Recent advances in the electrical performance of organic semiconductor materials position organic electronics as a viable alternative to technologies based on

amorphous silicon (a-Si). Traditionally a-Si-based transistors, which are used as the

switching and amplifying components in modern electronics [1], require energy

intensive batch manufacturing techniques. These include material deposition and

patterning using a number of high-vacuum and high-temperature processing steps

in addition to several subtractive lithographic patterning and mask steps, limiting

throughput. Although this allows for the cost of individual transistors to be extremely low because of the high circuit density that can be obtained, the actual cost

per unit area is very high. Alternatively, organic semiconductors can be formulated

into inks and processed using solution-based printing processes [2–5]. This allows

for large-area, high-throughput, low-temperature fabrication of organic field-effect

transistors (OFETs), enabling not only a reduction in cost but also the migration

to flexible circuitry, as lower temperatures enable the use of plastic substrates.

The potential applications for these OFETs are numerous, ranging from flexible

backplanes in active matrix displays to item-level radiofrequency identification tags.