How Printed Electronics is Changing Consumer Goods

by Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx
Electronic circuits that are wholly or substantially printed are a commercial success today.

Companies such as T-ink, E Ink, Toppan Forms, Soligie, GSI, Electroluminate, Schreiner, Delphi, Avery Dennison, and Power Paper are selling printed electronic products to many famous brands such as Timberland, Caterpillar, Sears Craftsman, Hallmark, Toys R Us, John Dickinson, Kent, McDonald’s, Estee Lauder, Ford, Toyota, GM, Playtex, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, Duracell, NTT DoCoMo, and Sony. Brand enhancement is a popular theme, from the tester on a battery to the animated display on a recent edition of Esquire magazine and the heated outdoor apparel of many famous brands.

The world’s largest conference on the subject will once again take place in the San Francisco area—Printed Electronics USA in San Jose on December 3-4, and will be truly international. On past trends, attendance will be about 800 and there will be a large exhibition. Although most of the speakers at the conference and optional Masterclasses are from the USA, a powerhouse of this new industrial opportunity, the foreign contribution is substantial as shown below:

Achieving the impossible
Printed electronics employs state-of-the-art physics and chemistry to achieve what was thought impossible only recently. This is reflected in sessions such as one on “Healthcare and Bionic Man” and another on “Smart Substrates and Stretchable Electronics”. Electronics as art is covered as is a broad sweep of printed and thin film components, including ones potentially using graphene. Add the new metamaterials based on micropatterning by flexo printing. They promise the cloak of invisibility and previously impossible electrical, electronic and optical components. Pioneers Imperial College London reveal, “Metamaterials—for Super Lenses and Invisibility Cloaks from DC to Optics”.

Transforming the human interface—staggeringly better brand enhancement
Probably one of the hottest topics this year is how, after 1,000 years of static print, the human interface is now starting to use many of our senses instead of one. Never forget that one in three Americans has difficulty reading instructions because they are sight-impaired, illiterate, dyslexic etc. and print is being made ever smaller to get everything in—a bizarre failure for a nation that got to the moon nearly forty years ago. For example, e-labels and e-packaging will employ electronic texture change, controlled aroma emission, localized sound and recording and many interactive features. This is therefore about transforming brands, not just saving lives when up to 25 percent of medication accidents are down to failure to comprehend written instructions and from lack of prompts from the package. Avery Dennison gives a case study of printed electronics in consumer goods. A key to this is for brand managers and brand facing suppliers to employ creative design using this new kit of parts instead of languishing in the wrong century.

Visit the magic
There are optional visits. They include Kovio, which replaces the silicon chip and antenna in an RFID label with a dramatically cost-reduced printed version—that being merely a bridge to transforming low-cost flexible electronics and photovoltaics in general. Visit Rfidium which will take you on a tour of the RFID processes leading to high-volume production. The Fuji Film Dimatix visit covers new fluid dispensing micropumps and inkjet technology and Vitex will show you their transparent ultra-thin barrier layers for flat panel displays. The University of California Berkeley tour takes in nanoparticle synthesis, gravure, inkjet and test facilities for printed electronics.

Huge opportunity
No one will be in doubt that this is shortly to become a multi-billion dollar industry transforming healthcare, printing, labelling, packaging, power generation, lighting, and many other industries. Nokia presents “Morph—Transformable Mobile Device”. Structural Graphics describes the recent success of electrophoretic displays on and in Esquire magazine and Apple will explain its approach. Goldman Sachs presents “Solar from Wall Street” and delegates will learn how intelligent batteries are now being printed by NEC of Japan.

New displays, materials and printing technology
Electronic displays from billboards to retinal projection will be covered including OLED advances, a new ultra-low-power electrochromic display from AJJER and the latest ultra-thin and flexible electrophoretic e-books, shelf labels, remotely programmable apparel pricing and so on. Kraft and other users describe their experiences. In addition, there is much on new materials and printing processes and the challenge of some materials becoming scarce. The new hot topic of printing copper to replace silver is center stage and then there is replacing indium.

For more information, visit www.IDTechEx.com/peUSA