Printed Electronics vs. Silicon—Getting the Priorities Right

Although the capabilities of complex silicon chips increase at a rapid pace, there is little or no reduction in cost of the simplest silicon chips. These have stuck at about five cents for decades. The cost of a chip factory and the cost of research to improve chip production is rising exponentially so there is no reason to believe that the simplest chips will get significantly cheaper in future. An added concern is that these chips are the ones that make little profit so they are the first to be rationed and suffer price hikes when there is a chip famine i.e. when demand exceeds capacity as happened in 1999 and, to a lesser extent, in 2004.