Abstract

The advance in organic electronics is pushing some applications into the market. Such applications are full color display, printable (disposable?) electronics, and solar cells. Also, since laser is almost the only application (besides PCs) that sounds attractive almost to all, they are being considered as potential target application too. In fact, the reports in 1996 of lasing [1, 2] from semiconducting polymers brought the organic semiconductor field to the attention of the wide scientific community which on top of appreciating the maturity of these materials also expected to see electrically driven plastic laser appearing soon after that. Needless to say, an electrically pumped organic laser has not been reported yet and even the applications that are already knocking on our doors are progressing at a much too slow paste. After all there is a vast academic and industrial know how in semiconductor devices and we are dealing here with organic semiconductors – so why? In a nut shell the answer is: the term "organic semiconductors" has two words of equal importance and if we want to succeed we must treat them as semiconductors but account for the fact that they are organic.

© 2007 IEEE