Bottom-up organic integrated circuits | ||
A research team from The Netherlands, Austria, Russia, and Germany announced a breakthrough in the development of organic electronic integrated circuits in the October 16, 2008 issue of the journal Nature. Self-Assembled Monolayer Field Effect Transistors (SAMFETs) were used to build circuits including a 15-bit code generator consisting of over 300 transistors. A critical layer of the SAMFETs consisted of a single molecular layer of quinquethiophene molecules which self-assembled into an ordered two-dimensional crystal. Although they are not as small or as fast as state-of-the-art silicon transistors, the self-assembly of molecules into useful devices is considered the ultimate technology for mass production and this is an important demonstration of how self-assembly can be used in the fabrication of a complex circuit. Organic transistors such as this are most useful in applications where transistors are distributed over a large area such as they are in a display. |