Petrolchemical-Derived Organic and Hybrid Materials for Integrated Printed and Flexible Electronics "iFPE"

Flexible and printed organic electronics has the potential to become a significant industry within the next decade, with much of the growth being fuelled by novel applications impossible with existing inorganic electronics due to cost and processability limitations. However, the growth of this industry is currently limited by the performance of the existing materials base, particularly organic semiconductors and dielectrics, effective integration of basic circuit "building blocks", poor prototype metrics, and negligible introduction in the supply chain. In this work, we have proposed the synthesis of several new organic materials for printed electronics. This collaborative effort will involve the systematic synthesis of a variety of organic semiconductors products of the petrolchemical industry such as benzonoid hydrocarbon, heterocycles, and fused heteroarens. Furthermore, we will develop dielectric materials which are typically based on polymeric cores such as polyolefines, polyestes, and polyamides, functionalized with proper penmdands. These materials will be synthesized in sufficient quantities for chemical characterization followed by formulation for printing using different processes. The resulting films will be tested in a transistor architecture to evaluate charge transport as well as characterized by multiple techniques including microscopy, spectroscopy, and crystallography. Once the fundamental transport and photophysical behaviour of these molecules is understood, we intend to incorporate the materials combination into more complex circuits which are the units for electronic device fabrication.