Masterclasses

Designed for those who are new to this disruptive technology or need to understand the big picture to assess the challenges and opportunities, this Masterclass will arm you with the latest knowledge of the applications and technology developments involving printed electronics. Led by experts, it is the ideal time to voice your questions as part of the interactive session and learn of the technologies that are available and emerging. The session will cover:

Another complication is that the active layers in thin film transistors, photovoltaics and other devices now commonly incorporate combined organic and inorganic substances, some in nanoparticle, carbon fullerene or other form.

All this means that there is a place for ink jet printing but also the various reel to reel printing technologies such as gravure, flexo and rotary screen. However, each must be customized to purpose.

This Masterclass demystifies the how, where, why and what next, bringing the subject alive with many real world examples.

This masterclass is designed to give an overall picture of photovoltaic technologies, from basic principles all the way to current advances. The masterclass is structured as follows:

a. Photovoltaics: Basic principles, operation, heterojunctions

b. After an overview of underlying principles, further details will be given on specific technologies:

• Organic and hybrid organic/inorganic photovoltaics

• Dye-sensitised solar cells, and

• Thin film technologies (e.g. amorphous silicon, CdTe, CIGS)

• III-V/ II-VI multijunctions

c. Advances/ Cutting Edge Applications

d. Market Analysis

The masterclass will be delivered by Dr Harry Zervos of IDTechEx and Prof. Ghassan Jabbour of Arizona State University.

Displays will be one of the largest market segments in printed/organic electronics. For example, Samsung has invested over $500 million in developing next generation OLED displays. Already 70% of the MP3 flash memory music devices use an OLED display. However, OLEDs are just the tip of the iceberg with electroluminescent, electrophoretic and electrochromic displays with unique benefits being commercially used now. Within ten years we will also see another major development - conventional lighting being replaced with lighting that is laminar and flexible.

This masterclass, led by experts in the field, will guide you through the full range of technologies, market opportunities and challenges, and issues to be resolved. The IP situation will also be covered as will companies in the value chain, along with their positioning and strengths.

Printed and potentially printed electronics is creating many new products given the benefits of the technology compared to conventional electronics, such as thinness, flexibility, cost, ease of manufacture, fast production turn around, "green" technology, power efficiency and more. However there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. For example incremental improvements to existing products are usually failures or at least take a long time to turn profit.

RFID is rapidly taking off for a wide range of applications, with the 1.3 billion tags shipped in 2006 rising to over 500 billion tags in 2016. The endgame is the item level tagging of ten trillion items every year and Ubiquitous Sensor Networks USN with at least billions of tags yearly but both call for ultra low-cost. In the case of item tagging they will cost little more than a barcode does today. For Ubiquitous Sensor Networks they must be self powered and under 50 cents each.