The enthusiasm for flexible organic electronics aside, it is unlikely that many flexible devices will be made entirely of organic materials, because they cannot serve all functions of inorganic materials. For example, organic thin-film transistor (TFT) is still limited by low carrier mobility. Organic conductors are still suffering low electrical conductivity and inadequate long-time stability. Furthermore, bare organic electronic components are vulnerable to atmospheric oxygen and moisture. As a result, many efforts have been also placed on developing flexible electronics with conventional inorganic materials on flexible substrates.

The 16 June 2006 issue of Science magazine has a News Focus on the recent progress on flexible inorganic electronics, in which various recent literatures in this topic are reviewed and several active researchers in the field, such as Sigurd Wagner at Princeton, John Rogers at UIUC, and Stephanie Lacour at Cambridge University, are interviewed.

• "A dark-horse technology bids to overtake plastics in the race to make circuits that can twist and stretch..."

See the full article here (subscription required).