The market for printed electronics (PE) is coming to fruition. Already, there are products successfully reaching consumers, and there are opportunities for new applications going forward. For innovative companies in the PE field, there was plenty of good news during the past year, with more ahead in the coming years.

Davor Sutija, CEO of Thin Film Electronics (Thinfilm), said that 2013 has been an exciting year for Thin Film for a lot of reasons.

“On the corporate side, we received a $23 million investment from Invesco and have strengthened our management team, adding Dr. Peter Fischer, our new chief product officer and John Afzelius-Jenevall, chief financial officer,” said Sutija. “We received our first commercial orders for Brand Protect Solution, first at a prototype level from a leading packaged consumer goods company and more recently from a luxury goods company. There is strong interest in the market in this application.”

Sutija noted that Thinfilm reached several important milestones in the company’s development of integrated system products.
“Mid-year, we demonstrated a low voltage, cost-effective, display driver, and in October showed our first fully stand-alone system based on printed and organic electronics,” Sutija reported. “Equally as important, we entered a commercial agreement for delivery of our first integrated systems in 2014. On the production and manufacturing side, we are building a new high definition printing facility in Sweden, making our in-house printing capacity 50 million systems annually.”

Amar Kendale, vice president of marketing for MC10 in 2013, noted that MC10 had an excellent year. On the financial side, the company completed Series C round of funding bringing funding to $42 million to date from existing venture capital investors and new strategic investors, and announced Medtronic as a strategic investor.

On the commercial side, MC10 and Reebok introduced its critically acclaimed CHECKPOINT indicator, its first commercial product. “MC10 and Reebok co-developed CHECKLIGHT, a sports impact indicator that alerts coaches, parents and trainers to the severity of head impacts,” Kendale said.

Wolfgang Mildner, managing director of PolyIC GmbH & Co. KG, said that PolyIC did very well in 2013, growing in every way.  “We had more customer contacts and projects than ever,” said Mildner. “All requests are very close to products and the feasibility for the projects is in good development. We have even opened our first subsidiary in southwest Germany.”

“There has been a dramatic increase of interest in touch control and touch-screen related projects over the year, especially those associated with flexible viewing screens. This has resulted in a big increase in touch-screen projects this year,” said David Lussey, founder and chief technical officer of Peratech Limited and inventor of Quantum Tunnelling Composites (QTC), a pressure switching and sensing material technology.

Ian Reid, marketing director at Plastic Logic, said that 2013 has included some very important milestones for the company.
“Our EPD product line is in mainstream production with a solid business pipeline,” Reid noted. “We have now started taking and shipping commercial orders for these products.”

Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, chief business development officer for Ynvisible, said that 2013 has been a year of increasing number of end client opportunities for Ynvisible.

“We are approached with numerous exciting product ideas and visions almost every day,” Kuusisto said. “As a small company, we’ve been focusing mainly on developing final applications with lead customers, particularly in the consumer goods and merchandise display industries. However, as the cash rich IT companies are also looking into the hardware space and natural user interface (NUI) design, we’ve allowed ourselves to also address some of those opportunities.

“We have a positive challenge that the order request volumes have increased significantly,” Kuusisto added. “Expected delivery times, especially in the promotional application space, are a challenge for current production capacity at print house partners. Despite strong demand, positioning the company for growth in the current economic environment within the EU has been challenging. Much of our revenues continue to come from North America. The importance of partnerships and networks has been highlighted. A large part of our current activities relate to electrochromics, and we’ve been partnering for electrochromics display production up-scaling and integration into final products.”

“Things are going well so far,” said Scott White, CEO of PragmatIC Printing Limited. “Our customer base and revenues continue to grow, and we have a healthy order book for the rest of the year. The business is a mix of new product concepts as well as certain previously developed products moving into commercial production (although initially low volume).”

Sriram Peruvemba, CMO of Cambrios Technologies, said that Cambrios is doing exceedingly well.

“We started the year following through on the design wins from the previous year and focused on getting into mass production,” Peruvemba said. “This resulted in Cambrios’ ClearOhm product being available in retail, in small and large area touchscreen devices. Being able to purchase ClearOhm material-based products in local electronics store is the best proof of the products’ ability to replace ITO as the transparent conductor of choice.

“While our competition showed slides and issued press releases, Cambrios mass produced products,” Peruvemba added. “In the second half of 2013, the company’s efforts was recognized by the leaders in the industry, key customers launched products using our material, key partners built factories and the largest players in the touchscreen industry made ClearOhm transparent conductors , part of their strategy to address future markets. We also strengthened our patent portfolio (40 issued patents, 200 pending), we forged relationships with the best in the industry, we made inroads into emerging market applications like OLED , OPV and others and built a tremendous ecosystem and supply chain.

“In 2013, Cambrios also proved that our material beats the incumbent on both performance and price, which this resulted in design wins from tier one brands like LG, Lenovo, NEC, Huawei and we expect to announce more,” Peruvemba concluded.

Reaching the Marketplace
For manufacturers of printed and flexible electronics, bringing their products to the market is the culmination of much effort. For example, T-INK produced Ford Fusion’s Overhead Console, and Thinfilm and its partners continue to develop sensors for Bemis.

