by Adrienne Lallo/Lallo Communications
DuPont Research Fellow Graciela Blanchet, a 19-year company veteran, and her co-workers are shepherding the printing world’s transition from the analog to the digital era. The use of laser ablation to print on bendable surfaces using only organic components will literally reshape the way information is displayed, creating a world where information can be shared inexpensively, any time, anywhere.
Lightweight flexible polymeric displays have all sorts of potential uses. According to Graciela, these include radio frequency identification tags such as those used for automatically paying tolls; smart cards; and digital displays that can be rolled up for storage. In addition, other appealing opportunities are advertising – particularly in hard to reach locations — high-resolution proofs that can be easily corrected prior to printing on a press, product information on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus.
One of the more ambitious ideas is electronic paper, “a medium that displays a newspaper or book page and then instantaneously loads the next page when desired,” she suggests.
“Eventually, we envision this technology being printed as easily as newsprint from rolls, and being inexpensive enough that the electronic devices can be thrown away,” Graciela says. “A disposable electronic device is truly novel.” It’s a market expected to be worth billions.
The materials used for printing organic electronic devices have fairly simple structures, borrowing from Graciela’s own pioneering work in color proofing and color filter products. A multi-layer donor film, with ejection, heating and printable layers – i.e. a conductor, dielectric or semiconductor – is sandwiched against a plastic substrate. A laser beam is used to selectively transfer, say, a conducting layer from the donor film onto the plastic substrate.
Printing organic electronic devices is exciting because of its distinct advantages over silicon-based electronics. Stiff silicon requires scrupulously clean rooms and high temperatures. It can cost $3 billion to put a new chip manufacturing facility into production. In contrast, Graciela and her colleagues hope that organic materials may yield to a room temperature, dry and high-speed process at considerably less cost.
Leave a Reply