New EU plastic electronics competition opens

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 21 Oct 2011

A new €18 million EU competition to promote commercialization of organic and large-area electronics (OLAE) technologies and products has opened.

Under the rules projects that qualify for funding under the new OLAE+ programme must be collaborative and application-focused. Projects must also include partners from at least two states. The competition will fund small and large projects, costing in the range of €0.5-€3 million, with the project consortiums expected to meet the remaining half of the project cost.

The UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB) recently announced the competition. It will contribute up to €4 million and the European Commission will provide up to €2 million to co-fund UK companies taking part.

Open

According to Nick Sheppard, a spokesperson at the TSB, the broad thrust of the competition is to help the printed and plastic electronics industry tackle challenges on the path to commercialisation - a topic the organisation will discuss further at the UK Plastic Electronics Show at the NEC in Birmingham on 9-10 November 2011.

The funding competition opens on 24 October 2011 and successfully selected projects begin at the end of 2012. The deadline for first-stage applications is 31 January 2012.

The project is open to participants from several countries including UK, Austria, Germany, Israel, Poland and Sweden, and has been developed with their participating governments.
OLAE+ is open to both commercial firms - including start-ups - universities and academic institutes, and other relevant organisations in the emerging printed and plastic electronics industry in the UK, such as advanced manufacturing centres.

Proposal

In the first stage potential projects are invited to submit a 'light' proposal of a few pages, including a description of the consortium, abstract and a financial plan. These submissions will receive feedback from the relevant national funding agency. The second stage, requiring an in-depth application, opens in March and the final deadline is end of May 2012.

Project objectives can vary as long as they qualify as OLAE technologies. Themes include the development of production equipment and processes, to enable large-scale manufacturing of displays, lighting, PVs, and integrated smart systems using current or next-generation material sets, advances in testing and measurement to enable or demonstrate high-volume in-line testing and repair or achieve significant improvements in barrier layer performance at high speed, large volume and high yield manufacturing.

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