Cambridge Researchers Break New Ground in Printed Transistor Technology

Electronics technology is a rapidly evolving field. Sizes of devices appear to shrink every day, computing power is continually improving, and the consumer electronics market seems to release new products that amaze the population with new features constantly. An emerging technology that has yet to take off is printed electronics. The idea and functionality have been around for more than a few years now, however, due to some shortcomings it has prevented it from fully taking off. At the heart of all new electronics technology is transistors, and the lack of a reliable and quality printed transistor is the reason for the area’s shortcomings.

Transistors are the fundamental building block of all our electronics. In digital circuits, they act as switches and in analog circuits they provide amplification. Both extremely important to how circuits and systems function. When designing with transistors, there are many characteristics to consider. A few of which include power handling, noise contribution to the overall system, and gain also known as the beta in bipolar transistors.

With that said, printed transistor technology has been below par. Their mobility has been severely limited which in turn limits applications they can be used for. Plus, their reliability and lifetime have suffered. These are the characteristics in which the Cambridge researchers claim to have improved upon recently.

Building off of current organic printed transistors, their findings show that power consumption and noise characteristics show vast improvements. More importantly, the transistors demonstrate good reliability over extended periods of time. Whereas some technologies have struggled to last days without their characteristics changing, the researchers claim the transistors have lasted several months while demonstrating the same performance. The authors of the study, Dr. Chen Jiang and Dr. David Hasko, are both very optimistic and excited about the technology moving forward.

Printed electronics can offer many advantages to current technologies. For one, the process of making electronics is much shorter and offers a lot of cost savings. For example, printed electronics is an additive manufacturing process compared to the photolithography based processes used in the industry today. The photolithography process uses materials that do not end up in the final products, and the entire process takes multiple steps. On the other hand, it can also help advance flexible electronics and bioelectronics. Overall, if the Cambridge researchers’ findings continue to prove reliable, the tech industry can begin to benefit from low cost, ease of production, and ease of integration into flexible form factors.