There is no question that the number of applications featuring flexible and printed electronics is on the rise. It is interesting to hear leading brand owners and other innovation leaders talk about the technology can benefit them.
TechBlick recently organized “Printed, Hybrid, and InMold Electronics: Innovation and Market Trends,” a two-day virtual conference featuring Fiat, JC Decaux, GE Research, Swarovski, Jabil and many other industry leaders. The focus was on how printed and hybrid electronics can change the world we live in.
TechBlick is a year-round event series with more than 350 analyst-selected live online presentations and more than 10 masterclasses. A primary focus area is printed, hybrid, textile, 3D and in-mold electronics.
“Our first virtual conference on printed, flexible, hybrid and in-mold electronics was a great success with fantastic feedback from members and exhibitors,” said Chris Clare, TechBlick’s event director. “We had two full days of world-class presentations from leading global organizations. Each of these was followed by live Q&A sessions, many of which were continued with the speakers in the networking lounge.
Clare said that exhibitors also were happy with the conference’s turnout.
“Exhibitors reported a large number of visitors to their booths and members commented on the quality of these and the ease of interaction with the exhibitors,” Clare added. “Networking was a particular highlight, with many matches on the speed dating/networking and visits to the networking lounge where many members brought a drink and met old friends and colleagues. We are looking forward to welcoming all our members to our next event on Graphene, Nano Carbon and 2D Materials, which takes place on 14 and 15 April.”
Highlights from TechBlick
The conference began with insights from end-users.
Thomas Morel of JC Decaux led off with his talk on “Technologies For Out-Of-Home & New Applications.” JC Decaux is a leading advertising group, with billboards, kiosks and other advertisements throughout cities, bus shelters, shopping centers and airports. The company has used a variety of technologies, including biosensors and connectivity with its ads. Morel talked about a new initiative to deploying solar panels over bus shelters.
“This is a virtuous and sustainable feature for bus shelters,” Morel said.
Nancy Stoffel of GE Research followed with her presentation on “Flexible Hybrid Electronics Applications for the Industrial World.” Stoffel discussed megatrends in diverse applications from airplanes and wind turbines to healthcare, and how printed and flexible electronics can be part of all of this.
“There is a push toward electrification in airplanes,” Stoffel said. “GE is in hybrid power generation, the Internet of Energy. The future of healthcare today is point of care driven – you go to your doctor. There will be continuous non-invasive health, analytics, therapeutics, prognostics and bioelectronics. Electronics is going to be important in all of these megatrends.”
For example, flexible and hybrid electronics (FHE) can lead to many advances, as its flexibility enables more comfortable wearables.
“FHE enables this concept of electronics on everything. – consumer electronics, sensing systems, soft healthcare systems on the body, and sensing systems for critical areas in the industry,” Stoffel noted.
“We print strain sensors on power turbines during the manufacturing process,” added Stoffel. “It costs a few dollars to print and potentially saves tens of thousands of dollars by reducing maintenance costs.”
In his talk, “Materials Meets Electronics: A New Paradigm for Automotive Components,” Fiat’s Nello Li Pira noted that cars are becoming like home.
“Every day our cars become more like movable living rooms,” Li Pira said. “There is freedom in decoration and style with functional and fashionable interiors. We need embedded electronics and mobile factories. We need to merge together sensing, displays, connectivity and electronics.”
Li Pira also spoke about integrating sustainable functionalities.
“We can use recycled materials everywhere,” he observed. “One example is replacing chrome with physical vapor deposition. We want to introduce functionality in our seating and displays. The future is to have larger flexible displays, a system that we integrate different functions in, and a collaborative approach among the whole supply chain is crucial.”
James Lee of Jones Healthcare discussed smart packaging of medications in his talk on “Improving Medication Adherence with Packaging.” Lee noted that clinical trials are costly, and companies are concerned about whether people are actually using the medication correctly.
“One reason clinical trials take so long is [that] they don’t know if the subject is adhering to it,” Lee noted.
Lee detailed Jones Healthcare’s path to multi-dose adherence cards, beginning in 2013 with a simple resistive multiplex silver/carbon on PET at NRC. The challenge was then printing these on paper substrates.
“At Jones, we had printed conductive traces for printed electronics,” Lee said. “This is not high-performance stuff, not doing anything with transistors.”
Jones Healthcare’s latest development is its CPAC system.
