Printed electronics features

Smart tags and packaging

The use of electronic display labels to replace price tags on supermarket shelves is a promising business opportunity. These electronic labels have a low pixel density and consume little energy. They not only provide information on a product’s price and characteristics, but can also alert sales staff when stock needs to be replenished on the shelf. They can be attached directly to the product to provide consumers with real-time technical (performance) and commercial information (discounts, etc.). This type of label is considerably more expensive than a traditional label, but offers the advantage of being reusable, as well as the possibility of centralized updating of information for all items in the store.

Increasing the added value of a simple cardboard box is now a priority for major brands. Analysts note that television advertising is losing its impact, while at the same time, consumers’ purchasing decisions are increasingly made in the store itself. Incorporating a flexible printed display into the packaging to provide information such as the list of ingredients, fat content or use-by date, can thus help to increase the perceived value of the product.

Another interesting market segment concerns so-called disposable electronics.

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RFID antennas

The market for labels and other electronic identifiers will exceed €15B by 2022. It is currently growing at almost 15% a year.
However, this development is conditional on a significant drop in the price of these tags. At present, RFID tags are viable for pallet identification, but too expensive for individual packaging. The development of printed electronics is an interesting way of significantly reducing these costs, thanks to high-volume production techniques.

Printing is already widely used to produce RFID antennas, but the production of complete RFID tags using printing techniques alone is still in its infancy. To produce a fully printed complex circuit that meets the current performance standards achieved by silicon technology, a large substrate area would be required. It will take a few more years of research (including work on low-cost, high-performance conductive inks) before they can be truly competitive with traditional RFID tags. Today, the standard process requires a hybrid approach in which the Silicon chip is positioned at very high speed and bonded to the antenna using conductive adhesives (pick&place process).

In addition to the logistics sector, other applications are already being studied, such as freeway passes, loyalty cards equipped with RFID to send advertising, anti-counterfeiting marking, document marking to record and track files or works, security devices, passports, animal identification, etc.

Oleds for lighting

Energy-intensive lighting technologies (incandescent, halogen) are gradually being replaced by new ambient lighting created directly on walls, ceilings, curtains, windows or any other surface capable of integrating organic LEDs. These technologies are increasingly being integrated into automotive safety lighting systems (rear lights on certain luxury cars, for example, enabling innovative and unique designs).

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Batteries

They are structurally thin and flexible, can have widely varying form factors, and can be integrated into disposable objects, but they still cost more than most conventional button cells, so their use is still limited to niche applications such as medical patches, where their flat, extremely compact appearance is an essential factor.

Printed batteries (rechargeable cells) are now available on the market and can be used to power most printed applications. The manufacturing process is screen printing. The electrical voltage reaches 1.5 V in normal operation, enabling power to be supplied to the Internet of Things (IoT). New players are now introducing solutions based on materials derived from green chemistry, making the problem of recyclability of smart objects containing embedded electronics easier to solve.

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Intelligent systems

Combining multiple functionalities to perform complex tasks autonomously is a response to the growing development of connected objects. What’s new is the use of flexible substrates to build complete systems that integrate measurement, logic and energy functions.

Organic electronics enable the integration of several functions on a single substrate, and the design of integrated systems or intelligent sensors. These “systems on foil” take the form of flexible intelligent sensors that are inserted into textiles or bonded to surfaces, for applications involving monitoring of the external environment (temperature, pressure, etc.) or health, and compatible with label formats.