A British company will today announce it has secured $100 million (€75 million) to build the world's first plant for making semiconductors out of plastic rather than silicon.
The technology could cut the price for electronic circuitry by up to 90 per cent and hasten the day when cans of baked beans and items of clothing are made of "intelligent" materials.
Plastic Logic, based in Cambridge in southeast England, is to build the factory by the end of next year in Dresden, Germany, backed by funds from Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation, the US venture capital groups. The plastic semiconductors are made using a process similar to ink-jet printing, widespread in the packaging industry for producing labels.
Plastic Logic, which was formed in 2000 and employs 90 people, has received $50 million in previous investment. Shareholders include Intel, the world's biggest microchip company, and BASF, the chemicals group.
Hermann Hauser, a Cambridge entrepreneur and financier who is a director of Plastic Logic, said the semiconductors could bring about huge changes in the global electronics industry.
"It could lead to an era of truly cheap electronics in which intelligent circuitry was sewn in to your clothing, for instance, to give you a set of instructions when you put the clothes on to tell you what you are supposed to be doing during the day," he said.
Mr Hauser said Plastic Logic had a two-year lead on competitors studying similar devices. Lucent, Philips, Hitachi, Samsung and AU Optronics of Taiwan are also involved in developing plastic semiconductors. - ( Financial Times service)
