IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe 2008 Awards Announced

Over 600 delegates from 28 countries were present at the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe event last week in Dresden - the industries largest event on the topic. The event featured the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Awards in recognition of outstanding achievement. The awards were given at the gala dinner on April 7th. The categories and winners are:

1) Technical Development Device Award Winner: LG Displays
2) Technical Development Manufacturing Award Winner: Hewlett Packard and PowerFilm Solar
3) Technical Development Materials Award Winner: Ciba
4) Best New Product Development Award Winner: PolyIC
5) Best Commercialization Award Winner: GSI Technologies
6) Printed Electronics Europe champion: Wolfgang Mildner, CEO, PolyIC

The independent panel of judges comprised of Prof. Bill Milner, Director, Centre for Advanced Photonics & Electronics - University of Cambridge; Prof. Karl Leo, Institut fuer Angewandte Photophysik; Prof. Edgar Dorsam - Technische Universitat Darmstadt; and Dr Peter Harrop, IDTechEx.

LG Displays won the IDTechEx Technical Development Device Award for the World’s highest resolution 14.3-inch flexible color e-paper display. It has a resolution of 2560 by 1600 sub-pixels and the ability to display nearly 16.7 million colors. This display uses electronic ink between Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on a thin stainless-steel-foil substrate and Color Filter Array coated onto the plastic substrate, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent as well as to produce color images. To make this new display possible proprietary processing technologies that minimize panel deformation and prevent circuit structure change during high-temperature processes were developed.

Hewlett Packard and PowerFilm Solar won the award for best Technical Development in Manufacturing, after taking Self Aligned Imprint Lithography all the way into a fully roll-to-roll process. Bottom gate TFTs with both amorphous silicon and zinc tin oxide have been created. Winner Carl Taussig, from HP Labs, reports, “Not only does our solution eliminate the need for any alignments, but it eliminates the costly photolithography process which dominates the cost of conventional active matrix backplane manufacturing.”

Ciba won the IDTechEx Technical Development Materials Award for developing a broad range of conductive inks to allow low cost printing of conductive structures on diverse substrates. XYMARA™ Electra inks most impressive advantages are the low drying temperatures and good line definition. The low drying temperature of the inks - down to 70° C - allows customers to print with excellent adhesion on a large number of substrates. The inks can be printed at high speeds with superior line definition and spacing down to 80 µm.

PolyIC won the IDTechEx Product Development Award, for realizing the world’s first printed RFID tag presented in September 2007. This tag is the first product of the PolyIC product line PolyID®. It consists of roll-to-roll printed transponder chips based on the polymer semiconductor polythiophene printed on flexible polyester film. The chips are mounted on a low-cost antenna and work at the high-frequency range of 13.56 MHz.

For the IDTechEx Best Commercialisation Award, the judges were looking for companies that had created a successful business selling printed electronics products. The award was won by GSI Technologies, a manufacturer of a variety of functional printed products including medical devices, smart card inlays, EL lamps and antennas. Its largest product line is biomedical sensors, with a production quantity of greater than 1 Billion units/year and a % yield of >99.5%, monitored with real-time SPC and 100% automated visual inspection.

Adam Laubach, CTO and GM of the Functional Printing™ division had this to say as he accepted the award: “I am proud to accept this award on behalf of our customers who brought us the opportunities and entrusted us to deliver their development and production needs; engineers and production personnel; and investors. This success is an example of our “Lab to Fab™” model that GSI has been practicing in functional printing for about 10 years.”

Wolfgang Mildner, CEO of PolyIC, was awarded the Printed Electronics Europe Champion Award. The purpose of this award is to recognize an individual who has given outstanding contribution to the industry by promoting it to a wider audience, and by also achieving significant technical and commercial development in their own companies. As CEO of PolyIC, Mildner has achieved this, with the company making significant technical developments and for Mildner’s role promoting the industry globally, including being Chairman of the Organic Electronics Association (OE-A). Mildner reports, “It is a great pleasure and a privilege to receive the IDTechEx awards for PolyIC’ product PolyID® and myself. This industry is in an exciting phase of development from the lab to production, where we experience fruitful collaboration of enthusiastic people and companies.”

Don’t miss the next awards at Printed Electronics USA 2009 www.IDTechEx.com/peUSA in San Jose, CA, USA in December 2008.

By Raghu Das