OPE-MENA Agenda

Presentation Title

Thin - lightweight - flexible: Shaping the Future with Organic and Printed Electronics

Printed Electronics enable a seamless integration of electronics into a wide range of products and, thus, new applications. Flexible sensors integrated in everyday devices monitor humidity, pressure, temperature, bending angle; Flexible, organic devices generate energy from ubiquitous sources such as temperature differences, sun- and artificial light. The enablers along the whole value chain of this technological change are represented by the leading industry association, the OE-A (Organic and Printed Electronics Association), to work on the common goal and make this technology a success. In this presentation, an overview on the international network and activities of the OE-A will be given.

Presentation Title

To trillions of smart objects and beyond

Traditional silicon integrated circuit (IC) production requires huge capital investment to keep up with the latest developments in technology, affordable now by only a handful of the largest device manufacturers. Increasing integration and mass production of standard ICs is the only way that these companies can continue to drive the cost per function down. However, this trend is going in the wrong direction for a future where we will be integrating a small amount of intelligence in trillions of everyday items. PragmatIC will describe how its FlexLogIC™ fab-in-a-box is creating a distributed and scalable production model for flexible ICs (FlexICs) that will revolutionise how smart solutions are fabricated.

Presentation Title

Flexible, thin and (partially) printed - applications for hybrid electronics for smart and intelligent buildings and surfaces

Printed Electronics is a platform technology to achieve thin, flexible, and lightweight functional components and systems. It is based on specific plastic and metal materials, the production technologies complements with additive manufacturing methods. Printed Electronics uses various adapted Roll-to-Roll and sheet fed processes like offset, gravure or inkjet printing for manufacturing. Many applications of printed electronics in different industries like automotive, health care, consumer electronics. Future Smart Buildings will be energy efficient and at the same time also comfortable. smart and intelligent. They will be operated like a smart phone with a touch of your finger, the intelligence will be enabled by integrated sensors. The talk provides an introduction, an overview of the state of the art of the technology and applications and outlook to future opportunities.

Presentation Title

Printing future electronic devices with organic semiconducting materials

Merck has been actively researching organic electronic materials since before 2000, with the objectives to develop products that enable mass production of electronic devices with new functionality, which are not readily obtainable using existing silicon technologies. These programmes require multi-disciplinary innovation to develop many inter-related materials and processes in parallel to realize these step-change technologies. Solution processable and printable, functional material sets have been developed, which we will introduce covering the technologies of OLED, OTFT, OPV and OPD. We will exemplify how the co-development of polymeric organic semiconductors, passive materials and formulations with process optimisation enable the printing of high performance OTFT backplane arrays, with charge carrier mobility greater than 2 cm2/Vs, suitable for the mass production of printed flexible displays and sensors.

Presentation Title

Organic Photovoltaic - Enabler for a new Business Model

In the last years OPVIUS has demonstrated the market readiness of Organic PV solutions in several projects and products ranging Solartrees of the German Pavilion at the World EXPO up to the world’s first plaster integrated PV system setting the standard for multi-functional construction materials opened in Frankfurt in autumn 2018. These projects show the enormous possibility OPV offer to rethink integration of functionality in products. In this contribution we show that the current line of thinking OPV is in full agreement with today’s understanding of photovoltaic, while OPVIUS’s approach of producing customizable, semi-finished goods being for integration into other products, like buildings, car and electronics offers a much wider dimension in tackling future markets. In this contribution we will show that an enabler component as OPV is understood by OPVIUS will ultimately result in unrivaled commercial success while standard PV products – including flexible ones but despite technology used – will mainly need to compete via price as only driver in a given market size in the future.

Presentation Title

Ultra-thin Organic Photovoltaic Films

ARMOR, the French mid-market company is a global market leader in print technologies. Its expertise in the formulation and coating of inks onto thin films carried out a new huge industrial challenge: using its know-how to achieve energy transition. ASCA® photovoltaic film project is born in 2010, after 8 years of technological partnerships with the leading names in chemicals, engineering and research and 80M€ of industrial investments. The French company conceives and produces its new generation of “low-carbon” photovoltaic organic films. ASCA ® is an innovative and virtuous material, right up to its production process. ARMOR has carefully selected each component and ensures that production conditions are as environmentally friendly as possible. Thanks to its thinness, flexibility and light weight, ASCA® is a revolutionary product that best suits to an infinity of applications. ARMOR is looking for partners and customers to innovate on this technology in terms of integration and deployment in the following market applications: smart cities and urban furniture, building, sensors, transportation and nomad applications.

