Heart to heart

Our headline articles looks at one of the biggest developments in the plastic electronics industry, revealing the plans and ideas of global brands and household names working with developers to develop new products and innovations based on organic and printed electronics technology and smart fabrics.

In 'Heart to heart' +Plastic Electronics speaks to Textronics, which was acquired by sportswear firm Adidas in 2008, about how a niche smart textile device can be turned into a global product.

CEO Stacey Burr gives her tips for smart textile developers hoping to break into the commercial domain, and explains how the technology is being prepared for launch.

The sensor web

Smart fabrics can be envisaged in a wealth of applications, but this huge potential presents the challenge of how to make the technology workable and useful.

Clarity: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies is tasked with making smart textiles work. That means accurate sensing of appropriate signals, in clothes that are comfortable to wear, and with results presented in ways that are easy to interpret.

Shirley Coyle, wearable technologies and technical textiles researcher at Clarity, writes exclusively for +Plastic Electronics magazine about how smart textiles are being developed, and what is being done to turn sensing materials into useful products.

The possibility of adding electronic functionality to clothing has been investigated for some time now by smart textile developers, but it is only over the last few years that the market has responded to these possibilities. Sportswear applications, most notably the Nike + iPod training and the Adidas miCoach systems, indicate that smart textiles are achieving market penetration.

Plugged in: smart fabrics reports on the latest work getting smart textiles more widely accepted in the commercial domain: from efforts to make smart textiles fashionable enough for mainstream markets, to adding lighting to clothing and opportunities in healthcare. +Plastic Electronics speaks to fashion design agency Studio 5050, lighting firm Philips, sensing shirt creator Smartex and other smart fabric developers.

Smart fabrics are attracting attention in many markets, from military to healthcare. The ability to monitor the wearer's body has led to fitness and wellbeing applications that are expected to grow in the near future. Meanwhile, smart textiles will become more established in communication and portable power.

Market watch uses information from Pira market reports to highlight how much growth to expect in the coming years and provide a roadmap for the development of smart textiles in the marketplace.

Sony may have stopped producing its OLED TVs, but competitors LG and Samsung are announcing plans for new products in 2010-12. +Plastic Electronics investigates how likely they are to succeed.

In lighting, Europe is aiming to create standards to make OLED panels acceptable to industry, with OLED100.eu partners Philips and Osram getting involved.

2009 saw organic solar cells in bags and carry cases: +Plastic Electronics talks to Heliatek, G24 Innovations and others about this market's potential, with the likes of Apple now taking an interest.

New display technologies are already being dominated by Asian manufacturers, but the UK PETEC and the US Flexible Display Centre are planning to change that this year with a new e-reader.

+Plastic Electronics magazine provides a review of the 2010 DoE Solid-State Lighting R&D Workshop, which took place on 2-4 February 2010 at Raleigh Convention Centre, Raleigh, North Carolina, US.

The event provided an opportunity for discussions on the work that needs to be done to get LED and OLED lighting into a position to compete with conventional lighting technologies.

Speakers from the likes of DuPont Displays, Universal Display Corporation and GE Research talked about the specifications that are needed to be competitive, and what trade-offs these call for; how the technology can be scaled up; and how to reduce manufacturing costs.