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The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

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Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#31

Post by DoingIsLearning »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

> That said, polymers (soft matter) doesn't do well in heat (or light), so applications are (and will forever be) restricted to low-cost throw-away devices IMO.

I can think of plenty of sterile single-use 'use cases' in Medical Devices where a throw away polymer processor would be useful but an existing semi-conductor processor would not make financial sense to use.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#32

Post by Taniwha »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

any sight of 3d-printable semiconductors I can use to make 3d bulk circuits with?

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#33

Post by [deleted] »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

[deleted]

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#34

Post by cushychicken »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

Don't be ashamed. Transconductance is cool as fuck.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#35

Post by kken »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

The technology used by PragmatIC is not based on organic semiconductors though. The only organic material is the substrate (Kapton, I assume).

The transistors are based on IGZO (Indium Gallium Zink Oxide), which is a relatively new material and is an amorphous high-channel mobility wide band gap material. The transistors are not as fast as LTPS, but have much lower leakage. Since the material does not have to by crystallized, it can be deposited at fairly low temperatures on plastic subtrate.

You may very well regard IGZO as the plastic electronics killer, because it does everything that PTTT/Pentacene etc. was supposed to do. Noble prize? Let's see.

Sadly, IGZO is not a rival to silicon when it comes to power efficiency, speed, and cost per gate. So these MCUs are nice demonstrators, but the use case is doubtful.

IGZO is great for display, large area sensing and possibly memory.

p.s.: Congrats on the research, very interesting paper! I am long out of the field, but still amazed about the progree being made. I wonder, what does the high ionic conductivity mean to device stability, especially if used with a field effect device?

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#36

Post by wbl »

ggm wrote: post #3
olliej wrote: post #2

My reading of this seems to be a matter of them simply reducing the chip complexity (down to 4 bit) so they can obviously have fewer components on the die. Aside from that simplification, I can't find anything actually new techniques. It also continues to annoy me that semiconductor-on-plastic gets labelled as a plastic processor.

Is the cost of the substrate a huge barrier in the field? I recall when gallium arsenide first came to market and when whatever was magic about ibm "copper" and diamond/graphite. Each time, it's wound up highly context specific and frankly not very informative to the market as I saw it. A cheap plastic substrate for low gate count functions might be a niche which fills supply chains in smart disposables, rfid and oth…

GaAs is a workhorse in the RF world and let people replace a lot of vaccuum tubes.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#37

Post by bryanrasmussen »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

>That said, polymers (soft matter) doesn't do well in heat (or light), so applications are (and will forever be) restricted to low-cost throw-away devices IMO.

since I have no knowledge in this area I will ask a question that probably doesn't make sense - would these be useful in objects that were very sturdy and shielded from variations in heat and light - or will shielding cause other problem? I'm pretty much considering high cost outdoors equipment. Or given that it's probably high cost the cost of actually using metal ones would be negligible so it wouldn't make sense to skimp?

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#38

Post by ben_w »

benj111 wrote: post #27
ziftface wrote: post #13

Why would anyone actively work towards "ubiquitous electronics"? That sounds like a nightmare.

Do we not have ubiquitous electronics already? What hasn't got electronics shoved it that could meaningfully use them?

If the cost is low enough, my bathroom mirror, my shower faucet, my locks and keys, my pens and paper.

Might be interested in getting a smart (e-ink?) tattoo, if it doesn't look obvious when it's in a suitable state.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#39

Post by m12k »

Does anyone have a good idea for use cases for these? It seems a lot of use cases for "small, cheap electronics" are already covered by RFID, where you keep the processing "smarts" in the device that reads the RFID. So when do you need actual computation to take part on each tiny chip? Some kind of "smart dust" mesh network? (assuming you can pair these chips with an antenna and power source)

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#40

Post by scoopertrooper »

lmc wrote: post #25
inamberclad wrote: post #6

Great, a thinking banana.

We are all thinking bananas (with a little rounding) [0] [0]: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/how_genetically_related...

Speak for yourself, I haven't had a thought in years. I'm allll banana.
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