Transparent Electronics

INVISIBLE deals directly with the emerging concept of Transparent Electronics, where transparent materials with conducting, semiconducting and insulating properties are combined to fabricate innovative products, such as transparent electronic circuits embedded in the home/office window glass or even fully transparent, flexible, foldable and low cost displays! Although these seem like science fiction concepts, they are close to become real due to the advances in novel multifunctional and multicomponent oxides such as Indium-Zinc oxide (IZO), Gallium-Indium-Zinc oxide (GIZO) or Zinc-Tin oxide (ZTO), which can behave as active or passive semiconductor materials. Also, the recent availability of both n- and p-type oxide semiconductors turns possible to think about transparent and low-power consumption CMOS circuits.


A vision of an office in the future, with transparent displays (from www.microsoft.com)







The most relevant materials being used to develop multicomponent oxide (semi)conductors









Concept of see-through electronics, featuring a transparent memory chip (from www.gizmodo.com)





Some of the main advantages ofTransparent Electronicsregarding materials, devices and processes are:

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visible transparency

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large area processing with good uniformity

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low cost (materials and processes)

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low temperature processing

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compatibility with a large number of processing techniques

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smooth surfaces/interfaces

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simple device structure

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robust, stable inorganic materials

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safe, non-toxic materials

It is difficult to find other materials or technologies able to satisfy all these characteristics simultaneously!