A Perspective on Balancing the Costs and Performances of Organic Electronics in 21st Century Academic Research

In recent decades, organic semiconductors have carved out a niche in the semiconductor industry due to their potential for lower production costs compared to their inorganic counterparts. Owing to their inherent flexibility, tunability, and reduced processing requirements, organic semiconductor materials (OSMs) have experienced a resurgence of interest from both academic laboratories and commercial researchers. With the use of OSMs becoming more widespread, we provide a Perspective that examines their design and development in academic laboratories from a financial standpoint. Using illustrative examples of organic photovoltaics (OPVs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and organic field effect transistors (OFETs) cited by prominent researchers in the field, we discuss important analyses put forth that explore costs associated with synthetic complexity of molecules. Extending the discussion, we offer two new cost-benefit figures of merit to correlate the cost of active layers of OPVs and OLEDs (made with commercially available organic materials) with their final key figures of merit for device performance. As the field of organic electronic materials continues to evolve and impress, cost considerations will play a key role in guiding the current combinatorial approach used in the discovery of new materials and device design.