Organic electronic at Fraunhofer IPMS

In this paper we present the different work topics covered by the Fraunhofer IPMS to develop new technologies and applications based on organic electronics. The IPMS is working on both OFET-circuit development and OLED-fabrication technologies. One core skill of the IPMS is the design and mask generation for the development of customer-defined integrated circuits in silicon technology. The design procedure of IPMS has been extended to technologies with active organic materials like OLED and OFET. The procedure starts with the schematic design of circuit diagram with p-OFET only. Then the design setup for a given OFET process flow has to be defined. This design setup for the Cadence system includes the development of design-rules and implementation of design-rule check, parameter extractions for circuit simulations and verification as well as the definition of test structures for in-line and end-of-line measurements. All layers for mask definition of lithographic masks, shadow masks as well as print image data are included. This covers all mask types typically used in OFET/OLED-technologies and guarantees data integrity of the entire mask set. IPMS has applied this procedure to our bottom-gate bottom-source/drain OFET-technology and the reel-to-reel process on flexible foils developed at Fraunhofer IZM-M. Inverter and ring-oscillator circuits designed at IPMS are fabricated using these technologies by IPMS (see fig. 1) and IZM-M respectively. Thus IPMS offers the complete development of circuit design and mask generation for technologies based on organic semiconductors.