“Our CPAC system monitors medical adherence,” Lee said. “CPAC reminds patients to take their medications, monitors if it is taken and offers evaluation through our online adherence portal. We have the ability to send real-time reminders until the package detects that the medication cavity has been opened.”
Andre Bausch of Dr. Jean Bausch and Florian Ullrich of InnovationLab discussed the OccluSense system in their talk on “High-Volume Printed Electronics: The LAB-2-FAB Concept and Industrial R2R Printing.”
“Andre Bausch came to us with the vision to digitalize occulation with pressure sensors,” Ullrich said. “We scaled it up on our roll-to-roll label printer. There are five printing slots that can do all relevant printing techniques, including flexo, screen, gravure and slot die printing. There are also different types of heating mechanisms and UV, which renders the printer into a highly efficient production machine.”
Ullrich noted that Heidelberg is producing the sensors.
“We transferred our process to Heidelberg, where the industrialization takes place,” he said. “We can provide any quantity, including 1.3 million sensors for Bausch in the last year. We designed a new product, scaled it up and brought it into the market.”
Bausch noted that Dr. Jean Bausch received the “Dental Oscar” – the Cellerant Best of Class Technology Award in 2019 – for OccluSense.
“We entered the future of occlusion control,” Bausch observed. “We wanted a thin and flexible sensor. It also had to be color-coded so they could see where the direct contact points are. The results are sent to an iPad, where they can see where the pressure occurs.”
Carolina Gioscio of Evonik then discussed “TAeTTOOz® Battery Materials: The Next Thin Thing.” Gioscio noted that there are no metals in the water-based formulations, which are then screen-printed, sheet-based or roll-to-roll, and UV cured.
“There is a seamless integration of the battery into the device and has substrate versatility,” Gioscio noted. “It is rechargeable battery technology and is good for logistics and retail, healthcare, infrastructure and environment. It could reduce healthcare costs and enhance patient comfort. Our second development is an interactive solution for point of sale with Ynvisible.”
Richard Kirk of PolyPhotonix followed with his talk on “Saving Sight With OLED Light.” Kirk noted that PolyPhotonix’s Noctura 400 mask is a treatment for diabetic retinopathy.
“Diabetes is a global epidemic, and diabetic retinography requires an average of seven injections directly into the eye,” said Kirk. “We have developed Noctura 400, and we have over 1.7 million hours of recorded patient use to date. Noctura 400is in early-stage commercialization. There is evidence of anatomical and functional effect with 66% of patients benefiting and no associated complications.”
In his talk on “First Commercial Applications of Flexible Printed Perovskite Solar Modules,” David Forgacs of Saule Technologies noted that Saule has developed and commercialized inkjet printed, ultra-thin and flexible solar cells based on perovskites.
“We can offer regular and arbitrary shapes and tunable output voltage and current,” Forgacs added. “We can also provide color or transparency. We have excellent power density in all lighting conditions. We have easy customization and a wider product portfolio due to fully digital manufacturing. This can enable a lot of different functionalities for the Internet of Things .
“We are working on electronics shelf labels and are rolling that out soon, in which stores can update prices more frequently,” Forgacs added. “It is also eco-friendly with less battery waste.”
Another project for Saule centers on animal tracking.
“We are doing asset tracking for a telemetry collar for wild animals,” he reported. “It helps to understand animal habitat over a five-year life expectancy, transmitting one location point per hour.”
Dave Rice of TactoTek followed with his talk, “Realizing Smart Surfaces with In-Mold Electronics,” detailing Tacto Tek’s in-mold structural electronics (IMSE) technology, which is gaining traction in the automotive market. Rice noted some of the advantages of IMSE.
“Some of IMSE benefits is that parts are up to 90% less thickness, 80% less weight, and offer reliability and durability due to encapsulated electronics – it’s a one-piece, seamless part with single tooling and offers freedom for designers,” Rice noted. We integrate electronics, cosmetics and structure into one part, using printed electronics and chip-based electronics and then injection molding plastic structures.”
Once thermoformed into a 3D shape, it becomes one seamless part. “This dramatically reduces complexity. An overhead console had 64 parts plus a PCBA, was 470 grams and a 45 mm assembly depth. Our IMSE part was 200 grams (58% less weight), 3.5 mm depth (90% less depth), and was a seamless part with a small PCBA.”
It is also more sustainable, as Rice noted that IMSE uses 34% less CO2e, 50% to 75% less plastic, and has no toxic waste stream. “We have a very efficient recovery process for silver inks,” he added.
