Electronic polymers continuous processing technology

Can they be continuously processable One of the important motivations for polymer-based electronic devices is that the polymers are compatible for continuous processing technology, such as roU-to-roll and ink-jet printing. A series of time-consuming labor work for polymer preparation will undermine its competitiveness to other rival materials. 

Data interpretation and processing can be complicated. In addition, software to handle hyphenated methodologies are still under development, and many laboratories find it more convenient to write their own software. As a result, most hyphenated polymer separation instrumentation are limited presently to research laboratories rather than to plant environments. Continued developments in digital electronics, laser-based detector technology, and computer data acquisition and processing will result eventually in easy to use, automated hyphenated instrumentation for process and quality control. 

Polymer radiation chemistry is a key element of the electronics industry, in that polymer materials that undergo radiation induced changes in solubility are used to define the individual elements of integrated circuits. As the demands placed on these materials increases due to increased density, complexity and miniaturization of devices, new materials and chemistry will be required. This necessitates continued efforts to understand fundamental polymer radiation chemical processes, and continued development of new radiation sensitive materials that are applicable to VLSI Technology. 

Already solution-processable conducting polymers have been used to develop fiber products that may be used in the applications described earlier. In one commercial operation (Santa Fe Science and Technology, Inc.), continuous lengths of PAn fibers are made by a wet-spinning operation. The continuous nature of the operations enables control of fiber diameter and electronic properties. Conductivities of... 

---