Center for organic and polymer electronics placed in LinköpingJanuary 20, 2003Linköping University in Sweden is to host a new national center for research on organic and polymer electronics (=plastic conducting materials). The Foundation for Strategic Research (SFF) is giving SEK 31 million over five years to a Center for Organic Electronics, COE. The allocation can be seen as testimony to the quality of the university's research in the field, since one condition for SFF centers is that they must be world leaders in their respective field. The new center is to develop organic electronics by applying printing methods: electronic components printed in the same way as printing ink on paper, which makes inexpensive large-scale production possible. It is also possible to work with so-called self-organizing nanostructures, such as polymers that, when printed on a surface, organize themselves in different layers as they dry from a liquid to a solid phase. One possible application for organic electronics is for solar cells. If efficient solar cells can be made of conductive plastic materials sometime in the future, then solar cells could be produced in printing presses and be fastened to the roofs of buildings as easily as tar paper. Another application is plastic materials driven by low-voltage current that in laboratory tests have been able to generate as much light as a fluorescent lamp. If they deliver what they promise, they could replace fluorescent lighting, which requires both a vacuum and mercury in production and high-voltage current in their energy supply. Several sections of Linköping University will be taking part in COE's activities. They range from spectroscopy in Linköping and Norrköping (Professor William Salaneck, IFM, and Associate Professor Mats Fahlman, ITN), production and studies of patterned components (Professor Magnus Berggren, ITN, and Professor Olle Ingan'¤s, IFM), theoretical modeling (Professor Sven Stafström, IFM), system simulation (Associate Professor Robert Forchheimer, ISY) to production methods (ACREO, Norrköping). Researchers at Chalmers Institute of Technology (Göteborg), the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), and Lund University, will also be involved in the work. In connection with COE Linköping University has also been granted SEK 3,8 million by the Swedish Research Council. This grant is earmarked for a printing press for electronic paper. Various printing methods are combined in a unique printing machine used for development and research into production processes for organic electronics. COE will be headed by Olle Ingan'¤s, with Magnus Berggren as coordinator at the Norrköping Campus. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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