Presentation Title

Printed Biosensors for Healthcare and IoT Applications

Early and accurate disease diagnosis is essential for survival of the patient. In the recent years, the demand for disposable, simple, cost-efficient, and user-friendly devices with fast response time has extensively increased. Such biosensors must be customized to address specific health issues and able to transmit the biomedical data wirelessly to the designated healthcare. Organic biosensors that can be fully printed and flexible owing to their potential to fulfil these criteria through an interdisciplinary combination of approaches from Medical Science and Nanotechnology have paved their way rapidly in the medical field. In this talk, an overview of the recent advances in Organic Electronics combined with Nanomedicine technologies such as 3D-bioprinting, production of diverse nanoparticles exhibiting multifaceted advantages, will be presented for the development of futuristic biosensors coupled with big data and the IoT. IoT constitutes wearable biosensors along with telemedicine for the preventive health activities and remote medical help along with the continuous monitoring of the patients. The design and mass production of such biosensors and their ability to generate the huge amount of data for therapeutics provide them real-time decision-making abilities that can lead to added value products in healthcare sector.

Presentation Title

Enabling game-changing products with OTFT-driven flexible displays and sensors

Organic electronics play a pivotal role in enabling flexible displays and sensors that break the form-factor constraints of glass and unlock new product applications and use cases. There is an increasing demand for conformable and shapeable displays and sensors for various applications that will offer more design freedom, while improving the user experience. OTFTs are the key to enabling low cost flexible displays and sensors that will bring surfaces to life, changing where and how we interact with objects in our daily lives. FlexEnable will present the latest performance of its OTFT technology, its industrialization and use in applications across consumer electronics, automotive, medical and security markets.

Presentation Title

High-Volume Printing of Low-Power Electrochromic Displays

Ynvisible is a developer and manufacturer of materials for producing electrochromic displays with high volume print technologies. With this presentation business applications, features and the technology behind the displays will be presented and discussed. Join us to understand how these displays with extremely low power consumption can add value by introducing unforeseen features and dynamic functionality to printed surfaces, enabling new ways how we interact with physical world.

Presentation Title

Intelligent Nano-Manufacturing of Flexible and Printed Organic Electronics

The revolutionary advantages of Organic and Printed Electronics (OEs) include flexible form factor, lightweight, conformability for adaptation to curved and complex surfaces and capability for fabrication by low-temperature and low-cost production processes such as R2R printing. These advantages enable their widespread implementation in existing and new consumer products from Energy, Lighting, Displays and Surfaces, Electronic Circuits, all (Bio) Sensors, Wearables, ICT, IoT, automotive, greenhouses, etc. In order to unleash the huge potential of OEs to enable the digital transformation of Industry, it is essential to optimize and upscale the nano-manufacturing process steps and to combine it with intelligent in-line precision metrology tools (to enable a closed-looped manufacturing process), in-line ultra-fast pulsed laser tools (for low temperature patterning and green process of device architectures), in-line inkjet printing tools (for digital fabrication of OE nanolayers in custom designs) & reliable manufacturing of advanced nanomaterials in complex device architectures with tunable and reproducible thickness, properties and structure.

Presentation Title

Printed Electronics on Paper Based Substrates

Challenges and solutions for printing functional electronic  layers on paper will be presented, as well as new insights on ink-substrate interactions for various inks and printing technologies such as screen, flexo, and  inkjet are given. Some prototypes and application studies will demonstrate  the current state of the art in the field of printed antennas, smart labels, sensors, batteries, and more.

Presentation Title

From Printtronic to Assembly on flex

db-matik AG is one of the world leading companys in special machinery for printed electronics and assembly machines on flex substrates. The product range starts from production lines for the lighting industry and goes over to the sensor production industry, especially in reel to reel manufacturing.

Presentation Title

Printed and Hybrid Electronics for Healthcare and Wearable Technology

This presentation provides an overview on the potential of high-volume printing technologies for Healthcare and Wearable Technology applications based on examples of current R&D work in Printed and Hybrid Electronics at VTT. Printed Diagnostics: The use of expert knowledge in paper technology, printed electronics, hybrid integration, microfluidics and assay development aims at creating low-cost printed diagnostics solutions as an alternative to expensive laboratory based analysis. With the growing demand for rapid and reliable disease testing, roll-to-roll printing methods have the best potential to prove upscalability of modern lab-on-a-chip device technology for the mass market. Ranging from everyday monitoring of health and wellbeing parameters to affordable rapid tests to detect diseases in developing countries, printed components on paper or plastic substrates can offer a comprehensive toolbox to compose costefficient diagnostic devices for a dedicated purpose. VTT’s roll-to-roll pilot printing and hybrid integration facilities provide upscaling infrastructure for printed diagnostics at all product stages: from prototype to mass product. Wearable Technology: VTT's current development focus evolves around flexible, low-power printed and hybrid systems by combining novel printing materials and processes with conventional silicon electronics components, with a strong emphasis is put on the use of sustainable materials, flex-stretch form factors, and electronics encapsulation for washability. We will present a short overview on VTT's FlexNode platform for sports analytics and performance improvement, large are flexible lighting and microfluidic heating/cooling circuits for outdoor clothing applications.

