Molecular breakthrough for plastic electronics

The potential applications for flexible plastic electronics are enormous -- from electronic books to radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to electronics for cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and laptop computers -- but certain technological hurdles must be overcome before we see such widespread use. Now a Northwestern University team of materials chemists report a breakthrough in the race to find the right materials for producing cost-effective, high-performance plastic electronics. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).