Polymer Promise: One Day IT Will All Be Organic

摘要

An all-polymer semiconductor sounds almost like a contradiction in terms because we generally think of plastics as being completely non-conducting as far as electricity is concerned—hence their everyday use as insulation for cables, casings, and sockets. An all-polymer visual display unit sounds equally implausible, since the stimulated emission of light is the province of inorganic materials such as doped metal phosphors. Yet some polymers can conduct and some can emit light, and what paper #2 reports is their bringing together to create the first all-polymer device. It is the work of Richard Friend, Henning Sirringhaus, and Nir Tessler of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, England, and it brings the "organic" computer of the future one step closer.