How much more efficiently could they be run if Friend's organic polymers replaced silicon?

FORBES: Innovators

Coatue, which has been working on conductive organic polymers for memory chips, has had major support from Sunnyvale microprocessor maker AMD.

FORBES: Mr. Nanotech

His original 1990 paper on glowing organic polymers, published in Nature, became Friend's most widely cited research, according to Science Watch, which tracks academic research.

FORBES: Innovators

Organic polymers are a fundamentally new way of converting electricity to light, a process at the heart of all displays--TVs, computer monitors, cell phone screens.

FORBES: Seeing the Light

The secret lies in harnessing organic polymers to function as pixels.

FORBES: Seeing the Light