The flexible and printed electronics (PE) field covers many different applications, from displays and sensors to packaging and organic photovoltaics (OPV), and much more. The equipment needs by PE manufacturers is also wide ranging.

Stan Farnsworth, director of marketing for NovaCentrix, said that with NovaCentrix’s platform products of the PulseForge photonic curing tools and Metalon conductive inks, the company is supporting many application types inside the printed electronics space.

“As far as specific application areas, we see action in the display segment, ongoing work in the medical equipment development and strengthening activity in packaging,” Farnsworth added. “Energy applications such as PV and batteries continue to move, though more quietly. Materials innovation continues to be an emphasis of our customers, including the development of new transparent conductor technologies.”

Lou Panico, CEO of XENON Corporation, said that XENON’s tier 1 market is printed electronics.

“XENON is doing well in this fascinating and developing market, due in part to the length and breadth of our understanding of pulsed light technology,” Panico added. “We now have about 80 R&D tools at customer sites worldwide. Our first roll-to-roll (R2R) system has been online for about six months, and we are awaiting confirmation of a second order.”

Thomas Kolbusch, vice president, Coatema Coating Machinery GmbH, said that Coatema’s key markets in PE are at the moment OPV, with a focus on DSSC solar cells, OLEDs and wearable electronics.

“We delivered during the last two years a number of bigger installations and see growing interest,” Kolbusch added. “Everything to do with encapsulation units for OLEDs is a topic of our work, interestingly enough, because that is the technology we started 40 years ago. Printed electronics integrated into textiles, also called wearable electronics, had a push the last six months.”

David Ventola, director business development – Advanced Materials processing at MEGTEC Systems, Inc., said that within printed electronics, MEGTEC focuses on flexible displays, OLED and el lighting, printed sensors and encapsulating films.

“In addition, we focus on related markets of supercapacitors and batteries,” Ventola added. “Within PE, MEGTEC is finding some projects where we facilitate the transition from a benchtop process to pilot scale process.”

Nicolas Bernardin, deputy managing director and co-founder of Ceradrop, said that Ceradrop has the knowledge of inkjet printing systems and advance software solutions necessary to support key markets.

“Markets that are currently developing inkjet printing are thin film transistors, inkjet printed circuits and inkjet printed sensors,” Bernardin noted. “Example of these markets are displays, image and medical sensors, organic photovoltaics, OLED displays and lighting and 3D ceramic electronics.”

“At AIXTRON, we focus on our core know how, namely deposition technology,” said Jürgen Kreis, director business development, AIXTRON SE. “We leverage this know-how to a number of different technologies, such as MOCVD (e.g. LEDs), ALD (memory chips), PECVD graphene), PVPD (organic applications) or OVPD.

“With the latter technology, we are targeting the large area OLED market, primarily for displays such as TVs,” Kreis added. “Further out in the future, OLEDs have the potential to be also used in general lighting applications. Currently, we are offering innovative and disruptive approaches for the deposition of small molecules as used in OLEDs as well as for polymer-based organic thin films. While markets for most organic semiconductors are not mature yet, we consider AIXTRON to be well positioned with our proprietary OVPD and PVPD process solutions.”

Mandy Gebhardt of 3D-Micromac said that 3D-Micromac is working mainly with the semiconductor industry, photovoltaics and medical device technology.

“We are producing micromachining systems for different applications in these markets,” Gebhardt said. “Our key markets for printed electronics are OPV, OLED, RFID , flexible displays and tools for general R&D purposes.”

“We have some ideas as to what may become ‘key markets’ in PE and related fields, but we’re taking a wide view,” said Bob Hoffman, regional manager, Martin Automatic Inc. “Martin’s expertise in handling webs – substrates delivered and processed as roll stock – spans a broad range of processes. We’re talking to or working with companies, individuals, research scientists, engineers, academics – you name it – who are involved in just about every printing, coating and converting technology related to photovoltaics, energy storage and all manner of printed electronics.”

Advances in Flexible and Printed Electronics
Equipment manufacturers said they are seeing some gains being made toward commercialization of flexible and printed electronics products, although they see more efforts being made in the area of pilot production. They do anticipate more movement in the near future.

“We are not seeing significant commercialization at this time,” Panico noted. “Most activity appears to be in research and development. However, we can offer one example of early commercialization: the manufacturing of RFID tags.”

Kolbusch said that everything that is replacing ITO in touch application is moving into the market. “In most of the touch applications, we see flexible polymer films as a carrier,” Kolbusch added. “We see a number of companies moving into printed memories and solutions for intelligent packaging , and more and more big players in Asia moving into a position of being able to deliver flexible displays.”

