[MANA E-BULLETIN Vol.4 - Feature] Next Generation Innovative Organic Electronics

MANA researchers are integrating flexible organic devices for functional logic circuits to process data.
Research in organic electronics has a long history with major breakthroughs including the serendipitous discovery of conducting polymers in the mid-1970s, the implications of which were recognized with the Noble Prize in Chemistry to Heeger, MacDiarmid and Shirakawa in 2000. This and related research on organic materials for applications in electronic devices led to the birth and proliferation of touch screens of smart phones, organic photovoltaic devices, and the dawn of flexible organic electronic devices that can be worn, like a suit and tie. “The potential of flexible organic materials for fabricating sensors, displays and sources of tunable light, for example, is the driving force pushing research in this area of materials science,” says Yutaka Wakayama, an expert in organic electronics and Deputy Director, MANA. “The challenge facing the organic electronics community is to integrate flexible devices to enable functional, and useful data processing for practical applications such as logic operations and switching. Solving these issues has been the driving force for my research over the last decade or so.”