Printed electronics for a newspaper...

Dr Arved Hubler of Chemnitz University gave an insight into the commercial applications of printed electronics at the Wan Ifra 2015 conference. Hubler said, “Printed electronics will be the future technology.”  In the year 2003, the first mass production of transistors took place and has evolved with the printed loudspeaker in 2012.

 

The fabrication of electronic devices requires a clean room and the fabrication of chips can be a slow and expensive process. Printed electronics in comparison can be printed in a normal production condition and much faster. The liquid formulation of the printing ink for printed electronics requires functional materials like monomer, oligomer, polymer hybrids.

 

“The investment involved to produce printed electronics is less and local printers can produce them with some adjustments and accessories on the existing presses,” informed Hubler.

 

Speaking about the evolution of electronics Hubler said, “Smart objects will the future of electronics. RFID for cattle is one such example.” Companies like Samsung are working on this and have given a forecast of fifteen years.

 

In the newspaper industry, printed sensors will play a critical role. For example, humidity sensors which are printed on paper with web offset can be used in building and construction industry, food industry among others, where humidity plays a critical role. Also, printed solar cells find a number potential and have multi-billion potential. 

 

Currently, Europe, US, China and Japan have started the production of printed electronics. “Today, printed electronics is expensive. But as the volume of the printed electronics increases, the price will come down,” said Hubler.

 

With printed electronics, newspapers can offer fancy advertisements to its customer and can also be a diversification strategy with an entirely new business.