A UK developed material that keeps plastic electronics bonded to its substrate will be available to the market in a year.
The surface treatment is aimed at removing one of the differences between vacuum processes and solution processes plastic electronics: delamination, where the semiconductor fails to stick and peels away from its substrate.
"Sputtering [in vacuum] gives good adhesion to a substrate. Printing is mildly adhesive and even just flexing can be a problem. Definitely scratching is an issue," Dr Jon-Paul Griffiths, co-founder of Oxford Advanced Surfaces (OAS), told Electronics Weekly.
OAS teamed up with PETEC (Printable Electronics Technology Centre) and the University of Manchester-based OMIC (Organic Materials Innovation Centre) with funding from the Technology Strategy Board to develop the coating.
OAS, a University of Oxford spin-out, provides the fundamental technology, named Onto, which is a proprietary family of reactive molecules whose head-ends bonds tenaciously to slippery surfaces.
The tail end can be designed specifically to add a characteristic to the surface underneath, in this to give a strong anchorage to plastic semiconductors.
PETEC is a Sedgefield-based pre-production facility that specialises in turning organic semiconductor research results into production processes.
"We found the interaction with PETEC has been absolutely valuable," said Griffiths, "they are experts in how to process plastic electronics."
OAS and PETEC will now licence the bonding material and the process to apply it.
"PETEC and ourselves will be taking it to market for licensing within the next 12 months," said Griffiths.
How good is it?
According to Griffiths, there are no internationally agreed metrics for plastic electronics adhesion.
"What I can say is that what we have done is take a material with absolutely no adhesion and we apply our material and we apply the electronic material on top and get very much better adhesion," he said. "When you scratch it, there is no delamination away from the scratch."
The operating temperature of the Onto variant exceeds that of plastic electronics, added Griffiths, and that it has been designed not to affect the electronic behaviour of the semiconductors.