Major players of the printed and organic electronics industry across the world will participate in the ‘Symposium on Roll-To-Roll Processing of Printed Electronics and Functional Films’ to discuss the market potential, sophisticated technologies and applications.
Printed electronics: cost effective and energy efficient
Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) in partnership with the Singaporean-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Organic and Printed Electronics Association will conduct the international symposium along with the launch of the Large Area Processing Programme of SIMTech.
The requirement for roll-to-roll production technology is ever-increasing due to the requirement for flexible and large-area functional surfaces for promising applications including solid-state lighting, flexible electronics and photovoltaics. The technology is poised to grow from $2 billion in 2011 to more than $40 billion by 2020, offering huge commercial prospects for industries such as printed media, healthcare, consumer electronics, building and advertising.
Wafers are processed in batches for traditional semiconductor production but the large-area processing system uses a production process that resembles continuous printing press and can be used with flexible polymer. The roll-to-roll processing technique allows the printing of functional materials over flexible, lightweight, transparent and thin plastic films.
By developing innovate production technologies, the Large Area Processing Programme of SIMTech plans to manufacture ‘Made in Singapore’ products with yet-to-be-developed patterning, coating, web inspection and web control techniques. In collaboration with industry partners, SIMTech is developing applications such as printed lighting film to provide aesthetic lighting to building and advertising industries and printed heating film liquid or blood heating in medical applications.