fantastic plastic

PolyIC, BASF, Evonik Industries, Elantas Beck and Siemens have announced the launch of a new German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)-sponsored alliance project called MaDriX to advance the development of high-performance printable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. […]

PolyIC leads the consortium engaged in the three-year joint project. The total investment sum amounts to some €15 million, with the BMBF contributing approximately €8 million. The project is funded as part of the BMBF’s 5th Framework Program “Key Technologies – Research for Innovations, Communications Technology Sector.” The German Aerospace Center, DLR, is acting as project sponsor. With MaDriX, the companies involved in the alliance and the federal ministry will secure Germany’s current leadership as a research base in the printable electronics sector. […]

The close cooperation between the companies involved is a key to the success of the MaDriX project. PolyIC engages with the issues of component characterization, process development and setting up demonstrators. BASF, Evonik Industries and Elantas Beck will supply new materials to produce semiconductors and insulators for use in electronic circuits. Siemens is developing new real-time visual print inspection processes for quality control in the printing process. A number of universities and research institutes are also involved in the MaDriX project.

New Scientist is reporting on printable batteries with carbon nanotube (CNT) electrodes.

The batteries were created by George Gruner and colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles, US, and use the same zinc-carbon chemistry as ordinary non-rechargeable batteries.

To make the battery, a layer of nanotubes is first deposited in the form of “nanotube ink” onto a surface. This layer acts as the charge collector, which removes current from the battery.
Next, a layer of nanotube ink mixed with manganese oxide powder and electrolytes, which carries charge within the cell, is applied on top. This layer acts as the cathode. Finally, a piece of zinc foil – the anode – is applied.
“The batteries are similar to conventional batteries,” says Gruner, “with the electrically conducting nanoscale networks replacing conventional metals and electrodes.”

The researchers also made supercapacitors using the inking technique and plan to combine these with batteries for applications requiring more power.
Furthermore, since both printed batteries and supercapacitors can be made entirely at room temperature, it should be possible to mass-produce them using established printing methods, Gruner says.

IDTechEx points out that

Professor Gruner is also Chief Technical Officer of Unidym Inc a company he funded in 2005 which focuses on nano-structured materials applications for flexible/transparent electronics.

This subsidiary of Arrowhead Research is developing printed carbon nanotube (CNT) technology for applications such as transparent electrodes, thin film transistors, and fuel cells.
The work has been published in Applied Physics Letters.

PolyIC, “The chip printers”, are announcing two product lines: PolyID® (RFID) and PolyLogo® (with additional display function).

Applications of products from the PolyID® and PolyLogo® lines will be presented at OEC [Organic Electronics Conference] 2007. PolyIC presents applications in the fields of brand protection, voucher systems, marketing, and logistics.

Within the PRISMA (Printed Smart Labels) project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and has PolyIC as its consortium manager, all tickets to the Organic Electronics Conference will have a PolyID® tag attached to them. The tickets will be evaluated with a radio frequency reader at 13.56 MHz. This ticketing field test is being coordinated by Bartsch GmbH.

The steady progress en route to products at PolyIC can also be seen with the results in the laboratory. Thus, 32- and 64-bit RFID chips have been produced in the clean room. This success shows that the production of RFID chips with more memory capacity on the basis of the polymer semiconductor polythiophene is possible.

Konarka (organic photovoltaics) and Toppan Forms (Data Print Services and information management services)

have signed a joint agreement to accelerate the development, manufacturing and commercialization of polymer-based organic photovoltaic (OPV) technologies for consumer and electronic applications. Under the agreement, the mutual goal is to bring Konarka’a organic photovoltaic material, Power Plastic®, to market.

“Konarka’s Power Plastic is flexible, thin, printable and low in cost, providing our organization with promising new business opportunities as we strive to become an integrated information management service company,” commented Masanori Akiyama, president and CEO of Toppan Forms. “With the full-fledged advent of the ubiquitous society under way, we need an ever-present power technology that can be integrated with pervasive networked devices for information collection and distribution. We are delighted to collaborate with Konarka, the world leader in OPV technologies, to accelerate the commercialization of this transformational power technology to the market place.” […]

“The partnership with Toppan Forms represents a key milestone for the commercialization of Power Plastic,” commented Rick Hess, president and CEO of Konarka. “This relationship enables each company to focus its expertise and resources on key product development processes, continuing our go-to-market strategy of partnering with leading global companies for a variety of applications.”

