Printable dielectrics set to boom

Until recently, the focus of materials development for thin-film, organic printable (TOP) electronics was focused primarily on conductors and semiconductors.

However, as this rapidly growing area of electronics becomes more sophisticated, there is a need for new or enhanced dielectric materials for both processors and memories.

The drivers here are demands for higher performance TOP circuitry and especially the need to math dielectrics to semiconductors to achieve it. In particular, the considerable current interest in an organic version of CMOS may well need novel dielectrics to make it work.

Other factors that are driving the need for new kinds of dielectrics include the special requirements of flexible and printed electronics in its many forms.

Silicon dioxide has been the mainstay of the semiconductor industry when it comes to dielectrics and will be used in TOP electronics too, but there is now considerable research and commercial development of dielectric materials that might be better suited to TOP electronics.

These include various metal oxides and nitrides, polymers, dielectric inks, nanomaterials and even novel high k-materials.

That such materials are important both strategically for the future development of TOP electronics and as revenue generators is shown in the list of firms and research institutes working in this space. These include BASF, DuPont, Evonik, Merck, Polyera, Camdbrige University, Max Planck Institute, PARC and University of Groningen.

A NanoMarkets report provides a guide to the opportunities in this space. It identifies and quantifies the opportunities for dielectrics in TOP electronics. It discusses the various applications in TOP electronics that are currently calling for novel dielectric materials. It also identifies and compares the major candidate materials for this role and how they fit with various system architectures, production technologies and the semiconductors used in TOP electronics.

The report also includes the product strategies of major firms that are involved and a review of R&D and commercialisation efforts of TOP dielectrics, as well as an eight-year forecast broken out by types of materials and applications.

Key findings include:

• 2010 is when the TOP dielectrics business will begin to take shape. For TOP electronics to reach its full commercial potential, materials firm will need to deliver novel dielectrics. These dielectrics will play a key role in enabling flexible backplanes to support more than just low-refresh rate e-paper displays and will also be critical to creating thin-film solar on metal foil substrates.

  In the future, OTFT-based UHF RFID may also depend on a better match between the semiconductor and dielectric materials used.

• Dielectrics are more than just a revenue source. They also provide for sales of other types of materials. NanoMarkets believes that those firms which plan to offer dielectrics matched to the conductor and semiconductor materials in their portfolio will have a distinct market advantage over those that do not. BASF, Evonik, Merck/EMD and Polyera are well positioned in this regard.

  Users will come to companies such as these to buy complete materials sets to ensure high performance of new thin-film transistor, memory and sensor devices.

• Today’s most common dielectrics require high-temperature deposition and are therefore not well matched with next-generation TOP electronics with its emphasis on solution processing on flexible substrates. As a result, there are intense development efforts for solution-processable dielectrics.

  This work involves highly novel materials such as water-based silicon oxides, barium titanate nanocomposites, and 'hybrimers', and its importance is emphasised by the involvement of major firms such as DuPont, Dow Corning and Honeywell.