Funding Accelerates Shift From Lab to Fab for Organic Semiconductors

More than 500 engineers, researchers, business leaders and investors from all over the world are expected to meet in Frankfurt at the end of September 2008 to report progress and discuss future directions in the organic electronics and organic semiconductor industries.

Over the past eight years more than $1,500 million has been invested in this technology by US and European VCs and governments. In some areas of the technology, Europe is outspending the US by 3 to 1. This investment has created a number of European companies such as Polymer Vision, Plastic Logic, Konarka, and Nanoident, that are in the process of launching their first products based on organic electronics. Historically this funding has been directed towards technology development but an increasing proportion is being used to establish large-scale manufacturing capability. Last year alone Plastic Logic received more than $100 million in investment to build the first the organic transistor fab.

With an increasing number of applications now moving towards commercialisation, the theme of this year's conference is 'From Lab to Fab'. Industry keynote speakers, include Gildas Sorin, CEO of Novaled, Jeremy Burroughes, CTO of Cambridge Display Technology, Edzer Huitema, CTO of Polymer Vision, and Christoph Brabec, CTO of Konarka Technologies, each of whom will present technical and commercial progress. This year OSC also has Sir Robin Saxby, Founder and Chairman of ARM, a leading semiconductor IP company, to present how ARM made the successful transition from start-up to global standard.

This major and long established annual conference will take place at the Frankfurt Messe, Frankfurt, Germany, from 29 September to 1 October 2008. The Organic Semiconductor Conference (OSC-08) provides an international forum for expert discussions on the latest research and development in organic semiconductor technologies.

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