fantastic plastic

Cartamundi, Europe’s largest manufacturer of playing cards and card games, and Thin Film Electronics, developers of printed organic memory devices,

have entered into a commercial License Agreement and a joint R&D Program.

Cartamundi will use Thinfilm’s patented technology and will now enter into a joint R&D project with the objective to include memory capabilities for the development, manufacturing and sales of products in the markets of trading and collectable cards, retail and private label cards, casino cards, promotional cards and cards for games.[…]

Johan Carlsson, CEO of Thin Film Electronics stated that “[…] Cartamundi is the undisputed leader in the market of cards and games, producing over 10 billions of cards annually, making them the ideal partner specialised in high volume production of cards.[…]”

“[…] Thinfilm’s printable re-writable memory technology will enable us to add value by including a functionality that has been asked for by our customers. […] Our goal is to be in production, and to supply our customers with this new feature, already next year.” commented Chris Van Doorslaer, CEO of the Cartamundi Group.

press release [pdf]

From the Press release: (pdf, html)

BASF and Bosch are to cooperate in the innovative field of organic photovoltaics (OPV) and are founding members of the technology initiative of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). [… ] Last year, photovoltaic modules had a global market volume of €8 billion. The segment is expected to grow by more than 20 percent annually until 2020. The BMBF will provide €60 million for research to develop this highly attractive market, while the initiative’s current industry partners – which include, alongside BASF and Bosch, Merck (Darmstadt) and Schott (Mainz) – plan to spend up to €300 million. […]

Stake in Heliatek

To further develop the new technology, BASF and Bosch are also cooperating on special research activities with the Dresden-based company Heliatek GmbH. BASF Venture Capital GmbH and Robert Bosch GmbH are each investing €1.6 million in the start-up company, which was founded in 2006. The other investors are Wellington Partners and the ‘High-Tech Gründerfonds’. Heliatek specializes in the manufacture of new-generation organic solar cells. The company is working on an ultra-efficient technology to build large-scale modules on cheap, flexible substrates using a roll-to-roll production process.

BASF is conducting research into semi-conductive organic materials with high thermal and photo-thermal stability. […] BASF contributes its broad-based expertise in the field of organic electronics and the design, synthesis and production of complex organic compounds to the project. […]

The researchers want to develop organic solar cells that convert at least ten percent of the incident light into energy and offer a service life of more than ten years. BASF’s “Joint Innovation Lab – Organic Electronics”, which was opened last year in Ludwigshafen, acts as a cooperation platform for the industry and university partners. Experts from a range of disciplines are also working on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) at the JIL, a technology also based, like organic photovoltaics, on organic semi-conductive materials.

According to DigiTimes, Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL), a Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) subsidiary,

started [to] volume produce active-matrix (AM) OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels in May, with monthly capacity able to reach 500,000 2-inch equivalent panels at present.
Zhe-yang Chen, president of CMEL, said the company has begun shipping 2-inch AM OLED panels to China- and Japan-based customers and end products adopting CMEL’s panels will hit the market in July at soonest. […]
The company now sees related yields at 60%, which will be improved to 80% by year-end, said Chen. Achieving high yields in the AM OLED industry is not easy; even leading makers such as Samsung SDI only targets yields at 60-70% initially, he pointed out. […]
Prices for an AM OLED panels now are still 1.8 times higher than those for the same-size TFT LCD panels. The company expects to see the price gap between the two segments narrow to 1.5 times in the future, according to Chen.

Solvay, through their specialty polymer subsidiary Solvay Solexis, and Thin Film Electronics have announced plans to jointly develop materials for printed memory applications.

The joint development agreement will build on Thinfilm’s intellectual property for soluble memory materials, as well as extend Solvay’s intellectual property for functional polymer materials. Under the agreement, Solvay Solexis could acquire certain production and commercialization rights to Thinfilm’s memory technology.