“We are continuing to work with Bemis on a fully customizable sensor platform that Bemis can adapt for its customers, and eventually make our technology a component of every package they manufacture,” Sutija said. “The technologies demonstrated this year are consistent with the development roadmap announced with Bemis.”

“Our current generation of ClearOhm silver nanowires is deemed as the best material for touchscreens by our customers,” Peruvemba said. “The company’s current activity involves scaling our production to meet market demand. We installed larger manufacturing equipment and process vessels, enlarged our footprint both in-house, as well as enabled multiple film and sensor partnership. We also developed newer materials to support key customers’ state-of-the-art manufacturing processes, we enabled better processes for our customers including laser patterning to increase throughput and create best in class products and developed the ecosystem to offer multiple configuration of products to support diverse application needs.

“We showed the market that Cambrios’ material can enable very small to very large area touchscreen applications by winning and mass producing transparent conductors for mobile phones to large area monitors,” Peruvemba added. “The market reacted by awarding the company design wins for smartphones, tablets, monitors, All-In-One (AIO) computers among others. Customers and partners are investing millions of dollars into factories and equipment to take advantage of the value our technology brings to the market.”

“The Globalpower drill containing QTC touch control is now available and represents one of the first mainstream products to contain a QTC printed electronics assembly,” said Lussey. “A number of similar devices are scheduled to follow within a short time.”

“We are working with a number of partners, designing-in displays for their products,” Reid said. “These range from digital signage – e.g. Dresden electronic and SERELEC – through to secondary displays for smart mobile accessories and companions – e.g. popSLATE and Pocketbook.”

Kuusisto said that Ynvisible focuses on consumer applications of printed electronics.

“The market pull to bring everyday objects and surfaces to life was the premise for setting up Ynvisible,” said Kuusisto. “We’re delighted to see that many companies in our target client base have re-initiated printed electronics programs during the past two years. For most of these companies, this is not a first attempt to work with printed electronics. Our early work triggered a high number of contacts from a diverse range of companies, designers and DIY types. Most of our time is focused on working with consumer brands; during the past year we’ve been addressing short to medium term application needs and opportunities with 10 of the world’s 50 biggest advertisers.

“At Ynvisible, we follow a design mantra of ‘adapting functionalities familiar to consumers from on-line digital experiences and apply these to physical (printed) objects,’” Kuusisto added. “This seems to be resonating well. It is in this context that many are approaching us. To our delight it’s not just technology enthusiasts who are approaching us. Many companies and designers we are working with tell us that they too have been looking at their digital initiatives and on-line content and services, and are seeking ways to bring these in a more natural way to physical spaces and goods. YnTouch Product Selector and Printed Physical Liking systems are some of the first manifestations of our work.”

“Besides mobile, we also see very positive reactions from the automotive, the home appliance and consumer electronic industries,” said Mildner. “Operation and input via touch is a trend and will be much easier to realize if its just based on a sensor film. So not only mobile phones are a big future business.”

The applications being launched by these innovators range over a wide range of industries. Thinfilm, for example, is working on temperature sensors, while Cambrios’ ClearOhm materials are in displays and laptops.

“We’ve shown significant progress in development of a temperature monitoring label for use with perishable goods, such as pharmaceuticals and food products,” Sutija said. “We’ve also announced three more commercial agreements, in addition to those announced in 2012. We now have active projects across packaging (Bemis), toys and games (Hasbro), high-value labeling and identification (Fortune 1000), and customers for brand protection, ranging from a global FMCG company to luxury goods. The first products containing our brand protection solution are expected to be in retail by March 2014.”

“Cambrios publicly stated products that are available in retail stores from NEC, LG, Lenovo, G-Vision, Huawei, we have also won tablet, mobile phone, AIO, monitor designs that will be announced by our customers, shortly,” Peruvemba said. “We have forged partnerships with some of the best in the industry and some of these also will be announced in the near future. Our recent joint venture with TPK and Nissha will enable ClearOhm material usage in tablets and mobile phone devices. Cambrios continues to make progress with flexible display applications targeted at mobile devices, as well as in the area of lighting and solar.”

MC10’s CHECKPOINT system, which it co-developed with Reebok, is an ideal opportunity to monitor the impact of head injuries.

“CHECKLIGHT has been extremely well received,” Kendale said. “This product represented a solution to a real market need at the right time. The CHECKLIGHT is available in both retail and online channels, and teams, parents, coaches and players have expressed that this product helps to keep the players safer by offering real-time feedback. Reaction from the media has been incredible, and we will be launching our next products in sports and fitness next year.”

“QTCs can detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and a project is currently underway with London College of Fashion to integrate VOC detection into textiles and wearables to monitor the wearer’s well being by detecting certain of the VOCs given off through the wearer’s skin,” said Lussey. “This is an area of technology that is capable of very rapid expansion because it is seen as a natural adjunct to a mobile telephone.”

Companies are working on other projects that are under nondisclosure agreements (NDAs).

“Most of the projects are under NDA and in preparation and ramp up for the market,” said Mildner. “The occhio designer lamp (based on touch-less operation by gesture) is a nice example of a released product.”

“Many players in the printed electronics field, including us at Ynvisible, have been silent in publishing developments in the past year or two,” said Kuusisto. “This is not a reflection of reduced activity, but a natural reflection of the fact that many companies now are busy in serious product developments. When successful, these will begin to hit the markets in 2014-2015.”