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed thin, flexible energy storage devices consisting of more than 90 percent cellulose. The paper is infused with aligned carbon nanotubes (electrodes), and an electrolyte (e.g. an ionic liquid). The technology allows to fabricate batteries, supercapacitors, or devices which combine both functions.

According to the press release, the devices can be biocompatible

and these new hybrid battery/supercapcitors have potential as power supplies for devices implanted in the body. The team printed paper batteries without adding any electrolytes, and demonstrated that naturally occurring electrolytes in human sweat, blood, and urine can be used to activate the battery device.
“It’s a way to power a small device such as a pacemaker without introducing any harsh chemicals – such as the kind that are typically found in batteries — into the body,” Pushparaj said.

Regarding manufacturing:

The materials required to create the paper batteries are inexpensive, Murugesan said, but the team has not yet developed a way to inexpensively mass produce the devices. The end goal is to print the paper using a roll-to-roll system similar to how newspapers are printed.

The work has been published in PNAS (Flexible energy storage devices based on nanocomposite paper), and a patent has been filed.

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]

Plastic Logic announced that it has raised $100 million to build a factory for flexible active matrix display modules in Dresden (Germany).

To fund this comprehensive commercialization program, Plastic Logic has completed a first closing of $100 million of equity finance led by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation. Existing investors Amadeus, which led the seed financing of Plastic Logic, Intel Capital, Bank of America, BASF Venture Capital, Quest for Growth and Merifin Capital also participated. The financing is one of the largest in the history of European venture capital. […]
The facility will produce display modules for portable electronic reader devices – a product category that is predicted to grow to 41.6 million units in 2010. It will have an initial capacity of more than a million display modules per year and production will start in 2008. Dresden in the ‘Silicon Saxony’ region of eastern Germany has been chosen as the facility location following an extensive worldwide site selection process.

Takeo Someya and coworkers at the University of Tokyo have created a flexible sheet comprising organic TFTs that inductively charges electronic gadgets placed on its surface.

According to this Technology Review article, the

system is designed in a way that overcomes the limitations of common induction schemes. Traditional induction systems can only spread small amounts of power over a relatively large area, and fairly large amounts of power can only be supplied to precise locations (such as a toothbrush mount). Someya’s power sheets, in contrast, can be large, and they can still supply a large amount of power to gadgets placed near them.

This new capability, he says, is enabled by a novel design and by advances in the fabrication of flexible electronics. The power system actually consists of two types of sheets: one sheet senses the position of an object, and the other sheet supplies power to the object’s point of contact, but not to the rest of the sheet. “In this way, the system selectively feeds power as high as 30 watts to electronic objects placed upon it,” Someya says.

The position-sensing sheet relies on two types of flexible electronics. Using a technique similar to silk screening, the researchers printed an array of copper coils 10 millimeters in diameter. In addition, they used a modified inkjet printer to print an array of organic transistors. Both devices are thin and flexible enough to bend with a sheet of plastic.

Gadgets would need to be equipped with a coil and special power-harvesting circuitry to use the power pad. As the gadget gets closer to the pad, the electrical resistance of the pad’s coils decreases. The array of transistors detects the exact position of the change in resistance and effectively directs the subsequent power flow, which is provided by devices on the second sheet of plastic.

This second power-supplying sheet has an array of switches and copper coils. The switches, made of silver and plastic, turn the electric current on and off, mediating its flow to the adjacent copper coil.

HurraFussball, an interactive trading card game developed by printed systems and Menippos, is the first commercial product based on printed organic electronics. [press release in german]

ORFID Corporation […] has signed an agreement with BASF Future Business GmbH (BFB), a subsidiary of BASF Aktiengesellschaft, to collaborate on the development and commercialization of printable organic electronic devices for use in display backplanes, RFID tags and other next generation electronic products.
Under the agreement, BFB will provide organic materials, materials expertise and financial resources for the development and commercialization of printable electronics. ORFID will build certain organic devices and develop processes for printing and testing the devices.

ORFID’s technology is based on research by Prof. Yang Yang’s group at UCLA: using a Vertical Organic Field Effect Transistor (VOFET) structure allows ORFID to fabricate TFTs with very short channel lengths (and thus high on-currents), without the need for high-resolution patterning methods.

ORFID has developed a breakthrough in organic electronics, called the VOFET (Vertical Organic Field Effect Transistor). Due to its unique architecture and use of conductive polymers (plastics that conduct electricity) in its fabrication, the VOFET offers performance characteristics similar to conventional, wafer-based silicon transistors, but can be produced at significantly lower cost, while offering other important advantages. Using organic materials, the VOFET can be manufactured using low-cost printing techniques. ORFID’s goal, and that of electronics manufacturers around the world, is to enable the production of a new generation of ultra-thin, light-weight and flexible electronic products, such as displays and “smart packaging” that incorporates printed RFID tags.

