Press release: Organic Semiconductor Industry Awards



Back to OEC-07		Press release Organic electronics: Vision becomes reality OEC-06 largest event for this emerging technology worldwide this year The fourth Organic Electronics Conference and Exhibition (OEC-06) was held on 25-27 September in Frankfurt, Germany. OEC-06 presented latest research, first products, new Government funding and winners of the first Organic Semiconductor Industry Awards. "With over 300 delegates from 18 countries, representing more than 200 organisations, and 28 exhibitors, OEC-06 is the largest event in this industry this year," said Craig Cruickshank, CEO of cintelliq and conference director of OEC. Organic electronics is seen as an essential emerging technology for Europe and during the plenary session of the conference both the European Commission and the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) reinforced their long-term support. The European Commission is set to fund organic electronics with a budget of Euro 50 million under the forthcoming 7th Framework Programme, first calls are expected to begin in January 2007, according to Augusto De Albuquerque, Information Society and Media Directorate-General, European Commission. Dr Gerhard Finking, German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) said that organic electronics is an integral and important part of the German High Tech Strategy Program. The presentation of record-breaking progress in materials, novel device architectures and printing, demonstrated the continued technical progress being made across the industry. Merck and Mitsubishi Chemicals separately presented the latest developments on high mobility solution-processible organic semiconductor materials. Mitsubishi Chemicals presented recent progress on small molecule materials while Merck presented recent progress on polymer materials. Novaled presented recent record-breaking results of their P-I-N OLED technology, in particular red devices with greater than 120,000 hours lifetime at 500Cd/m2. ORFID presented progress on high-current organic transistors based on a vertical device architecture. Xaar took the opportunity to discuss their work with Thin Film Electronics on ink-jet printing of non-volatile polymer memory. The combination of new materials and large area printing processes is enabling a whole range of new organic electronic devices to be developed, such as displays, sensors, memory, transistors, and photovoltaics. This provides the opportunity to develop new applications that will be - thin, lightweight, flexible, and ultimately low cost. Applications such as smart and intelligent packaging, flexible displays, disposable sensors, brand protection as well as interactive games are now beginning to reach the market. In the OEC-06 exhibition printed systems showed the first available printed organic electronics product - 'hurrafussball' - a simple interactive game. PolyIC took the opportunity to show the first 'mile-long' roll-to-roll printed 13.56 MHz polymer RF tag (radio frequency tag). The company expects to launch its first product in 2007. "These two announcements clearly represent a major milestone in the transition from research and development to volume products," said Wolfgang Mildner, chairman of OE-A and Managing Director of PolyIC. The OE-A presented a multifunctional game board and technology demonstrators combining multiple organic devices developed by nine members of the OE-A, demonstrating the potential of integrated organic electronics. Exceptional achievements in the development and commercialisation were honoured at OEC-06 by the 2006 Organic Semiconductor Industry Awards (OSIA), sponsored by cintelliq in association with OSA Direct. The awards were presented by Craig Cruickshank, cintelliq CEO, at the conference Gala Dinner: Research and development award: Winner: Merck KGaA, Germany Start-up of the year award: Winner: Plextronics. USA Best peer-review paper award: Winner: CERC-AIST, Japan More information about the OSIA awards is available on the cintelliq web site. Next year's Organic Electronics Conference and Exhibition (OEC-07) will be held 24-26 September 2007 at the Sheraton- Conference Centre, Frankfurt-Airport, Germany. 4 October 2006