Andreas Friedrich of Geely Design then discussed using IMSE for a seat controller.
“We aimed to replace the seat controller with a functioning one, with one part instead of 45, 25g vs 185g, 3mm depth as opposed to 38mm depth and two unique tools vs. 20 unique tools,” Friedrich noted. “With printed electronics, everything is basically possible. Imagine if all soft surfaces in a car could be smart? What if all plastic surfaces could be smart? What if windows can be smart?”
Mathias Ronnfeldt of Lightworks followed up with “Technical & Styling Approaches for Intelligent Surface Illumination.”
“Light and function will be everywhere,” said Ronnfeldt. “This offers a new dimension of freedom, minimal design and shytech approaches, stimulating contrasts and unexpected effects through 3D lighting scenarios and implementation of functional, ambient lighting. Automotive is a very cost-sensitive industry and this has low scrap rates. We can integrate HMI and touch functions and feedback, with illumination through an embossed real wood veneer.”
Mari Makkonen of Canatu discussed “CNB Film Heaters for ADAS Sensors to Enable Any-Weather Safe Autonomous Driving.”
Makkonen noted that the number of vehicles with active safety applications is increasing, fueled by regulations and consumer interest. The value of ADAS per car is increasing level by level. She pointed out that the camera is dominant.
“The camera is used for object detection,” said Makkonen. “LIDAR creates a 3D/4D image, measures distance and speed; radar functions better during adverse weather, but has a shorter range and angle.”
Bad weather can be a problem for sensors.
“There are multiple sensor sites in a car,” said Makkonen. “Some of these aren’t reliable in harsh weather. In sub-optimal weather, camera sensors can get blocked by raindrops, snow or ice, so accurate object detection becomes more difficult. Effective LIDAR measurement range decreases.
“CNB film heaters can overcome limitations for any-weather safe autonomous driving,” Makkonen added. “They are transparent and conductive, offering even heating. Traditional metallic wire heaters can cause pixel-to-pixel distortion on the camera image.”
Rafael Michalczuk of Swarovski led off the second day with his talk on “Reinventing the Wheel? Printing (R)Evolution for a Luxury Brand.” Michalczuk noted that Swarovski is experimenting with printed electronics.
“3D printing is used for quite some time for making costume jewelry,” Michalczuk observed. “We are also collaborating with designers and experimenting with 3D technology. We have printed dresses. We are exploring different materials like crystals. We see quite some PE potential in consumer electronics, textile and accessories, interior and automotive.”
For example, Michalczuk then discussed the Swarovski Emotional Wellbeing Patch, an actuating skin patch for full-time online stress and mental balance monitoring and control that is being developed as part of Horizon 2020 BEWELL. Swarovski is working with Varta, ynvisible, imec, VTT, CEA, Beiersdorf on printed electrodes, haptic actuators, printed batteries and printed perovskite solar cells.
Kimmo Pernu then gave a talk on “Movesense by Suunto Oy - In-mold Electronics Add Context-Awareness to Smart Apparel.” Movesense is an open programmable movement and ECG sensor made for sports, health, research and IoT. Pernu noted they are using in-mold electronics (IME) for designs.
“IME offers robust electronics encapsulation, thin conformal form factor, application to the apparel lamination process, reasonable pricing in volume production and a nearby technical partner in TactoTek,” Pernu said. “It has to be swimming and washing machine proof. Simple electronics circuitry makes it easier to realize the design intent with good yield. Dynamic loading (flexing and twisting) and post-processing requirements were a big challenge to overcome.”
Jabil is a $19 billion electronics manufacturer looking at the FHE market. Girish Wable detailed their approach in his talk on “Bringing Flexible Hybrid Electronics to the Market.”
Wable noted that cost, comfort and convenience are driving “digital transformation” in almost all industries and consumer space, and flexible hybrid electronics have unique characteristics that make them attractive.
“The industry is looking for ways to make thin, flexible, stretchable interfaces and reduce weight, and printed electronics can be one such technology that can allow design freedom to achieve the above goals by creating FHE,” said Wable. “It helps with smart packaging , such as dispensing liquids or wearables where electrodes can be added for sensing different modalities and can be put on different parts of the body. It could be a patch with a flexible display, or you can create a large array. Being able to print on a large format really opens up the design possibilities, like a sensor mat.”
Wable said that to realize this, companies need to develop a very robust toolkit. “This includes a wide variety of substrates, the choice of different printing technologies between screen, inkjet, gravure – there are many choices. We take all of that knowledge and combine it into a design, testing and assembly know-how. You can leverage know-how from traditional electronics assembly for printed electronics.”
