A multidisciplinary（有关各种学问的） research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found that an organic semiconductor¹（半导体） may be a viable²（可行的） candidate for creating large-area electronics, such as solar cells and displays that can be sprayed（喷洒，散布） onto a surface as easily as paint. While the electronics will not be ready for market anytime soon, the research team says the material they studied could overcome one of the main cost hurdles³（跨栏，障碍） blocking the large-scale manufacture of organic thin-film transistors⁵（晶体管） , the development of which also could lead to a host of devices inexpensive enough to be disposable（可任意处理的，可自由使用的） .

Silicon⁶ is the iconic material of the electronics industry, the basic material for most microprocessors⁷ and memory chips. Silicon has proved highly successful as a substance（物质，实质） because billions of computer elements can be crammed⁸ into（塞入，填满） a tiny area, and the manufacturing process behind these high-performance chips is well-established.

But the electronics industry for a long time has been pursuing novel（新奇的，异常的） organic materials to create semiconductor products—materials that perhaps could not be packed as densely⁹ as state-of-the-art silicon chips, but that would require less power, cost less and do things silicon devices cannot: bend and fold, for example. Proponents¹⁰ predict that organic semiconductors¹¹, once perfected, might permit the construction of low-cost solar cells and video displays that could be sprayed onto a surface just as paint is.

"At this stage, there is no established best material or manufacturing process for creating low-cost, large-area electronics," says Calvin Chan, an electrical engineer at NIST. "What our team has done is to translate a classic material deposition¹²（沉积，矿床） method, spray painting, to a way of manufacturing cheap electronic devices."

The team's work showed that a commonly used organic transistor⁴ material, poly(3-hexylthiophene), or P3HT, works well as a spray-on transistor material because, like beauty, transistors aren't very deep. When sprayed onto a flat surface, inhomogeneities（不同类，不同质） give the P3HT film a rough and uneven¹³ top surface that causes problems in other applications. But because the transistor effects occur along its lower surface—where it contacts the substrate—it functions quite well.

Chan says the simplicity¹⁴ of spray-on electronics gives it a potential cost advantage over other manufacturing processes for organic electronics. Other candidate processes, he says, require costly¹⁵ equipment to function or are simply not suitable for use in high-volume manufacturing.