Emerging Printing Technologies — Business Lines Are Forming

T-Ink in New York has been very active in this area, having produced examples with Hallmark, MeadWestvaco, NewsAmerica and Sears that used a variety of materials. Polymertronics in the U.K. is developing a process for embedding lights into substrates for flatbed or rollfed ink-jet printers.

For the printed electronics industry as a whole, ink-jet printing has become a leading production process in the current generation of development efforts, but may present challenges in scaling up to volume production. Screen printing was used for much of the pioneering work and continues to be a contender, although it has weaknesses in terms of printing fine lines and productivity. Some development has been done with flexo, and it is considered a very promising technology going forward.