Printed Electronics Conference

The talk focuses on the latest global progress within displays, lighting, pv, sensors, power, logic and memory. Market size and forecast will also be presented followed by emerging sectors that are exhibiting strong growth. Finally, Raghu Das presents an analysis of successes and failures so far.

This presentation will explore processes and techniques for the creation of textile integrated wearables. Christian Dalsgaard focuses on micro-electronic integration, sensor platform development and sensor encapsulation. He will present solutions to the challenges of cabling, connectivity and washability and cover current applications and high-end market opportunities within wearables.

With extensive experience in the world of inks/coatings and adhesives for electronic applications, Henkel has built up a broad portfolio of materials suitable for printed electronics. This portfolio not only contains the standard inks for printing electronic circuits on rigid or flexible substrates, but also contains materials like conductive adhesives to attach components onto the printed circuitry and coatings to protect the completed assembly. In this presentation, a complete overview will be shared of all materials available to produce your products in a fast, highly reliable and cost effective way.

Necomada is a current H2020 funded project that targets the incorporation of advanced functional materials to deliver customized conductive inks and adhesives compatible with high volume manufacturing platforms. Specifically the development of such enabling materials are tailored toward high-speed roll to roll integration of hybrid and large area electronics to address the internet of things opportunities. This discussion will provide an overview of the materials and formulation strategies employed and resulting properties of the inks and adhesives developed.

In order to facilitate the implementation of nanomaterials into conductive ink formulation, large scale and sustainable production of these nanomaterials must be demonstrated. Zachary Davis will discuss first the benefits of nanomaterial based ink formulation and then present DTI’s latest results in the development of sustainable, cost effective production technologies.

Gas-phase direct-writing is an additive manufacturing technology based on dry nano-aerosol processes. It combines generation (via spark ablation) and deposition (via inertial impaction) of nanoparticles on a wide variety of substrates. The created thin-films have a nanostructured morphology, which has the potential to be put to use in a range of applications, including sensors and batteries. At VSParticle we developed a nanostructured material printer enabling researchers to deposit pure layers of nanostructured materials (metals, semiconductors, metal compounds) in a controllable and scalable way. We pr+esent our technology and discuss possible applications within electronics.

The wide availability of Near Field Communication (NFC)with smartphones is driving new applications such as electronic payments and can now be further extended to enable direct interaction between printed media (labels, posters, documents, packaging) with integrated electronics and smartphone. This talk will focus on introducing CPIs newly built facility for delivering applications within the IOT space. The talk will focus on CPIs involvement in both UK and EU funded projects currently active. These projects address a major barrier to the commercialisation of printable electronics, namely the establishment of large-scale manufacturing and technology transfer to multiple application sectors.

Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things concepts put forward not only the massive use of data exchange, but also the need of devices and smart tools. Therefore, customized and flexible integration of RFID, antennas, batteries, interconnects, resistors, capacitors, sensors, etc. into products and systems becomes a key task. Direct writing technologies, i.e. maskless, additive manufacturing process – such as Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP), can offer additional opportunities with respect to prototyping, customization, flexible design, repairing and small batch production. In this talk, general insights in the use and capabilities of AJP, with focus on the research activities carried out at the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory (AML), will be given.

With the advent of concepts like the cyber-physical systems, IoT, Big Data, etc. the demand for smart electric and electronic devices will be drastically increased. In this context, the moulded interconnect (MID) technology can be a key technology to fulfill future industrial and societal needs. MIDs combine the electrical and mechanical functions and allow an efficient adaption of conductive patterns to the geometric form of the products. This presentation will focus on what the MID technology can offer for future industries by highlighting the latest developments in the technology. Some of the challenges and opportunities ahead of MID technology and some recent research within the MID areas will be shared.

Pure metals and alloys are essential for many electronic devices, since only this group of materials can provide a sufficiently high electrical conductivity. In order to deposit pure metals and alloys on non-conducting substrates, electroless deposition (ED) methods must be applied. Typical applications of ED include though-hole plating of copper for printed circuit boards, and ion-exchange plating of gold for electrical contacts. Among the more recent application areas is particularly molded interconnect devices (MID). This presentation will introduce the various types of ED that exist, the practical “tricks” that are used to attack different substrates as well as several examples of MID devices utilizing ED. The presentation will also discuss various challenges such as corrosion and adhesion of the deposited metals.

Day 2, Tuesday 30 October 2018

Seamless integration of electronics into flexible, curved (and even stretchable) surfaces can be observed in market segments such as automotive (dashboards, lighting, sensors), smart buildings (lighting facades, air quality, PV), medical (health patches, X-ray, analysis) and smart clothing (position tracking, sports). Printed electronics allows large area roll-to-roll printing of electrical circuitries on foils. Common types are PET, PEN, TPU (thermos plastic polyurethane) and even paper. The talk will illustrate the above by examples in wearable electronics, structural electronics and smart textiles. Manufacturing technologies, such as circuitry printing, electric component assembly and post-processing steps will be explained in detail as well.

Printed electronics is an emerging technology that has a huge expected growth rate in the in the coming years. But still there are not too many examples of products and applications on the market. During the last decade The Printed Electronics Arena in Sweden has been a place for commercializing research results and ideas from the industry. Tommy gives an overview and presents different case examples where we go from idea to product gathered from reality at Printed Electronics Arena and a short outlook on future applications to hit the market.

Recent progress in development of new functional materials that are flexible and can be processed at very low temperatures (below 100 °C) opens a new opportunity for new emerging applications, such as smart textiles, non-destructive test systems (NDT), underwater acoustics, etc. The present work is devoted to the development of flexible piezoelectric materials on the basis of piezoceramic materials, including lead-free piezoelectrics, dispersed into polymer matrix. The newly developed materials (PiezoPaint™ material) combine an increased piezoelectric activity (d₃₃ coefficient up to 45 pC/N), extremely low processing temperatures (< 100 °C), and high flexibility in the cured state. The materials developed are also compatible with screen- and pad- printing technology and therefore can be easily applied to a variety of substrates, including textile materials and fabrics, silicon wafers, plastics, polymers, PCBs, papers etc.

Mekoprint has a long proven record of accomplishment producing flexible printed electronics, and is considered one of the pioneers within the industry. This presentation gives the Mekoprint view on the technology and highlights the current and future market opportunities. Furthermore, it provides practical product examples, along with highlights of the production technology required to enable the market potential within flexible electronics.

Combining the flexibility of 3D printing techniques with technologies from flexible electronics creates a new manufacturing paradigm for products with integrated electronic functionalities. Free form is no longer only applicable to the structural part, but also to the embedded electronics.

In this presentation we will showcase our development based on SLA (Stereo Lithography). With SLA high quality 3D products can be manufactured, yet the integration with other manufacturing technologies is more challenging than some other AM technologies. This presentation will focus on the challenges and our achievements in integrating electronic structures during the 3D printing processes.

In printable electronics, nanomaterials can be used as enabling materials for customised conductive inks and flexible adhesives. Nanomaterials may provide many attracting characteristics to the materials such as improved functionality and performance. On the other hand, utilization of nanomaterials may pose a risk for workers and for the environment (Savolainen et al. 2010). Thus, safety issues need to be carefully addressed when nanoscale materials are being developed and used. Due to a lack of sufficient hazard data, actual health effects of nanomaterials are not yet well known and health based occupational exposure levels are not currently available. At the moment, precautionary principle with minimization of exposure should be followed when working with nanomaterials, and suitable risk management methods should be applied. Safety aspects should extend throughout the whole life cycle i.e. from the material development to the final product, and ultimately the safety of the end of life processes.