“We are seeing advances made toward commercialization of printed memories, solution processed OLED displays, and flexible printed bio-sensors and circuits that are incorporated functional materials processing with digital printing technologies,” said Bernardin.

“We are seeing customers make the move from product development to process development and small volume builds in printed sensors and flexible displays,” Ventola said.

“One relationship I can talk about is our relationship with Muehlbauer in the RFID space, which involves both our PulseForge tools and our very low-cost/high-performance ICI copper oxide conductive inks,” Farnsworth said. “This joint effort has important ramifications for markets including anti-counterfeiting, product logistics and document authenticity.”

Gebhardt said that most customer requests are still focused on lab applications, few on pilot line productions.

“A true industrial production for commercialization cannot be seen today,” Gebhardt added. “The most significant challenge is the huge cost pressure in combination with the high risk for the substitution of existing solutions.”

Kreis said that this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has shown that manufacturers like Samsung and LG in particular are in an advanced development stage regarding the use of OLEDs in TVs, tablet computers and smartphones.

“Showing these devices also in a curved form, the industry understands this to be a first indication of an increasing significance of products introducing flexibility as an additional value proposition,” Kreis said. “Though the current devices including TVs or mobile applications are not yet fully flexible, the trend toward flexibility is clearly visible.

“While printing is considered to offer some advantages for manufacturing due to its intrinsically additive process, applying such processes for the fabrication of complex devices still faces technical challenges,” Kreis added. “Therefore, mass production for the time being will find inroads for a restricted number of applications only. OLEDs, as one example of those complex devices, see some progress in applying printing for some years on a proof-of-principle level. However, they are still manufactured mostly by evaporation processes, making use of the intrinsic purity of this approach.

“In contrast, printing of electronic devices is already being applied for applications like the manufacturing of flexible TFT backplanes,” Kreis noted. “Further production processes for applications like RFID tags, where printing for a long time was considered as enabling low-cost manufacturing, are still too cost-intensive though. Specialized on scalable manufacturing processes where very thin and functional layers with high uniformity, pin -hole free characteristics and precise thickness control are mandatory, AIXTRON’s carrier-gas enhanced deposition processes are considered as enabling.”

Customers’ Needs
The equipment manufacturers Printed Electronics Now spoke with said that PE manufacturers have unique needs for their machinery.

“Our customers generally are not experts yet in printed electronics,” said Farnsworth. “They are experts in their markets and their products, but they look to us to provide leadership in helping them select the right technologies to meet their needs. Our PulseForge tools are designed with features and capabilities that might not seem immediately important to new participants in printed and flexible electronics development, but as our customers get more experience, they more fully value the capabilities of our tools. Our tools include these advanced features for a reason: development testing in our labs by our own ink and application engineers showed they were necessary. Examples include the pulse shaping capability, which is unique to our tools.

“Our physicists and engineers told our hardware and controls teams what was needed in order to develop the right thermal profiles to process thick films,” Farnsworth added. “The result is the only toolset in the community able to deliver the process controllability needed to switch from processing inkjet copper to screenprint silver to deposited ITO within seconds, and without any hardware changes.

“Another example is our use of water-cooled lamps,” Farnsworth noted. “Water-cooling is the only way to get long lifetimes from lamps in a production setting on applications that require power beyond what a simple camera flash can deliver. This means less downtime on the production floor, and more consistent lamp output. While the R&D-oriented clients might not have strong appreciation for these features, I can tell you the operations teams of our customers do.”

“At the R&D level of printed electronics, our customers are looking for flexibility,” Panico said. “We are working on this and an expanded software package. The device makers are looking for wider processing capability. The R2R order we will receive this week will be for 60” width capability. The OEM machine makers are looking for modular low cost equipment that can readily be incorporated into the machines they will manufacture for their printed electronics customers. With more than 3,000 pulsed light systems operating 24/7 on industrial production lines, we are ready to meet the needs of these machine makers.”

“Referring to the manufacturing of OLEDs as the single largest segment in organic electronics, we see the absolute necessity for more cost-efficient manufacturing in particular with regards to large area applications such as OLED TVs or OLED lighting at a later stage,” Kreis said. “Against this background, we have significantly increased our demonstration capabilities in the area of organic semiconductor manufacturing and are about to put a new organic cluster environment into operation, which allows us to demonstrate customer specific processes with the cost-saving potential of our proprietary OVPD and PVPD technologies on device level. At the same time, we are building a Gen8 demonstration unit, which will prove the scalability of our OVPD and PVPD technologies all the way up to largest applicable substrate sizes. In parallel, we are working in publicly funded research projects to further improve our own technologies and to identify future industry requirements at an early stage.”

