Highly crystalline thin films of organic semiconductors have great potential as a basis for low-cost flexible electronics with a good performance. But one of the obstacles engineers have run into is their limited knowledge of how to make such thin films with large monocrystalline domains, domains that do not slow down or prevent the transport of charges. In a breakthrough study supported by a prestigious ERC grant, professor Paul Heremans, imec fellow and director of imec’s large area electronics department, and his colleagues have studied how exactly crystals are formed in organic semiconductor materials. With that knowledge, they have developed new, scalable techniques to form highly-ordered crystalline organic films. And they have devised methods to integrate these films into devices such as organic thin film transistors, organic solar cells and organic light-emitting transistors.