Printing Electronics Sharply Improves Performance

By Dr. Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx

Self-powered electronics is progressing rapidly as use of thin films, increasingly printed, improves performance by ten to one hundred times. For example, thermovoltaic generators are much more efficient when made as thin films. Piezoelectric generators are starting to be printed and Sony and other DSSC solar cells printed reel to reel have high efficiency in low light levels and with light at narrow angles, unlike conventional silicon cells. Boeing's thin film cells with higher efficiency than silicon are now being considered for terrestrial use having started in space.

Single layer thin film terahertz transistors outperform silicon ones by several magnitudes. Some new laminar batteries have many times the capacity of coin cells. OLED and electrophoretic displays outperform conventional LCD, PDP and other displays in a whole raft of parameters and have giants such as Sumitomo and Samsung pumping billions into their success. Esquire magazine has published its first edition with an e-display and publishers and Amazon are newly offering e-books with content, throwing down the gauntlet for a new media era.

There are even thin film versions of most electronic and electrical components that are transparent. They can go in previously impossible locations such as on the glass of a wristwatch, over the advertisements on a smart package, and on a window, with Swatch and Nokia already experimenting with concept models of products using such features. Hewlett Packard has recently licensed the technology to two companies. Even lighting can take the form of transparent film. GE has a new joint venture with Konarka Minolta on that one and it is doubtless hoping to regain the number one slot it had in lighting since Edison founded the company. However, Philips the leader is also developing this next generation.

Because one can print, say, a logic circuit, memory, loudspeaker and microphone on top of each other, one can avoid all the connections necessitated by the nostalgic silicon chip with conventional components wired to it. Higher reliability can result as well as fault tolerance - something which interests NASA. Silicon chips can never be viable in the sizes necessitated if one is to overprint batteries, lasers and the like.

Printed electronics has one tenth of the environmental issues of what went before and it can safely be contemplated for everything from human implants to food packaging where it will give interfaces that everyone can use, employing changing surface texture, vibration, sound, moving colour, aroma emission and more with scrolled text in large fonts, prompting and so on. AstraZeneca is working on some of this. The world's packaging companies and brand managers are also among those getting heavily involved because here lies the potential for premium pricing and dramatic brand enhancement. With printed electronics, designs can be altered at the press of a button yet huge areas for the home cinema display and the solar cells on the side of a building are possible. Volumes of trillions can be contemplated and typically cost reduction of ten to one hundred times over conventional electronics. Dow Chemical, BASF, DuPont and most of the world's leading chemical companies are therefore now heavily involved, making the special paper and plastic film and the electronic inks, of which there are many types just for one device. Some chemical giants have made appropriate major acquisitions recently.

Morphing, stretchable, edible (Kodak patents) and other electronics are on their way and a $300 billion potential market is there for the taking. Consumer, healthcare, military and other products can be transformed, so here is an antidote to the global financial meltdown. The message is well taken that, in tough times, you shed the past faster and hasten the move into the future. Little wonder then that the largest conferences on the subject continue to grow very rapidly. They are the IDTechEx Printed Electronics series of annual conferences in three continents, the next being Printed Electronics Europe in Dresden Germany on April 7-8 2009 with an exhibition, investment summit, Masterclasses and visits to local leaders in printed and potentially printed electronics. The future has arrived.

SOURCE: ID TechEx