Information Mediary Corp.’s (IMC) Michael Peterson also discussed smart packaging for medicine in his talk on “Real World Smart Packaging for Pharmaceuticals.” IMC’s Electronic Content Monitor (ECM) enables smart blisters, active syringe packaging, smart bottles and built-in temperature analysis.
IMC has now launched its Med-IC system, which discovered that patients misuse their medication, with an adherence drop over six months.
“The Med-IC Smart Blister solution was used to capture adherence data on thousands of patients in hundreds of centers,” said Peterson. “It was a big success and had the first-ever FDA approval containing objective smart-blister-based adherence data. If you want to make a real-world solution, you need to take a holistic approach from chip to app from press to cloud. They require an entire ecosystem.
“The ability to execute must be in place to be accepted by the pharma industry,” Peterson added. “It should use mass-production printing for the largest components We want our electronics to be reusable. We have packaging partners who print our sensors, and we perform our own final assembly.”
David Lim of Australian Advanced Materials (AAM) spoke about the company’s “Nanocube Ink Nanomaterial.”
Lim noted that AAM is currently developing a printed memory technology for the printed/flexible electronics sector based on its Nanocube Ink technology.
“Nanocube Memory Ink is a transparent ink containing billions of nanometer-scale particles,” said Lim. “When printed on a glass or plastic surface and assembled with electrodes, they operate as computer memory. We have developed new electronic materials for a wide range of uses in flexible electronics. It is inkjet and slot die printed, and initial apps for it are smart packaging and printed sensors.”
Ofer Shochet of Copprint followed with “Copper Pastes That Outperform Silver – Make the Switch.” Shochet noted that Copprint overcame copper oxidation using a patented chemical sintering agent featuring low-temperature sintering. He said that Copprint has achieved highly conductive results through screenprinting.
Ken Klapproth of CHASM Advanced Materials talked about the use of carbon nanotubes (CNT) in the automotive heater field in his presentation on “Why Your Next Automotive Heater Will be a CNT Hybrid.”
“Autonomous cars need reliable ADAS systems that must be able to differentiate a pedestrian from a pothole,” Klapproth noted. “They need heated surfaces and optical cameras.’
Klapproth said that CNT hybrids are an ideal heating solution to meet unmet needs such as transparency and uniform heating.
“CNT hybrids based on metal mesh combine all of the benefits of materials being commercialized,” Klapproth noted. “Precious few are both transparent and conductive. CNT ink is screen printed and roll-to-roll coated on AgNW film, and exposed areas are etched away. The headlight lens was curved gently and we laminated a heater on it. The heater reached a steady state in 7 minutes. Heat distribution was consistent. They were thrilled with the result.”
Chris Booher of ChemCubed talked about ChemCubed’s ElectroJet system in his talk about “Multi-Material/Multi-Layer Solutions for Additively Manufactured Electronics/ Printed Electronics (AME/PE).”
Booher noted that ChemCubed’s ElectroJet system is being used in FHE, displays, printed circuitry, RFID and sensors.
“ElectroJet is a synergy of solutions, materials such as silver conductive inks that are particle-free, printers and processes,” Booher said. “ElectroUV3D has all the material you need to start up from day 1, including training. We can print conductive silver inks and dielector insulating inks with UV inline curing. We can also embed our CESEC-7 security marking ink, which is invisible and can only be seen with UV. We also work on postprint processes such as solder masks.
Thomas Kolbusch of Coatema then covered “New & Digital Production Methods For Printed Electronics.” Kolbusch began by noting that digital fabrication is opening the door for the fourth industrial revolution, and noted that Coatema is now developing inkjet systems.
“The digital fab can produce lot size one of the same cost as lot size million,” Kolbusch observed. “Printed electronics is a flexible bridge, whether it uses an actuator, sensor, energy source or harvesting, data transmission and communication. We can use a lot of different processes and need to make them independent from energy sources. We also need to develop design principles and standardization in the industry.”
To help its customers, Coatema is creating an ecosystem for end users.
“We are the equipment provider,” Kolbusch said. “We have ink suppliers, developers and print module integrators, and we want to deliver the complete system for our customers. We are not trying to invent everything ourselves. A reproducible result in every step of the scale is needed for success. We believe inkjet is stable enough now to be scaled into production. There’s a lot of interest from traditional textile manufacturers.”
