The application of organic electronics relies on reliable material manufacture. Owing to their multiscale structural characteristics, organic electronic materials face great opportunities and challenges in some unique applications compared with silicon-based semiconductors. Understanding the relationships among material structure, processing and properties is highly desirable for the multiscale manufacturing of organic functional devices. Recently, researchers have made significant progress in this field, achieving reliable fabrication across multiple scales, from molecular-scale devices to micro/milli-scale wearable systems and macroscale organic solar cell modules, to meet the specific requirements of various application scenarios. This review aims to summarize the latest advancements in multiscale manufacturing of organic electronic materials. It introduces multiscale structures and properties of organic semiconductors, with an emphasis on elucidating the structure-property relationship. Subsequently, different technologies for multiscale manufacturing and their advanced applications in organic electronics are discussed. Finally, potential challenges and prospects for the multiscale manufacture of organic electronic materials are proposed. This review could help in choosing appropriate manufacturing technologies to achieve optimal performance of organic electronic devices based on the properties of organic materials.
Zhao et al. (Mon,) studied this question.