transistor: organic field effect transistor to control current and voltage Diode: organic devices to control and rectify current Capacitor: organic device to store charge and smoothing of alternating voltage Inverter: most simple logic device made of transistors to invert an incoming signal Ring Oscillator: organic device, consists of transistors to produce an oscillating signal Rectifier: device build from diodes and capacitors to rectify an electrical alternating signal

The transistor is the basic building block for integrated circuits. A typical polymer transistor contains 4 layers: On the substrate, there is a first contact layer, which is structured to form the base of a transistor with two contacts: source and drain. These contacts are covered by the polymer semiconductor. The next layer is the polymer insulator, which separates the gate contact layer form the semiconductor. The next layer is the polymer insulator, which separates the gate contact layer form the semiconductor. The top layer is the gate contact layer.

The capacitor consists of two electrodes which are separated by a dielectric (insulator). Capacitors are able to store energy in form of charge and voltage. In a DC circuit, a capacitor acts like an infinite resistance. In an AC circuit, the capacitive resistance increases with frequency. Due to those properties, capacitors are used in a variety of circuits such as resonance circuits, analog filters, and rectifiers.

A polymer inverter consists of two organic transistors. The output level "out" is always the inverted input level "in". Inverters are the basic circuits for the implementation of logical functions like NAND, NOR, NOT. Every computer is built up of many complex compositions of these logical functions containing thousands of inverters.

The ring oscillator is a relatively simple circuit consisting of a series of several inverters. The output of each inverter stage is connected to the input of the following stage. The output of the last stage is connected to the input of the first one. Supplied with a DC voltage, it starts to oscillate at a certain frequency. Therefore, it can be used in integrated circuits to generate a clock signal

Rectifiers are necessary to convert alternating currents into direct currents. The simplest form of a rectifier is to load a capacitor over a diode. As the diode allows current flow only into one direction, the input AC voltage causes into a pulsating DC current flow through the diode, which loads the capacitor. At the output a smooth DC voltage drops across the load resistor.

Semiconducting polymers have intrigued researchers since their discovery 20 years ago because of their unique electronic properties, which straddle the fence between those of traditional inorganic materials and organics such as photoactive biomolecular materials. Now these polymers are poised to enter the commercial marketplace as active elements in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for displays.

Presentation By, Rakesh Adhikesavan CSE10152 Boobalan Thiru CSE10110