Materials

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.

Bayer MaterialScience LLC, a subsidiary of Bayer AG and part of the global Bayer MaterialScience business, has acquired Artificial Muscle, Inc. (AMI) of Sunnyvale, California. AMI is a pioneer and leader in the field of electroactive polymers for the consumer electronics industry.

Interest in Printed Electronics from major consumer brands worldwide is constantly increasing. A testimony to that is the ever-growing number of end-users presenting at the latest IDTechEx Printed Electronics conference this coming April, as well as the variety of industries they represent.

MuTracx BV, a technology spin-out from Océ Technologies, have secured additional funding of US$11.3M for the Lunaris project. Lunaris is an industrialized solution for the jetting of etch resist for Printed Circuit Board (PCB) inner layers. The additional funds have been raised from multiple sources and bring the total post spin-out funding to US$17.5M.

Scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are developing the electronics for a third-generation artificial retina.

Researchers at Purdue University have created a magnetic "ferropaper" that might be used to make low-cost "micromotors" for surgical instruments, tiny tweezers to study cells and miniature speakers.

Rice University researchers have found a way to stitch graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) into a two-dimensional quilt that offers new paths of exploration for materials scientists.

Chris Giacoponello introduced NTERA's concept of "printegration", the possibility to integrate a display, a sensor and a battery by using successive printing steps. NTERA's technology is based on viologen inks that change colour upon accepting electrical charge. Without a need for a transparent conductor, they can be directly deposited on any opaque substrate (e.g. paper, PCB) with better reflectivity and lower cost (avoiding costly ITO).Company demonstrators include RF-powered displays (co-operation with poly-IC), solar powered ones (co-operation with Plextronics) and a device comprising a printed display & battery stack, demonstrated in June 2009.

A very interesting array of talks spread over 3 days brought together approximately 400 people interested in printed electronics and related technologies. On the opening day of the conference, Marc Bernstein from the Palo A lot research Center focused his presentation on the lessons learnt from the move from laboratory scale research to real world applications whereas John Pellegrino from the US Army research Labs, although primarily focused on "meeting the technology challenges for the soldier", highlighted efforts to accelerate the adoption of flexible electronics in the intersection of the military and commercial sectors.

Antennas aren't just for listening to the radio anymore. They're used in everything from cell phones to GPS devices. Research from North Carolina State University is revolutionizing the field of antenna design - creating shape-shifting antennas that open the door to a host of new uses in fields ranging from public safety to military deployment.

Ordinary textiles could be transformed into batteries that hold up to three times more energy than a mobile phone battery, by simply dipping them into nanoparticle-infused ink.

It's not just Hollywood stars hitting the cream carpet. A new coating of invisible glass sprayed on your cream carpet could make that French Beaujolais easy to clean with just water.

Cambrios Technologies Corporation announced today that an important patent has issued covering commercially relevant methods of manufacturing metal nanostructures. U.S. Patent number 7,585,349 assigned to the University of Washington and covering an invention made by Younan Xia and Yougang Sun was licensed exclusively to Cambrios in its specific field of use.

Southwest Nano Technologies introduces carbon nanotube ink technology for commercial, high volume, printed electronics applications.

Aerotech PRO Series hard-cover, side-sealed linear stages for smooth, accurate motion at an attractive price.

Bayer MaterialScience has opened a new pilot facility for the manufacture of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) at CHEMPARK Leverkusen. The company has invested some EUR 22 million in the planning, development and construction of the facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world and has an annual capacity of 200 metric tons.

Graphene wafers 100mm in diameter have been produced by Researchers in the Electro-Optics Center (EOC) Materials Division at Penn State, making them the largest diameter commercially available for silicon carbide wafers.

The new radio opaque ink can be used for adhesive skin patches and other topical devices that are attached during X-Ray, CAT or MRI scan to highlight a target area.

Nanoparticle films are no longer a delicate matter - Vanderbilt physicists have found a way to make them strong enough so they don't disintegrate at the slightest touch.

New start-up company Aneeve Nanotechnologies may be able to provide consumer based easy to use sensors that detect oestrogen and progesterone hormone levels in menopausal women.

A Portuguese university has developed Paper-e®, an emergent technology for applying field effect transistors on and with paper.

PCB mounting of the LED's has to date been limited to mechanical interconnection or the use of Printed Circuits Boards built on Thermally Conductive Copper Clad aluminum substrates.

