Printed Electronics – the Missing Fragments

One can not be as sanguine about printed sensors, fuel cells or even development of alternatives to printing silver for conductors, fuses, antennas and so on. Too few organisations are working on these aspects.

A major impediment to the commercialisation of printed electronics is the large footprint. For transistors, this is caused by the large feature size, for conductors by the poor conductance of the inks and for photovoltaics by the poor efficiency. It therefore comes as a surprise that few are working on the printing of one component on top of another because this would reduce overall footprint and improve reliability by eliminating conventional interconnects. There are therefore many sectors of printed electronics with little competition and great needs and most players would be wise to be profitably serving these as they watch the impending shakeout of OLED developers from a safe distance.