Printed Electronics - the Giants Get Involved

Printed electronics often involves simple things such as printed conductive patterns to counter the pollution, unreliability, bulk, weight and cost of wires, solder and etched patterns. The US Army plans to use printed electronics to reduce the weight of a warfighter’s pack by two thirds and give him smart clothing that generates electricity, heats him, cools him, monitors vital signs, acts as a long range antenna and so on. Printed electronics is mainly about reducing cost but it also involves printed lasers, photodiode arrays and many other sophisticated structures some of which perform better and are more fault tolerant than traditional alternatives. Most commonly, printed electronics will be used where traditional technology is simply not a feasible solution, such as wallpaper that generates power and doubles as a television and lighting or electronic anti-counterfeiting on 100 billion cigarette packets yearly, giving traceability at a cost of only 0.1 cents per package. Only secondarily will it be used to create improvements to existing electronic products such as laptop computers, mobile phones and talking gift cards.