Business Applications for Printed Electronics

by Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx

Recently, the commercialization of printed electronics has progressed from conductive patterns to batteries, displays, sensors, resistors, solar cells, lighting and transistor circuits, increasingly in combination. Power Paper is making 12 million skin patches yearly that electrically deliver cosmetics through the skin. They consist of a printed battery and electrodes. Many are sold under the Estee Lauder brand. Membrane keyboards for personal electronics have long been made in the hundreds of millions using printed silver as have the RFID antennas of Checkpoint Systems and others. Fully printed electronics has appeared in the billions of battery testers made by Avery Dennison and sold on Duracell batteries. They employ printed resistors and conductors. More recently, printed electrophoretic displays have sold in the form of e-books and they were also used a few months ago in the 75th anniversary edition of Esquire magazine but these applications involve conventional components as well. Now Plastic Logic has demonstrated such displays in e-books where even the transistor drive circuits are printed.