The plastic electronics industry has to find its own space, just as ARM did 20 years ago, Sir Robin Saxby, founding CEO of ARM, told the Plastic Electronics plenary session at Semicon Europa in Dresden this morning.
“Think beyond the possible, then back off to reality,” said Saxby, “you need a stretch goal. You need to look for a new space which no one has thought of. You can't predict where the winds are, often they are not where you think.”
When ARM was being formed people told him it was absurd to think of a RISC processor in phones – RISC was for high-end workstations and servers.
“You must make your enemies your friends,” said Saxby, instancing TI, Motorola and Sharp who all took ARM licenses to sell chip-sets to the mobile phone makers.
He advocated the EU collaborative R&D programmes as a good way to go and recommended finding like-minded people in large companies who were pursuing plastic options.
Saxby advised: “It always takes longer than you think, and it always takes more money. It's better to get money from customers than VCs, so look for routes to money – royalties, selling tools, anything. You've got to get someone to give you something as soon as possible to preserve your credibility.”
Prof Paul Heremans of Imec thought the question for plastic electronics is: Chips or Displays? In chips the advantages over silicon could be ruggedness and flexibility where the volumes are “enormous”.
Heremans sees possibilities in printed discretes. “We're looking for complementarity between silicon and plastic. Could we print discretes on a PCB as complementary to silicon circuits?” he asked.
Prof Eicke Weber of Fraunhofer thought organic solar cells was a promising area for plastics because the greatest efficiency achievable by silicon solar cells is 28-29% whereas organic cells have 30%, 40% or 50% efficiency and, theoretically could achieve 80%. However there are major obstacles – like long-term reliability, said Weber.
To get this industry to work, there's no point relying on the politicians, said Saxby. “This is something the industry has to do itself,” he said, “there's money available for good ideas.”
David Manners, Dresden