Printed Electronics

As a leader within your printing company, you constantly scan for new printing technologies and applications. Printed electronics is one to monitor, but not for the reasons you think.

What Are Printed Electronics?

Printed electronics are electronic devices produced with digital or analog printing technologies. Printed on a variety of substrates, the devices may be fully functional conductors, semiconductors, resistors, dielectrics and optical materials. Printed electronics that are available today include sensors that are either applied to or incorporated within an object as well as flexible displays and smart labels. For example, sensors can be incorporated into the leading edge of aircraft wings to provide performance feedback to the flight systems and pilot.

Digital (jetting, extrusion or spraying) and analog (flexography, gravure, offset or screen) printing technologies are commonly used to produce the devices. Inks with materials including metallic conductors, nanoparticles and nanotubes that can be carried in a printable solution are printed one layer on top of another. 

However, the output is held to much higher standards than conventional print products that are seen by the human eye. Printed electronics require manufacturing capabilities that are possible but not widely available today: high-level pixel accuracy, absolute minimum thickness variation and precise material placement. So, while printing electronics directly onto board or plastic packaging has great potential because of the theoretical ability to track the package from factory to user (and gather data all along the way), challenges with absorption and sintering of the electronics impede growth.

See Through the Hype

Printed electronics has gone by a variety of names, including flexible electronics and hybrid electronics. At the peak of the hype surrounding the technology, many people thought printed electronics would replace large area displays and even silicon-based microprocessors. Disillusionment set in as pundits and investors understood the realities of technology’s limitations and long development timeline. Nevertheless, considerable research on printed electronics was still being conducted by firms and labs such as Avery Dennison, DuPont, Holst Centre, Kodak, Nano Dimension, Thin Film Electronics, Toppan Printing and Xerox PARC.

Today, the development effort is, as Ersin Uzun, VP and director of the System Sciences Laboratory at PARC put it, not about beating silicon but replacing or complementing silicon wherever appropriate. New and different form factors will come about, ranging from aircraft wings to automobile consoles to medical devices. 

Widespread adoption of printed electronics will not occur in the very near-term. Depending on how long you have been in the trade, you will understand what I am saying. Offset lithography will always have a place when very long runs of identical items must be printed. Inkjet printing displaced offset in the short-run and custom print market after a good two decades. In other words, just as it took time for digital printing to become a viable alternative to analog printing on quality, materials and cost, so will it take more time before we experience widespread use of printed electronics.

Certainly, performance and cost issues are inhibiting the printed electronics market’s growth but, as PARC’s Uzun points out, there are other factors at play. Potential high-volume users such as auto and aircraft manufacturers rightly require supply chains with multiple competitors providing equivalent products. Knowledge of the tech and how to build and operate the equipment is not evenly spread across the industry because the technology is still evolving. The software design and analytical tools that evaluate the potential performance of a printed electronic item are not robust. Rather than redesigning a conventional silicon-based electronic part, the ability to design for printed electronics (DfPE), while blending mechanical and electronic performance requirements and limits, must become commonplace.

How Close Are Printed Electronics?

So, as you do your technology scan, what to think about printed electronics?

First, the technology continues to evolve through the work of numerous labs and technology providers. Watch for not only hardware and material developments but also DfPE software advances.

Second, the investment required for not only the printing systems but also the printed electronics design software is out of the reach of most companies. Partnering with a specialist provider may be the most cost-effective market entry, enabling you to learn the tech as well as customer requirements.

Third, most printing companies are more likely to use printed electronics within production processes than to produce printed electronics for sale. Think about where printed, flexible and conforming sensors could provide your maintenance and management personnel with critical data about machine operation, as well as how wearables with printed electronics could improve your employees’ performance, health and safety.