Printed Organic Electronics on Flexible Foil: Circuit Design and Emerging Applications

This brief provides an overview of recent advancements in printed flexible electronics, focusing on both circuit design and emerging applications of organic thin film transistors, including radio-frequency identification, organic sensors and their electronic interfaces. Printed circuits are low cost and large area, and thus enable applications where silicon-based circuits are either too expensive or need to be complemented by flexible circuitry distributed on large surfaces. Circuit topologies, design guidelines and tradeoffs are discussed with reference to state-of-the-art printed organic digital/analog building blocks enabling complex systems. Both technology and design challenges along with application bottlenecks are pointed out. Several printed organic systems on flexible substrate are also discussed as representative examples, namely a 13-MHz RFID tag, an ambient light sensor, and a large-area pressure sensor.