This document discusses polytronics, which involves making plastics electrically conductive by doping them with impurities. Certain plastics have inherent conductive and light-emitting properties. Conjugated polymers can also gain conductivity through chemical doping and have alternating double and single bonds along the polymer chain. This allows for applications like electronic paper, plastic batteries, artificial muscles using electroactive polymers, and OLED displays using organic thin films. Polytronics provides opportunities for cheap, flexible and lightweight electronic products printed on plastic substrates.

3. POLYTRONICS

4. WHAT IS POLYTRONICS…??
 Polymer + electronics
 Influence of plastic in electronics
 Certain plastic(polymers) have conductive & light
emitting property
 providing the basis of a new technology for flat–panel
displays with excellent visibility

5. PLASTIC ELECTRONICS
 Plastics could be made to conduct through doping(adding
impurities)
 depending on their chemical structure plastics may exhibit
electrically conductive, semi-conductive or insulating properties
 Chemical composition of plastics or conjugated polymers is
changed by doping to make them conducting
 Polymers such as polythiophenes, oligothiophenes and
pentacene have conductive property
 electronic behavior of these polymers is very different from
inorganic semiconductors such as silicon or gallium arsenide

6. ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY
Polymer
Electronically
Intrinsically
conductive
polymers
Ionically

7. CONJUGATED POLYMERS
 Gain conductivity
through “conjugation”
 Polymer molecules have
alternating double bond
and single bond
 Pathway for free
electron charge carriers
 Doped with oxidising or
reducing agents
 Conductivity btw conv:
polymers & metals

8. MOSTLY USED CONJUGATED POLYMERS
 They can emit light
 Conductivity can be varied
 Generate current
 Ability to store an electric
charge

9. MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUES
 Printing polymer circuits is known as Polymer
Mechatronics or Flexonics
 Developed by university of California in Berkeley
 No need of “assemble and build” technique

10. PRINTING YOUR CIRCUITS
 Polymer
mechatronics or
flexonics
 The entire product
would come out of the
printer
 Electronic circuits
embedded in the
product itself

11. STEPS…

12. FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS
»Talk and Trash« Cell Phone

13. ELECTRONIC PAPER
 paper is made of a thin layer
(coating) of conductive synthetic
material
 coating contains capsules filled
with oil, with floating black and
white pigment parts in it.
 text and pictures are displayed by
electronic ink or e-Ink.
 use plastic substrate and
electronics to make the display
flexible.
 text or the image will remain on the
electronic paper, even when the
reader is switched off

14. USED IN : Electronic price tags, Bus/Train station timetables,
Electronic billboards…
ADVANTAGE : handy, light size ,Inexpensive ,reusable ,portable…
 electronic ink
 electronics required to
generate the pattern of
text and images
Electronic paper
Front plane
backplane

15. PLASTIC BATTERIES
 Developed by Hopkins university
 Positive and negative electrodes are
thin, foil-like plastic sheets
 Electrolyte is a polymer gel film
 Does not contain hazardous chemicals
as in Ni-Cd cells
 Can be recharged and reused a
number of times without loss of power
USED IN :military and space applications , small consumer devices

16. ELECTROACTIVE POLYMERS
 Polymers which can be to bend,
stretch, twist or contract under
the influence of electric charge
 Have the potential to function as
artificial muscles
 Implanted into the body
 Have sensor, battery &EAP
valves
 Sensor activated with chemical
change
 delivered to specific tissues at
specific doses and times.
Artificial muscles Smart pills

17. OLEDS
 sandwiching organic thin films
between two conductors.
 Emissive displays
 Wider viewing angle(upto 160°)
 Can be read even in bright
sunlight
 Preferred choice for lighter, thinner
and flexible display screens
USED IN : televisions, laptop, cellular phones, digital video cameras,
DVD players, PDAs, car stereos

18. LEDs remain functionality even
under tight bending radius

19. ADVANTAGES
 freedom in design
 cheap foil substrates
 light-weight
 compact portable products
 cost-effective assembly with reel-to-reel processing
 environment-friendly
 printing instead of lithography
 Scale :printing can be done with almost unlimited length

20. DISADVANTAGES
 Need low temperature processes
 Substrates are not flat and have many defects
 Plastics are highly permeable for water and oxygen and
offer little protection for electronic components

21. FUTURE
 Rollable or foldable thin film
computers
 Electronic newspaper which
continually updated
 Fruit and vegetables labels
 Invisible chips will one day be
integrated in paper, postage
stamps, bank notes etc with
intelligence

22. CONCLUSION
 provide a cheap method for the fabrication of simple low-cost electronic products
 Polymer materials offer a high degree of freedom and flexibility in the design of the
materials, devices and systems
 Scarcity of semiconductors and power compels the new generation to move to
polytronics.
 “THE IDEA OF POLYTRONICS IS NOT TO REPLACE SILICON TECHNOLOGY BUT TO DEVELOP
NEW APPLICATION IN CONJUNCTION WITH SILICON”