From the Lab: Nanotechnology

Organic transistors, which are made from semiconducting plastics, are cheap to manufacture. Although they enable thin, bendable electronics, so far they can’t implement the fastest, most efficient circuit designs, because the plastics can’t transport electrons. Instead, they rely on a flow of positive charges, or electron “holes,” to pass current, which limits their use. Now, in a surprising discovery, Lay-Lay Chua at the University of Cambridge and Peter Ho at the National University of Singapore have shown that the transistors’ inability to move electrons is due not to the plastic itself but to an interaction with other materials in the transistor.