Organic electronics grow to meet society's needs

The Organic Electronics Association (OE-A) defines organic electronics in the "OE-A roadmap for organic and printed electronics," as a platform technology that "enables multiple applications that are based on organic electronics but vary widely in their specifications."

The OE-A has identified the key trends that will drive modern societies in the next decades as: mobility; water, food and environment; security; health and demographics; industry; and energy.

Organic electronics will rise to meet the challenges of these trends, based on a combination of new materials and cost-effective, large area production processes that open up new fields of application. "Thin, light-weight, flexible and environmentally friendly—that's what organic electronics means," according to OE-A. As such it "enables a wide range of electrical components that can be produced and directly integrated in low-cost reel-to-reel processes."

The OE-A roadmap presents forecasts for the market entry on larger scales—product generations—for applications in flexible batteries, printed memory (View table) and RFID, organic photovoltaics (View table), TFT backplanes and sensors (View table), and smart objects. At the same time, the association recognizes that there is a need to "continue the work at the roadmap, as it is planned, to follow the actual trends."