Bernardin said that no one system solution can be all things to all customers, but in the view of many potential customers, they would like to see equipment manufacturers be their single source of equipment and process support.

“One way Ceradrop MGI group is working to solve such challenges is to provides an open platform that can have the flexibility to integrate and incorporated the latest key deposition OEM components such as types of industrial piezo inkjet printheads, type of drop analysis methods, type of post deposition thickness measurements methods and type of post process solutions curing requirement needed by customers to seamless incorporate into their unique inkjet deposition process requirements,” Bernardin added.

“Customers need equipment manufacturers to provide support to move from R&D unit operations to pilot scale methods that can readily scale to larger production volumes,” Ventola said. “MEGTEC is either supporting the customers directly or engaging with collaboration partners like Chasm Technologies. MEGTEC provides process scale-up support and testing in our R&D Center. If the customer needs more help defining the steps and approaches, we feel that Chasm Technologies can better meet this need. Once the R&D process is prototyped, we then participate in the scale-up.”

Gebhardt said that the increase of production yield to reduce costs and increase the trust in the technology is a key requirement for customers.

“3D-Micromac has put a lot of effort into the optimization of process relevant parameter stability, as well as the supervision and control of these parameters,” Gebhardt added. “In addition, 3DMM puts a lot of work into the definition of the process environment, ranging from clean room to inert conditions.”

“When commercialization happens, the ability to automate the converting process will be critical to maintaining consistency and reducing manufacturing costs,” Hoffman said. “Two key components for the success of the PE process are superior quality tension control and automatic splicing for non-stop roll-to-roll processing. I would agree with some market observers, who believe successful and profitable commercialization depends on manufacturing volumes measured not in square feet but in square miles.”

“They are looking more and more for integrated solutions, which can cover the whole production value chain,” said Kolbusch. “We also see more customers coming into the field of PE which have no background in printed electronics, so they are looking for support in designing devices, processes or chemistry. We have since the beginning of this year a cooperation with OET in Greece, a start-up company specializing in providing these solutions to customers. We deliver the equipment which fits their pre-engineering solutions.”

Growing Interest in Flexible and Printed Electronics
All in all, equipment manufacturers are optimistic about the market for flexible and printed electronics.

“We are seeing an increased interest and willingness for silver nanoinks, due in part to the recognition that copper ink is on a much slower development track,” Panico said.

“The interest is increasing,” Gebhardt said. “However, the majority of actions is limited to lab-based feasibility studies. Most ideas are targeting the substitution of existing process chains to further reduce the production costs, which if critically reflected, is hardly possible through the introduction of a new technology, as the required investment to enable a company to fabricate printed electronics is quite high and job shop capacities aren’t available yet.”

“The next major shift in portable and display electronics technologies will be the expected transition from flat-ridged form factor to flexible-durable-light weight form factor,” said Bernardin. “Such a market shift will drive more interest in flexible and printed electronics developments and the promise of lower cost, higher return on manufacturing investments in printed electronics.”

“We have seen increased interest, inquiries and project opportunities in printed electronics,” Ventola said. “We have a long-term perspective for this market and are optimistic for growth opportunities for MEGTEC. In the short term, our goal is to establish relationships with the R&D teams at our customers to insure we can support the go to market needs for their products.”

“Overall, we see increasing interest in organic electronics, in particular due to its wide range of potential applications,” Kreis said.
“While OLED manufacturing technology remains a key focus of AIXTRON’s activities in the field of organic electronics, we do, of course, also investigate areas beyond this segment. TFTs, for instance, have successfully been introduced for flexible backplane technologies by companies like Plastic Logic. The industry is characterized by new innovative applications requiring efficient manufacturing solutions. We support the industry to commercialize new applications by offering enabling solutions that perfectly meet customer requirements on the path of the introduction of applications based on printed electronics.”

“By every indicator and metric, we see increased interest in printed electronics,” said Farnsworth. “At each of the events we attend and in which we participate, we see increased attendance year-on-year. This includes events here in the U.S. such as the very successful FlexTech conference in Phoenix Feb. 3-5, as well as the Printed Electronics USA event in Santa Clara at the end of last year. The European conferences such as LOPEC in Munich, Printed Electronics Europe in Berlin, and the Asian events also are seeing dramatic upticks in participation. For us though, the important indicators are sales of our PulseForge tools, Metalon inks, and even our nanomaterials, and shipments of each are continuing to track up and to the right.”