Objective

Opera proposes to coordinate the work of academia and industry in organic & large area electronics [OLAE]

The overall objective of this project is to strengthen the position of Europe as the leading force in OLAE in the world.

At present, the sector of organic & large area electronics in Europe suffers from two main handicaps:

The sector has grown organically without a coherent overall strategy. This leads to duplication of efforts, inefficiency and poor synergy. These are major obstacles to the emergence of truly global force

Organic & large area electronics is still at too early a stage of development to justify massive investment from the end-user industry. The lack of investment hampers growth towards critical mass

The specific objective of this project is to create the conditions for the establishment of a number of coordinated competitiveness clusters in the EU. This would address both problems simultaneously

Organic & Large Area Electronics

Organic & Large Area Electronics will radically change the way we envisage the distribution, storage and transfer of information and energy.

Organic & large area electronics, or often referred to polymer electronics, printed electronics or plastic electronics, is a branch of electronics that deals with [semi-] conductive polymers, plastics, or small molecules. It is called 'organic' electronics because the polymers and small molecules are carbon-based, as opposed to traditional electronics which relies on inorganic conductors such as copper or silicon.

Although the technological foundation of organic & large area electronics is still in its early stages of development, it holds out the prospect of new products with reasonable times-to-market and large revenue potential. The market for OLAE products is expected to grow from around million today to .8 billion by 2009.