Latest Printed Electronics News & Analysis from IDTechEx

The memristor "the missing link of electronics" was finally built in 2008, using nothing more than titanium dioxide and metal electrodes in thin films. In 2009 NIST printed them on plastic film. Now a new version involving silicon and silver thin film seems to have advantages. (19 Mar 2010)

A new EU-funded project POLARIC was launched in January 2010 to develop roll-to-roll printing of high-performance organic electronic circuits. The project will revolutionise the way printed electronic circuits are made by combining large-area fabrication methods with high-performance organic electronic circuits on a scale not previously attempted.  (18 Mar 2010)

The new standard stamp features a large area of 50 mm x 50 mm with closely packed microlens array structures. The features are concave so that imprinting/embossing into a polymer film forms a microlens array in a low cost and feasible manner.  (18 Mar 2010)

With a month still to go, more than 650 unique attendees from 24 countries have registered for Europe's largest show covering printed electronics and its many variants (flexible, organic and inorganic electronics). As of this week, there are 74 exhibiting companies - the World's largest exhibition on the topic. (17 Mar 2010)

Scientists from Philips Research and the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUe) have developed a novel method for accurately measuring the active layer in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting. This is an important step forward for OLED device optimization and efficiency that is determined by the position of the very narrow zone in which the light is generated. (17 Mar 2010)

With its 135 members all over the world, the OE-A has become a highly dynamic and constantly growing network of leading international companies and institutes in the past five years", said Wolfgang Mildner, Chairman of the OE-A and Managing Director, PolyIC GmbH & Co. KG, Germany, on the occasion of the 5th anniversary celebration of the OE-A - the industry association for organic and printed electronics - in late February at the Holst Centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In December 2004, 35 members founded this working group within VDMA. "One of the founding principles of the OE-A five years ago was the goal to build an international industry association to jointly develop this future multi-billion Euro market", emphasized the Chairman of the OE-A. "Cooperation all along the value chain is essential in this phase; no company can achieve it alone." (16 Mar 2010)

The traditional electronics manufacturing process is poised for a paradigm shift away from expensive photolithography toward inkjet technology. Carbon nanotubes are enabling this paradigm shift due to their high conductivity and nanoscale size. This combination enables the production of new inks that create the needed conductive paths at much smaller feature sizes than is currently possible. (16 Mar 2010)

170 years ago, Faraday appreciated the different electrical properties of nano gold over bulk metal in electrical devices, so applying nanotechnology to these things is scarcely new. However, the huge sums now being applied to improvement of lithium traction batteries in particular are now leading to work on a much larger scale and thin film technology, nanotechnology and printing are in increasingly important part of this. Potential is considerable. LG of Korea, one of the leaders in traction batteries, forecasts 4.6 million electric cars produced in 2015 and IDTechEx forecasts 3.8 million for that year - hybrid and pure electric. The conference "Lithium Battery Technology and System Development" in London 9 March 2010 was concerned with "breaking barriers for electric vehicles". Professor John Owen of the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton in the UK described work on interdigitated laminar electrodes to overcome the problems of ionic and polymeric electrolytes that are resistive. His team is involved in a pan European project working on this that involves Swedish, Dutch and French organisations, Varta Battery and St Jude Medical.  (15 Mar 2010)