Alex Chandler and I attended the trade show in Santa Clara in November. There were quite a few interesting things, but nothing to really knock our socks off.
Some interesting general themes:
There were companies at the show with well developed products Thinfilm Electronics, PST and Solvay for example had things to sell. This is a move forward for the Printed Electronics universe, because so much of it has been about what we might do.
That is not to say we are out of the development phase. A lot of work has been done at the component level (inks by Protavic, DuPont, and PPG for example) that has not yet been translated into real. And there are more than a few unanswered questions, such as how we will connect printed electronics. While a few imagine a world where every circuit is printed, a much more likely scenario is a Hybrid world, where some functionality is still silicon based, with some printed electronics extensions where that makes sense. Even using a zero insertion force connector is not a terrific idea for most ink interconnects, so I think there will need to be some advance in this area for many implementations.
We also saw a lot of buy in for photonic curing. Five years ago Novacentrix seemed to be out in the wilderness with Pulse Forge, but at this show they and other photonic curing solutions were all over the place. Photonic curing is important to speed up printed electronics processes as most current presses are limited more by drying capacity than printing capacity. I don’t think this is the end of the story, but I do think photonic curing has turned a more commercial corner.
Finally, I think it is safe to say that printed electronics has a lot of hype to it reminiscent of the early RFID market. But I think as companies sort out what works and what doesn’t some actual business plans will emerge that don’t look like taking investor money to Vegas..
Dave Uland
President
Freehand Engineering
-Make it Real-