Sensors

Flextech Alliance awards grant to Corning Incorporated to develop commercially viable methods for continuous printed electronic manufacturing on flexible glass substrates.

Research team develops ultra high-power energy storage devices

ECS researchers are developing intelligent medical sensors which can be worn by patients to monitor their symptoms and which will alert GPs if medical intervention is needed.

Replicating nanostructures from the wings of Morpho butterflies, GE's sensors would enable highly selective, near-instantaneous detection of chemical threats GE's sensing platform could create other industrial and healthcare applications, including emissions monitoring at power plants, water purification and food safety testing and breath analysis for disease detection

The Biomedical Diagnostics Institute is developing a cholesterol test using printed electronics.

Applied Nanodetectors Ltd and Kelvin Nanotechnology Ltd to work on next generation healthcare applications.

Submarines could use new technology to scan the depths and elude detection.

A team of U.S. scientists has designed some new men's briefs that may be comfortable, durable and even stylish but, unlike most underpants, may be able to save lives.

Japan's NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) is developing a small color camera with a single-chip color image sensor that uses stacked organic films. STRL fabricated a high-definition sensor by increasing the number of pixels and reducing the pixel size.

Printed electronics company T-Ink has a range of applications, some already commercialized for Point of Sale (POS) integration. The current applications include floor and shelf T-Ink printed Floortalkers and Shelftalkers activated by touch or proximity.

The cellphone is switched off but immediately springs into action at the point of a finger. It is not necessary to touch the display. This touchless control is made possible by a polymer sensor affixed to the cellphone which, like human skin, reacts to the tiniest fluctuations in temperature and differences in pressure and recognizes the finger as it approaches.

What if a bandage could do more than just cover up a wound? What if it could help you to heal by dispensing medicine and scrubbing away bacteria? What if this technology were so cheap you could throw it away when you were done? These are questions doctoral student Dylan Farnam grapples with as he attempts to design a better bandage.

Holst Centre and others are working on body area networking to monitor vital signs, control drug delivery according to need and otherwise progress towards bionic man and woman and care of the disabled and elderly. Unfortunately cutting into your body to change batteries brings with it a significant percentage of mortalities, not just pain and infection. Energy harvesting within the body is potentially helpful but biobatteries and thermoelectric generators provide only weak amounts of electricity in such applications.

In the European PriMeBits project, a printable electric low-voltage non-volatile memory is being developed for printed sensor, media and wireless ID applications. The main strategy is to utilize printed technology where it has a competitive advantage compared to silicon technology. The project builds on basic research of new materials and components and takes the results into prototyping of new applications. To reduce the research risk, two different technologies for the memory functionality are considered with partially overlapping application areas.

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."

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 (CNTs), graphene and their composite materials offer high potential for use in diverse applications such as photovoltaics, sensors, semiconductor devices, displays, conductors, smart textiles and energy conversion devices (e.g., fuel cells, harvesters and batteries).

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.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) - self organising, self healing networks of small "nodes" - have huge potential across industrial, military and other many other sectors. While appreciable sales have now been established, major progress depends on standards and achieving twenty year life.

SmartKem Ltd, the developer of novel materials and processes that create high resolution microelectronic components directly onto thin flexible materials, today announces the launch of its new website - www.smartkem.com. The easy-to-navigate website offers quick access to information about the innovative SmartKem technique, which is set to revolutionise the rapidly growing printed electronics industry and overcome challenges associated with other printed electronics techniques.