We are on the brink of a new age of Plastic Electronics, production costs are tumbling and business opportunities are growing exponentially, yet companies are slow to take up the innovation challenge, according to research from the Advanced Institute of Management Research.

Brewer Science,® Inc., and SouthWest NanoTechnologies, Inc. (SWeNT), have received a $6.5M award under NIST's Technology Innovation Program (TIP). The funding is in support of research and development programs that focus upon methodologies to attain the cost-effective production of high-purity, high-quality metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) inks. These advancements will enable production of a wide variety of high-performing electronic devices incorporating CNTs.

The demands placed on new, high-tech materials are continually increasing, and existing material systems are reaching their limits. Due to their exceptional electrical and mechanical properties, carbon nanotubes offer high potential for use in diverse applications.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow, in collaboration with colleagues from Edinburgh, Manchester, Southampton and York universities, have developed technology, which will help microchip designers create future integrated circuits.

Nano ePrint has already demonstrated that its nano-scale devices not only dramatically simplify manufacture, but also achieve over 10 times the performance and over 100 times the density of conventional printed electronics.

In a determined bid to take the e-paper market lead, PVI has collaborated with LCD display manufacturer Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) who is looking to get a foothold in the industry.

Rice University scientists have unveiled a method for the industrial-scale processing of pure carbon-nanotube fibers that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics.

Inexpensive, easy-to-manufacture conductive papers, tissues, and nonwovens open new areas for resistively heated and disposable electronic consumer goods. The technology allows electric and electronic features previously too expensive for disposables to be built into consumer goods with low-cost, non-metallic materials, thus opening a wide new range of applications.

Terepac Corporation and IMEC announced their collaboration on novel packaging technologies for flexible electronics.

Xerox announces silver ink technology

Novacentrix has tackled the problem of making copper nanoparticle ink at low cost.

Seiko Epson Corporation and E Ink Corporation announced a new jointly developed display controller IC, the S1D13522, which provides a high performance, space saving solution for E Ink's Vizplex-enabled electronic paper displays.

The afternoon of the first day of the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event this week continued to illustrate how an increasing minority of developers of printed transistors target metal oxide versions with better performance. However, organic versions retain advantages of being tightly rollable and low voltage.

Structural irregularities in correlated electron materials - a phenomenon known as "phase inhomogeneity" - could be engineered at the sub-micron scale to achieve such desired properties as colossal magnetoresistance

An insulator can now be transformed to conduct electricity by an ordinary camera flash.

An international team of researchers has designed a new graphite-based, magnetic nano-material that acts as a semiconductor and could help material scientists create the next generation of electronic devices like microchips.

In the years leading up to its commercial-use of printed electronics, Belair Microelectronics found many of the initial prophecies about printed electronics replacing the printed circuit board industry to be exaggerated. Instead, what it found was a technology capable of enabling an entire new line of products that was not before possible.

A recently developed sensor that consists of carbon nanotubes coated with a luminescent compound incorporating europium, a reactive metal found in fluorescent bulbs, television/computer screens, and lasers, among other applications is able to gauge minute amounts of oxygen.

Innovalight has demonstrated a record 18 percent conversion efficiency with silicon-ink processed solar cells.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota successfully demonstrated that ion-gel could be used as printable, high-capacitance gate insulator in organic thin-film transistors (OTFT).

Terepac scientists have developed a novel and extremely powerful approach for handling micro-thin, small form factor ICs such as those desired for RFID.

Consumer packaged goods companies would like to see more printed electronics providers offering final products rather than just components. Read more about brand enhancement using electronics in packaging.

Nanoparticle inks could be used to print solar cells like newspaper, or painted onto the side of buildings or rooftops to produce electricity.

Nanotechnology advance could lead to smaller, faster, more energy-efficient computer chips

Printed silicon transistors are now receiving increasing attention because they can provide good transistor characteristics at low cost on flexible substrates, including high frequency performance.

The engine of the new printed electronics will be printed transistors on flexible substrates that can be one tenth to one hundredth of the cost of those in simple silicon chips.

Korean company NeoLux has developed a flashing electronic display that combines motion with the visual appeal of ink-on-paper - the same technology used by many e-readers available today.

Mathematicians develop a new cloaking method that might shield submarines from sonar, planes from radar, buildings from earthquakes, and oil rigs and coastal structures from tsunamis.