New Direction for Printed Electronics in 2008

The major Western companies become more ambitious

For every giant Western company involved in printed electronics there are five ones involved in East Asia. It is the ones that should be making devices that are asleep on the whole, not the materials suppliers like BASF, where they are easily a match for eastern competition. BASF is even backing Heliatek making organic solar cells. Exceptions on the device side are GE of America, with its joint venture with Konica to make OLED lighting and its many other printed electronics activities that will be announced at the conference. Philips also works on many levels in this field, and it will present on latest advances at the conference. Organic Light Emitting Diodes remain very important and MicroEmissive Displays will describe how they are selling them while the Holst Centre in the Netherlands, Novaled, IAPP and SimTec in Germany and the pan European OLLA project will be among those announcing breakthroughs in OLED materials, device physics and production technology.