Printed Electronics - HP's Technology beyond Ink on Paper (Printed Electronics Europe 2005)

The HP site in Corvallis, Oregon has a rich tradition in developing and making ink jet cartridges. With a cross functional staff of engineers and scientists a number of core capabilities have been built. A representative, but not exhaustive, list would be: semiconductor and thin-film technology, chemistry and material science, process development and device technology, circuit design and integration, electroforming, laser technology, assembly, printhead technology, and last but not least, ink chemistry and micro-fluidics.

 

Thermal Ink-jet technology has seen an impressive development over the last twenty years, basically doubling it's performance every 18 months, thus following a Moore's law of improvement. Most of this growth was accomplished through incremental improvements of the core technology, but required in-depth understanding and technology performance at the highest level. Examples for this are: Novel thin-film materials for the thermal resistor, solving materials compatibility issues, high precision micro-fabrication and assembly techniques, development of specific diagnostic tools, application of fluidic modeling, and understanding ink-media interaction.

 

In the last two years we have experimented with printable electronic materials to explore new applications. We found thus far that Thermal Ink-jet is a versatile technique and not necessarily limited to aqueous fluids. Examples of materials that could be readily printed are: PEDOT, PANI, P3HT, nano-particle solutions, other chemical precursor solutions, methanol, toluene, gasoline, UV curable adhesives, color filters, and more. Printing test beds have been built that allow high precision alignment in the plane and automated print-head to substrate spacing. Some are featured with an enclosure and oxygen and moisture control. Examples of printed active devices are: Transistor test structures with printed semiconductor channel material showing an incremental mobility of 6 cm2/Vs, a printed gate dielectric made from a dual layer (composite) material, featuring high breakdown voltage and low leakage current. Other materials are under investigation.

 

Thomas Lindner holds an advanced degree in physics from the Technical University in Berlin, Germany. After a few years of basic research in surface science he pursued a career in industry with the development and manufacturing of micro-machined sensors for six years. He joined Hewlett-Packard in Corvallis in 1996. For the last five years he has been managing new development projects in the Advanced Materials and Process Laboratory.

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. HP is a company unlike any other. It's a fact underscored by its reach, its presence and leadership in key regions around the world; and by its uniquely rich technology portfolio. HP is the largest consumer IT company, the world's largest SMB IT company and a leading enterprise IT company. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP, which has corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, California, has 142,000 employees doing business in more than 170 countries.