Printing Electronics
 Globally the printing industry is in decline. Are the centuries of sophisticated development of the science and production technology for printing declining in a whimper? The answer is probably not. Certainly there is a fascinating escape route opening up for some. It is the printing of electronics. Learn more in this article from Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of IDTechEx www.idtechex.com.
In the United States, much of the printing industry is in free fall as a result of the internet and changing lifestyles. For example, the young prefer television, the i-pod and the computer to the newspaper or magazine. There is some growth in sectors of the packaging industry such as polyester packaging and in the labelling industry in the form of self-adhesive labels but neither of these industries is particularly prosperous either. Printing spans them all. For example, only 5% of barcodes are created in the form of labels any more. Instead of the label industry providing a barcode applied to packaging and products, the barcode is now printed directly at almost zero cost when other printing takes place. Feeble pickings there for the industry.
So are the centuries of sophisticated development of the science and production technology for printing ending in a whimper? Are the ink makers, machinery suppliers and others variously specialising in flexo, litho, ink jet, screen, gravure and other technologies looking like the steam engine experts of one hundred years ago? The answer is probably not. Certainly there is a fascinating escape route opening up for some. It is the printing of electronics.
The argument goes like this. The silicon chip is the clever bit of almost everything electronic. It subsumes transistors, diodes and many other small components and the myriad of wires, connections and therefore failure modes previously involved. By making the features on the chip smaller and smaller, more and more complexity can be provided with little or no increase in cost. However, the silicon chip has subsumed all it can and that means that it has to be connected in the good old fashioned way to large components such as displays, batteries, actuators, antennas and even the larger capacitors and resistors. This is all with added cost and plenty of failure modes in the interconnects. Indeed, the size of the finished device exhibits no benefit from the smallness of the chip and that may mean it is too large for the required purpose such as smart packaging.
There is more. The cost of the simplest silicon chips has not changed for decades and the exponential increase in cost of chip making factories – now three billion dollars each – and of the cost of supporting research and development bodes ill for the future. We need disposable thin electronics for a myriad of things from smart skin patches that deliver drugs without error, disposable blood, insulin and pregnancy testers with clear human interfaces, self-adjusting use by dates that take note of whether we opened and/ or heated the food or medicine, wallpaper television, controllable wallpaper lighting and so on. It would be safer if the whole of the outside of a car glowed in the dark and that surface doubled as large indicator lights and so on. The laminate across the whole of the outside of the car could all flash red in an emergency, having stored its power from the sun. The silicon chip is a poor route to all of this. While silicon chips are used for energy production in the form of photovoltaic panels, these brittle structures are not leading to the kilometres of low cost electricity generating tape we need down motorways and on buildings. In short, we need much cheaper, more flexible, thinner electronics and electrics combined. We need printers.
WHAT IS PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY?
Photolithography or optical lithography is a process used in semiconductor device fabrication to transfer a pattern from a photomask (also called reticle) to the surface of a substrate. Often crystalline silicon in the form of a wafer is used as a choice of substrate, although there are several other options including, but not limited to, glass, sapphire, and metal. Photolithography (also referred to as "microlithography" or "nanolithography") bears a similarity to the conventional lithography used in printing and shares some of the fundamental principles of photographic processes.
Source: Wikipedia | It is true that making silicon chips involves so-called photolithography but that is an optical and etching technology that has nothing worthwhile in common with the printer’s reel to reel lithographic process. The new form of electronics and electrics commonly called printed electronics involves modification of existing forms of flat bed, ink jet and rotary printing. All the traditional skills are dearly needed so we can truly have pervasive electronics in our clothing, packaging, books, medical treatment and much more besides. Printed electronics will kick the silicon chip out of the talking gift card as well as the discrete components and wires to which it is attached. But that is the least of what it will do. The film Minority Report showed it giving us the moving colour display and voice over on the cornflake packet. Interactive games on disposable paper packaging have already been demonstrated in real life but more serious uses will also drive printed electronics forward.
So how is it progressing and how is the printing industry getting involved? The table below gives some examples including large flexible moving colour billboards that replace conventional printing with something more compelling. Later the same will occur with most packaging. The printing industry therefore has both carrot and stick to make it take an interest in these new applications of printing. |
