Professor Elvira Fortunato
Materials Science Department,Faculty of Science and Technology of New University of Lisbon
Professor Elvira Fortunato is one of the pioneers in the field of paper electronics; her original work on paper electronics opened up new opportunities of the expansion of the areas to which we could apply otherwise difficult electronic devices. In developing such electronic devices, a key element is the establishment of low-temperature and solution-based technologies that enables to construct high-performance electronics such as thin film transistors.
Professor Fortunato at the podium began her speech with some of the photos showing large-sized transparent OLED displays etc that clearly reflected growing thin film electronics market, and then continued to explain the importance of thin film electronics and how the devices have been developed. The main topics of the plenary lecture are some advances on solution-based metal oxide semiconductors (ex. ZnO- and In2O3-based oxides) and their application to electronic devices. Professor Fortunato explained the importance and usefulness of solution based-technology. Unlike conventional electronic device fabrication technologies that mostly rely on complex high vacuum equipment, the solution process has many advantages in terms of large-area deposition, roll-to-roll capability, easy control of composition, atmospheric processing, low cost, and so forth. The recent achievements by Professor Fortunato and her colleagues were then reviewed: they were successful in depositing solution-based InOx-based FETs at temperatures about 150 oC, and achieved a record high device mobility higher than 1 cm2/Vs. More importantly, the device performances were quite stable and reproducible. She also paid attention her focus on not only low-cost solution based-technology, but also on constituent materials to choose to fabricate the devices, that is, eco-friendly materials.
In the lecture, she mentioned that we are in the 4th generation of the electronic devices in which multifunction devices are widely used, and that “more than Moore” would be expected in the 5th generation to come. Finally, she delivered a clear message to the audience that the solution-processed electronic device will play a pivotal role in the 5th generation.