[press release]

The Cambridge Evening News is reporting that

Amazon, the world’s biggest bookseller, is in talks with Cambridge company, Plastic Logic, about the end of books as we know them. […]
News of the Amazon/Plastic Logic link was given to a Cambridge audience on Thursday night when Hermann Hauser delivered the RSA Lecture at Magdalene College. […]
“The reason why Amazon doesn’t sell e-books at the moment is because people don’t like reading on a screen, but now they can curl
up with an e-book,” Dr Hauser said.

This past week, Plastic Logic has been showing off its new product concepts at a trade show in San Francisco, under the heading ‘Life is Flexible‘.

CDT and Litrex

are paving the way for the production of a new generation of high resolution polymer organic light emitting displays (P-OLED) through the development of an inkjet printing solution capable of producing P-OLED displays at up to 200 pixels per inch (ppi).

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Toppan Printing

have produced a number of 5.5 inch full color active matrix polymer OLED (P-OLED) displays using a roll printing method. A demonstrator will be shown at the SID conference in San Francisco. The displays - believed to be the first of their type ever produced - are the result of close co-operation between the two companies and part of their joint development activity announced in February 2005.

Solution processing of P-OLED displays is more commonly associated with inkjet printing, and the companies believe that roll printing represents a promising alternative production technique which offers the potential for very good display uniformity, very high display resolution and low capital and operating costs. […]

The technique is based on relief printing, a well-established method for the transfer of soluble materials onto a range of substrates, but which has been developed by Toppan into a highly precise technology capable of producing patterned pixels of small size and highly uniform distribution. The companies believe that the process is capable of scaling to large substrate size and very high resolution, potentially over 200 ppi.

press release

NanoMarkets predictions for the OLED and e-paper, smart packaging, and thin-film photovoltaics industries:

Markets for OLED and Paper-Like Displays to Total $10.2 Billion by 2011:

• combined sales of OLED displays and paper-like displays will reach $10.2 billion by 2011 and then go on to reach $14.7 billion by 2013.
• shelf-edge displays will be the biggest opportunity for the paper-like display business in the next few years, generating $1.2 billion in annual revenues by 2011.
• OLED televisions will reach $2.2 billion in revenues in 2011
• by 2011, flexible displays will account for $1.7 billion in revenues.

Smart Packaging Market to Reach $4.8 billion by 2011:

• The global smart packaging market will grow to $4.8 billion in 2011 and reach $14.1 billion in 2013
• Smart packaging will account for over $1.1 billion in printable electronics components by 2011 growing to $4.2 billion in 2013
• Smart packaging will also consume $1.1 billion in printable and chip-based RFID tags by 2011

Thin Film and Organic Photovoltaic Market To Reach $2.3 Billion ($US) in 2011:

• Integrated building and construction products such as PV enabled roofing and window materials are projected to be the largest market opportunity measuring $800 million ($US) in 2011 with large project and consumer electronic products the second and third largest market opportunities.
• On the materials front, amorphous silicon, the best established of the various thin-film PV materials, will represent an $800 million ($US) opportunity followed by organic and hybrid organic/inorganic materials and then CIS/CIGS.
• Thin film/organic PV is also generating buzz in the industry and several companies have received large VC rounds. Major multinationals are also supporting this technology as Honda has announced it will soon start full-scale production of thin film PV and Shell has just sold off its conventional PV business to focus on thin film. On the other hand, NanoMarkets points out that thin film and organic PV is also a technology space that has received its fair share of hype and controversy with competing claims by different manufacturers on where and how it can be applied and disputes over conversion efficiencies and costs per watt.

A centre for printed organic electronics, printronics, has been formed around printed systems, a leading player in the field. Four other companies (3D Micromac, GEMAC, GETT Gerätetechnik, KSG Leiterplatten) and two research institutes (Multi Device Integration group at the Chemnitz branch of the Frauenhofer Institute and the Institute for Print and Media Technology at the Technical University Chemnitz) are part of the printronics centre, which receives 5.3 million euros of regional government funding.
Under the motto “printed electronics everywhere”, printronics’ goal is to establish a knowledge and production center for printed electronics and become the world leading supplier of mass-printed electronic products within 10 years.
[press release in German]