Presentation Title

Printed Sensor Systems: Possibilities & Applications

In this presentation, we will introduce a set of newly developed flexible sensors and discuss some use cases of these. The number of connected sensors in the IoT world is projected to grow rapidly in the coming years. For many future applications, sensing devices must be ultralow-power, flexible, lightweight, and printable on a variety of substrates and in different form factors. Applications range from medical devices, gaming, wearables, and industrial monitoring. Brewer Science, a global technology leader, has developed a suite of innovative sensors and devices with a unique set of features that will be discussed in this presentation.

Presentation Title

Printing the Future

InnovationLab (iL) is a unique research & development platform designed to foster cross-disciplinary research and innovation at the interface of academia and industry. We are working on the future technology of printed and organic electronics and offer services in technical supply and maintenance of laboratories and scientific equipment, laboratory security, protection of intellectual property and its commercialization. Furthermore, we assist clients through various stages of the product and process development such as planning, design, printing, coating, pre-processing, post-processing, and integration. The emphasis is on cost-effective, environmentally friendly production of electronic components such as circuits and sensors. Our flexible printed pressure sensor can be easily tuned to suit a variety of applications enabling us to turn your ideas into products. For example, the digital occlusion control system OccluSense® by Dr. Jean Bausch depicts the unique features accessible by printed electronics - thin, lightweight, conformable/flexible on plastic substrate. The integrated sensors by iL are only 60μm thin and very flexible. Due to their color-coating it is possible to assign them to contact points on teeth. We accompanied this process from the idea to the final product. Our technology is not limited to any sector but much more applicable in various scopes of application within the automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, logistics, IT, IoT, electronics, and glass sector. We will demonstrate different applications to convince you that printed electronics is also applicable to your business. So what is your challenge?

Presentation Title

Fully printed and flexible low voltage backplane

InnovationLab is a pioneer in fully printed passive matrix pressure sensors in large area (km x m). Our product site in Germany has already developed solutions for automotive, medical, agriculture industry following our B2B relations with big players such as VW, Sanofi, Bausch, etc. This past success has paved the way for us to develop higher resolution flexible sensors this year, based on active matrix of transistors, fully solution processed, working in low voltage using batteries. The matrix is based on organic field effect transistors. We have performed various reliability tests and observed a close to perfect stability on long term ambient functionality. The matrix communicates with the software using wireless signals. We are integrating the matrix to distinct sensing elements in future. Technology description: An array of min 256, and max 5625 transistors based on fully solution processes polymers, are fabricated on plastic foil using different printing methods. The matrix has been combined with a fully printed pressure array for a high resolution flexible pressure sensing. The matrix works for V lower than 5V, and communicate to its light mobile software over WiFi. All used materials are commercially available, mostly via BASF.

Presentation Title

How organic electronics/photovoltaics can improve corporate competitiveness in a global economic environment

Companies are committed to reduce their carbon footprint for various reasons:, to fight climatic change that could affect communities to improve their image to their customers and to gain competitiveness. All these factors lead companies to design brave strategies on CO2 reduction. Is the implementation of these strategies always possible? Countries like S. Korea, Netherlands, Singapore and UAE face difficulties on implementing existing renewable technologies because of different factors. What are these factors and how they can be eliminated from companies in order to become more competitive? Organic electronics/photovoltaics as part of the solution. Are new technologies like OPV ready to address the problem? Large scale manufacturing of OPV. Opportunities and implications. The case of Heliatek in Germany.

