NCMOS

Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new
products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The
printed electronics market is estimated to be $16B today, growing to $77B by 2023
(IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products
and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Replacing the PCB with
flexible (printed) electronics could overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin
form-factor products. PragmatIC has pioneered the development of printed logic,
corresponding to the printed equivalent of a silicon chip, based on a unipolar NMOS
technology which has now been transferred into pilot-production. Whilst NMOS was the early
technology of choice for the design of Si chips, it was the advent of the more power-efficient
CMOS (complementary logic) which allowed the ongoing evolution of ever-more complex
functions. CMOS is a goal for printed logic since it would allow many existing circuit designs
to be directly implemented. However, unlike Si, printed CMOS requires different and
complementary bulk semiconductor materials, presenting significant process yield,
performance and associated cost challenges for commercialisation. PragmatIC has developed
a device concept which provides many of the benefits of CMOS using a single semiconductor
material. Once proven this can be directly implemented within PragmatIC’s existing
manufacturing processes. The project will explore the new concept, in particular the
development of device models and investigate the limitations of the approach. Once
established, the design platform would be applicable to areas such as flexible display circuits
(row/column drivers, multiplexers), rfid and toys/games. Device models and circuit designs
will be exploited through licensing.