Magnetic field effects in organic semiconductors: from touch screen displays to bird navigation
Markus Wohlgenannt
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa
Organic semiconductors are electrically conducting plastic
materials, whose main applications are as display pixels as well as plastic solar cells. We show that these materials are however also promising as magnetic field sensors, similar to read-heads used in computer hard disk drives. We propose a novel application, combining the display pixel property with the magntoresistive property to construct a pen-input touch screen display. We will briefly discuss the physics that underlies the magnetic field effects. Interestingly, it has been proposed that a very similar mechanism is used by birds to navigate during migration season.