This Month's Spectrum Summary:

(The following is an excerpt from the October 2005 issue of Spectrum, a proprietary monthly briefing published exclusively for the clients of I.T. Strategies, Inc. © 2005)

Plastic Electronics emerging from the labs;
seed near term inkjet openings, long term boom

This month Marco Boer and your SPECTRUM editor meet with Mark Hanley fresh back from participation in the year's major Plastic Electronics conference held at Messe Frankfurt. I.T. Strategies participated as a co-sponsor, Mark Hanley was a panelist, and I.T. Strategies' Liz Ziepniewski addressed a breakout session.

Plastic electronics is a revolution in the making that appears ready now to emerge from what has been primarily materials research to commercialization. It deserves watching closely since digital printing, especially inkjet, is viewed as a major potential manufacturing technology. Our discussion expands on our Global Industry Review that was distributed at the conference and as a Market Application installment for clients.

As with any emerging industry, terminology tends to be in flux. This new generation of electronics has been variously termed printed electronics, plastic electronics, and flexible electronics. Basically, it is the creation of flexible circuits or sensors through microdeposition or printing metallic inks or vapors, or liquid conductive polymers. It is expected that this will initiate a long term shift from electronics that are relatively expensive and rigid to those that are inexpensive, flexible, and large-area. Foreseen applications include displays, lighted signage, photovoltaics, sensors, RFIDs and mobile antennas, and "smart" textiles. It seems destined to develop printing into a major manufacturing technology.

Current printed circuit technologies are true analog printing, various hybrid analog gas, solid and liquid disposition technologies, and now, direct digital printing, mainly inkjet. Inkjet negatives include problems with conductivity of jettable inks, viscosity, and (compared with analog) speed and cost. But the many advantages of the technology outweigh the problems in a number of applications. Among these are surface independence, unit cost independent of run length, extremely high programmable droplet size and positioning, easy integration into the digital data flow, and physically compact hardware.

Since today the technologies are only beginning to move out of the laboratory, efforts to commercialize them will tend toward a lot of trial and error. This means currently inkjet can serve as a complement to the other more mainstream technologies. Dimatix is positioning itself to capitalize on this opportunity with its newly introduced "Materials Printer."

Who else is involved? At the Frankfurt conference a good portion of the 400 attendees were from university research labs and chemical companies. Except for Dimatix, inkjet vendors were fairly invisible. Regarding conferences, it is felt there is a lot more talk than action at this point, with 15-20 conferences this year alone worldwide. One geographic area to watch is central Europe where there has been a lot of ongoing development. It bears watching for both short-term opportunities and for long term strategic payoff. It will change our electronic world in future decades and digital printing will surely play a major role.