Polymer Electronics

Polymer Electronics
Developments in organic chemistry have ensured that plastics now have a huge range of applications. Plastics are diverse and easy to process.

The discovery of conducting plastics will lead to an equally broad range of applications in electronics. Philips is working on two types of plastic electronics: the plastic chip and the PolyLED.

The supermarket checkout has no conveyor belt to put the shopping on. In its place, there is a gate alongside the checkout, which the shopping trolleys pass through.

Once past the gate, the customer is presented with the bill without having unloaded the shopping. This is because, instead of a barcode, the product packaging bear a small memory chip containing product information that is read by a computer remotely via the gate.

Image is a prototype of a segmented display. The presented prototypes are all orange. The display shows a high contrast and a high brightness, and use little power.