Presentation Title

Customized Flexible and Printed Organic Photovoltaic Panels

OET brings Flexible and Printed Organic Photovoltaic-OPV panels combining the latest high-tech materials with large area processes with an emphasis on quality, innovation, technology, sustainability and cost-effectiveness, towards the market segments of Buildings, Automotive, Wearables, Packaging, Agriculture, Tourism, IoT and Industry 4.0. OET delivers on the market high quality flexible and lightweight OPVs in an aesthetic way of designs for robust applications and demonstrator cases. Customized fully printed OPV panels up to 1m length in a range color pallet like grey, blue, green, red, brown and shapes and transparency up to 50% (depending on the efficiency) with a focus on client-specific requirements are available on market at appealing price vary in respect to its final applications. OET’s flexible energy innovations on plastics can be adapted with simplicity to all flat and curved shaped surfaces on different electrical design assembly. Since the production of printed OPVs over large area induce many technical challenges on product delivery, OET has a holistic approach to optimize the manufacturing by implementing Automatic Decision Processes. Based on a digital closed looped nano-manufacturing approach, OET strives to widespread the commercialization of OPVs in existing and new consumer market segments alike, in order to pave the way for the Smart Society 5.0. In this work, we present the OET advances on the large area manufacturing of flexible and lightweight OPVs, and its world record in PCE of 7.4% by R2R printed polymer-based single junction OPV Cell. This record was achieved for a fullerene solar cells in an inverted single device stack, fully printed on plastics by R2R printing techniques. This new result confirms the world-leading technology position of OET in large area printing technology and processing of fully printed single junction OPVs onto flexible substrates. OET demonstrated its continuous progress in the efficiency of the OPV modules (70cm2 active area) over the last 7 years, is currently holding 5.4%, and targets 9% for large scale OPV modules by 2021. OET also emphasizes on high precision patterning (μm resolution) of OPV module scribes by in-line laser P1, P2, P3 electrical isolation cut processes, to increase the active area coverage of the OPVs above 90%, and targeting a power density throughput more than 80W/m2. Finally, in this presentation, we describe the latest innovations on the development of a novel Control Platform that connects the in-line precision metrology tools with the operation systems of the R2R printing production line to control automatically the process parameters. Through this real-time monitoring and control (preventive corrections) of the printing and laser processes by assisting in automatic decision-making processes OET targets the large scale manufacturing of OPVs with an unprecedented yield and quality. The perspective of in-line precision metrology and quality control in combination with in-line short pulsed laser patterning in a unique R2R printing production line creates a Factory of the Future, featuring intelligent and zero-defect manufacturing processes for large area fabrication of flexible customized OPVs, high quality, performance and production yield.

Presentation Title

More than just color—opportunities of printed flexible electronics on paper

In all sectors of the printing and electronics industry, the demand for innovation is continuously growing. Electronics are becoming flexible, printable and lightweight. Printing of conductive lines, capacitors, sensors, batteries and displays on thin polymer films is state of the art. Systems for the Internet of Things are becoming more and more reality. In view of this trend, printed electronic systems on paper are also becoming interesting, but somewhat more sophisticated due to the paper itself. The rough surface and the storage of water in the paper limit some of the electronic applications. In the presentation I would like to give you an overview and insight into the state of the art of printed flexible electronics on polymer films as well as on paper. My goal is to inspire you to innovate printing and to find new applications on paper beside color.

Presentation Title

Technical Screenprinting at it`s best

1964 Blase Siebdruck was founded as a family business starting „technical screenprinting“ in the upcoming area of the lettering of overseas containers. Over the years Blase more and more focussed in the „technical screenprinting“ area becoming one of the leading screen and digital partners for the industry serving areas like white and browns goods, bicycle industry, farming industry, medicine industry and many more whereever decals of long durability, sun and chemical resistance are needed. Beside this over the years Blase specialized in the combination of optical and functional printing by establishing Blase Kommunikationstechnik, one of the main producers of membrane switches and touch panels in Germany. Investing heavily in the area of fine line printing Blase will follow it‘s aim „Blase - Screenprinting at it‘s best“.

Presentation Title

Future Outlook

Printed and flexible electronics have experienced a tremendous evolution in the last decades from proof-of-concept devices in research labs to end-user applications in nearly all major market sectors, e.g. automotive, healthcare, wearables and consumer electronics. This is also corroborated by the growing market numbers, showing the shift from technology push to an increasing market pull. This wide range makes it complex and sometimes difficult to track and interpret the progress. Every two years top global companies and technological leaders alike, coordinated by the OE-A, build up a common vision of the coming goals and challenges in this emerging industry. In this presentation we will give an overview on applications and technologies covered by the OE-A Roadmap. We report on status of available products as well as giving a medium and long-term outlook for the different application areas, including: OLED lighting, flexible displays, organic photovoltaics and smart and hybrid systems as well as for the manufacturing technologies and materials needed.

Presentation Title

Summary & Wrap-Up of the Conference