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44 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2024 $3 billion investment in R&D, workforce development, and manufacturing, along with a 25% tax incentive for companies buying PCBs made in America. Without government investment, we will be perpetually dependent on countries abroad for the technology stack that chips need to function. We know we will never have 100% of the man- ufacturing and assembly in the U.S. However, the current situation leaves us vulnerable to forces outside our control, and Congress needs to pass legislation to restore this vital industry. We can't afford another decade of decline. e PCBAA believes in, and fights for, mar- ket fairness and a level playing field on which U.S. PCB and substrate manufacturers can compete and win. is is the year to join our effort by visiting us at pcbaa.org or contacting me directly. PCB007 Travis Kelly is CEO of Isola- Group and current chair of the Printed Circuit Board Association of America. To read past columns, click here. ics any closer to the United States. Asia has ship- ping chokepoints that, if disrupted by natural or manmade disasters, could become factors for microelectronics headed to and from the U.S. We will continue to play catch up and remain overdependent on a long and vulnerable sup- ply chain for 90% of the printed circuit boards and the rest of the microelectronics ecosys- tem powering our critical infrastructure and national defense systems if Congress doesn't address the entire microelectronics ecosystem. e CHIPS Act claims to have addressed crit- ical disruptions in the semiconductor supply chain. e funding thus far has been for semi- conductors but not for the rest of the technol- ogy stack. e new fabs being built in the U.S. will begin producing chips in a year or two, but this doesn't solve the supply chain challenge. We will still ship components back and forth across the globe when we should be investing in the U.S. microelectronics ecosystem. e one thing the CHIPS Act did well was attract private investors. e same could be done for printed circuit boards and substrates. e Protecting Circuit Board and Substrates Act would do just that. HR 3249 calls for a Organic semiconductors are materials that find applications in various electronic devices. Exci- ton binding energy is an important attribute that influences the behavior of these materials. Now, researchers have employed advanced spectro- scopic techniques to accurately determine these energies for various organic semiconductor materi- als, with a high precision of 0.1 electron volts. Their study reveals unexpected correlations that are poised to shape the future of organic optoelectron- ics, influence design principles, and find potential applications in bio-related materials. Advancing research in this domain, a team of researchers led by Professor Hiroyuki Yoshida from the Graduate School of Engineering at Chiba Uni- versity, Japan, have now shed light on the exciton binding energies of organic semiconductors. Their study was recently published online in The Jour- nal of Physical Chemistry Letters on December 11, 2023. The team first experimentally measured the exci- ton binding energies for 42 organic semiconduc- tors including 32 solar cell materials, seven organic light-emitting diode materials, and three crystalline compounds of pentacene. To compute the exciton binding energies, the researchers calculated the energy difference between the bound exciton and its "free carrier" state. The outcomes of this study are set to shape the fundamental principles pertaining to organic opto- electronics and also have potential real-life applica- tions. (Source: Chiba University) Lighting the Path: Exploring Exciton Binding Energies in Organic Semiconductors