Speakers & Tracks

Among the first adopters of printed electronics are CPG companies - with numerous commercial successes of printed electronics in pacakging. They seek brand enhancement, product differentiation, reasons for premium pricing, better consumer experience and much more. The volumes of products are tremendous - trillions of items per year. Here the worlds leading CPG companies and retailers will discuss what is next.

Printed electronics is used in making more than 1 billion gluclose test strips each year. Now we have smart blisterpacks to monitor medication compliance, and many more new innovations to meet the needs for the burdened healthcare system.

Printed electronics is enabling thinner, more robust and better consumer electronics. This session covers the printed electronics strategy of several world leading electronic and electrical companies.

It has taken twenty years for LED lighting to become 3% of the $80 Billion global lighting market, but it is now exponentially growing, appearing in everything from car headlights to home lighting to street lighting. What is the impact on OLED lighting? Will those in OLED lighting achieve efficiencies, yields and lifetimes fast enough before LED becomes ingrained? Printing is already being applied to LED lighting for connectors and even printing LEDs themselves. Others are mounting LEDs on flexible substrates. But will the thermal problems restrict the applicability of LED lighting on flexible substrates, paving the way for OLED lighting there? Who is investing in OLED lighting manufacturing? Hear the lighting developers debate the topic at this event, covering opportunities for printed electronics in both LED and OLED lighting.

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is still about 95% of the $3.5 billion transparent conductive film market. Indium is subject to supply restriction and its price has varied by a magnitude in the last ten years. It is required primarily for photovoltaics, displays and touch screen applications - enormous markets. Alternatives to ITO include transparent organic materials, finely printed conductive mesh, and other ways of patterning metal 'strands'. Some even use copper rather than silver to reduce cost. Others are progressing carbon nanotubes and graphene as a viable alternative. Do all these choices have a market and what is their opportunity? Contrast the specifications - including hearing from those using ITO - to piece together the opportunity in this session.

Battery technology had progressed incredibly slowly over the last 100 years compared to other electronics and electrics. Now the development of energy storage technology has accelerated - due to government stimulus and industry demand for electric vehicles, local energy storage for renewable energy geenration, the smart grid, long life energy storage for consumer electronics, and powering printed electronics components. Printed materials and laminar films have many opportunities in energy storage - including printed batteries but also beyond that - improving conventional batteries, capacitors and supercapacitors - even those that scale up to the sizes of cars. Hear about the market needs, opportunity and technology progress in this session.

Stretchable and conformal electronics is a relatively new but rapidly emerging and fascinating field in microelectronics. The session will cover the range from stretchable components for energy harvesting & storage, the use of stretchable systems in medical applications and industrial fabrication concepts for stretchable electronic systems. It is organised together with Fraunhofer IZM.