Setting the standards for plastic electronics

Dan Rogers - 10 Feb 2012

Pockets of R&D and investment in facilities for the plastic electronics market have allowed certain areas to flourish, however this approach to development has created a somewhat patchy industry.

For some time it has been expected that printed and organic electronics will gradually be transformed from niche sales and R&D progress to high-volume markets based on a fully equipped supply chain. Bridging the gap between these two extremes has taken time.

Supply chain

For a company sitting somewhere in the middle of the value chain for a certain device - an organic solar cell, or a smart packaging concept, for instance - it can be difficult to source materials or equipment for a specific application that is reliable in both performance characteristics and supply volumes. OLED displays seem to have broken this barrier.

How to replicate such secure, mature supply chains elsewhere is the next big challenge for the plastic electronics industry. Two recent announcements of international, industry-wide initiatives suggest that achieving this supply chain coherency is on the agenda for 2012.

In February 2012 members of a newly formed technical committee for technology trade association IPC will meet to discuss standards for printed electronics.

The US-headquartered organisation launched its standards development programme in August 2011. The first set of standards for printed electronics substrates has been drafted and will go to ballot later in Q1 2012, before their release.

Meanwhile an EU-funded project was launched in September 2011 to bring together R&D organisations from across Europe, to exploit cross-continent expertise and facilities for the development of Europe's plastic electronics supply chain.

The 'Commercialisation clusters of organic large-area electronics' (COLAE) project aims to 'promote the commercial exploitation of organic and large-area electronics [OLAE] for the benefit of European industry and economies,' the consortium states in its vision outline. The €5.1 million project - with €3.8 million funding from the EU - brings together a strong consortium of European R&D organisations.

It is unsurprising that two such initiatives have emerged for the plastic electronics industry. The commercial success of technologies like OLED displays have demonstrated that there is much to offer.

This article appears in full in Volume 4, issue 4 of +Plastic Electronics magazine. To read this article, along with more high-value, exclusive content, subscribe to +Plastic Electronics magazine.