Polymer Electronics Systems - Polytronics

Current trends in the development of electronics systems show that the provision of thin flexible components and semiconductors plays a decisive role in the steadily progressing development of highly integrated systems. A new generation of thin flexible electronic systems arises. At Fraunhofer IZM, inline manufacturing processes for polymer electronic systems are developed on production type equipment. A low-cost process for the fabrication of polymer electronics has been developed performed completely on continuous flexible foil substrates with typical thickness of 50 /spl mu/m, enabling low-functional electronic circuit fabrication with IC complexity up to 30 devices at present (2005). This process opens further possibilities to integrate thin silicon circuits and plastic microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) structures in the same fabrication and process environment. Microsystems incorporating fluidic, mechanical, optical, and electrical components are under research and development at present. Key applications scenarios for the polymer electronics predict fully applicable displays, embedded MEMS, labels for broad-band wireless communication, polymer batteries, and photovoltaic cells.