Bringing biotechnology to organic electronics
Aims
To understand the potential future role of organic electronics in solving current resource and sustainability issues. Focusing on barriers to adoption and most promising future research areas.
Overview
Dr Alison Stowell and Dr John Hardy, explain:
“Using organic molecules/materials as components of electronic devices can avoid or minimise the use of unsustainable or toxic resources and wasteful practices. Organic components can be derived from renewable resources and used to manufacture degradable devices minimising the negative impacts of traditional electronics waste.
The project looked at how organic electronics could be introduced, focusing on display technologies. The project moved beyond discussing only the technology, but included ethical, philosophical, legal, economic, environmental and societal themes.
Over seven months we engaged with stakeholders in the UK, identifying promising approaches, impacts and important questions for further study. We examined research literature, carried out in depth interviews and a short survey.
We identified a number of technologies as having the most promise for future research including wearable technologies, smart fabrics, packaging, toys and RFID cards.
We discovered many barriers to adoption including a lack of articulation for demand, fragmented markets, and a lack of investment and regulation.
We now have the opportunity to engage more deeply with a network of worldwide contacts that will offer valuable insight to industry and to policy makers on organic electronics. It has focused our plans for future research and clarified reasons for existing barriers to adoption.”
Results and Outcomes
Tab Content: For Partners and Engagement
Alison and John explain the value of their research.
“Engaging in a conversation with key partners in industry helps both to move forward research which can help understand blockers to organic material-based technologies, but also helps to focus the efforts of further research. Our initial research report has been positively received by our project partners, who find it supports some of their own views on the most likely future areas for development, but also helps them understand some of the wider context.
As an example, our report has helped companies such as NeuDrive and ASECCA understand some of the wider social, political and economic drivers that shape their work, as well as gain a richer understanding of some of the product markets and future end of life challenges.
Dr Olga Efemova, Head of Sensor Technology at NeuDrive explained:
“This is a very important study for such companies as NeuDrive Ltd, whose core business is in the area of organic electronic materials (OEM) and organic electronics (OE). There are a few extremely important findings for us as a company, particularly in identifying clear barriers and gaps in the eco-system, in particular for OE-based biosensor technology, as well as the trajectory and research directions that need to be undertaken to fill these gaps.”
Tab Content: For Academics
Learning from the process
“By engaging in research across a number of areas and drawing together staff from multiple disciplines it’s possible to identify, understand and potentially solve problems from new areas (eg. emerging technologies). In this case much of the fundamental research had focused on the science/engineering underpinning the technology but not the wider context. By collaborating across the Management School, Chemistry and Materials Science we were able to both understand the technology and also look at other factors to help focus future collaborative interdisciplinary research projects. In addition to the originally intended output (a structured report), the project has developed a network of potential future contacts for collaborative research, and familiarised the team members with one another’s expertise delivering collaborative publications (1 published [https://doi.org/10.1002/gch3.202000102] and more submitted for peer review)."
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