Business from technology

The anticipated business potential for printed organic and large-area electronics continues to be huge. Yet until now, a lack of stable materials and industrial-scale manufacturing processes has limited the feasibility of printed electronics components.

Upscaling from lab to pilot

VTT emphasises technologies that can be upscaled to volume production, preferably using roll-to-roll processing. In addition to printing, it is possible to utilize several process combinations, such as laser processing, nano-imprinting, or lamination. Applications of printed electronics components include display drivers, backplanes and sensor systems, among others.

As a manufacturing technology, printed electronics is suitable for high volume large-area manufacturing to flexible substrates. Printed electronics can be integrated to substrates and products where no functionality has previously existed.

Printed thin film transistors (TFTs), memory, power sources and sensors

VTT’s competences for printed electronics components include:

• Printed organic transistors, developed in collaboration with leading material suppliers and in advanced research consortiums that are specifically focused on printing and roll-to-roll processing technologies
  
• printed inorganic transistors, based on zinc oxide nanoparticle materials
  
• printed batteries: We have been developing new, environmentally friendly power sources, such as enzymatic biofuel cells and printed polyaniline batteries. We have also been developing roll-to-roll processes for Li-ion cell manufacturing, as an example.
  
• fully printed write once –read many (WORM) memory.
  

In addition to full scale pilot printing facilities, VTT has excellent facilities for lab scale printing experiments and characterization equipments.