Imec researchers create simple plastic microprocessor

A group from Imec in Belgium succeeded in integrating 4,000 organic transistors to create the microprocessor, which measures 2cm² and is built on top of flexible plastic foil.

Although plastic electronics have been used in some prototype LED displays and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, they have been limited to a handful of organic transistors performing simple control logic.

Wide-scale adoption of plastic electronics promises devices that are cheaper, lighter, more robust and flexible compared with their silicon counterparts.

However, they can never compete with silicon in terms of performance, because the organic materials fundamentally limit the mobility of electrons and thus the speed of operation.

Nevertheless, project lead Jan Genoe of Imec believes plastic electronics have huge potential for a range of applications where silicon is simply not cost effective or robust enough.

‘Silicon processors have become very advanced but they are expensive — there’s a minimum unit cost, somewhere around €1 [£0.88]. You could envisage using a simple processor working at low speed, where you would not be able to use silicon,’ he told The Engineer.