Printed Electronics - The Magic Arrives
Bionic man and woman
The conference covers interfacing thin film electronics with the human body, a thin film electronic contact lens, low power body monitoring and other breakthroughs leading to devolved healthcare and bionic men and women.
Power and energy harvesting
Most of the applications of printed electronics call for local power sources that are safe, environmental and printed - or at least thin. Conventional silicon photovoltaics has glass to cut you and it is heavy, rigid and expensive. The new photovoltaics is printed or at least rapidly deposited reel to reel, being lightweight, low cost and sometimes even transparent and working off heat as well as light so it can be used on packaging, toys and much else besides including replacing power stations. Some is available as plastic film in attractive colors. Cold power is a hot topic and it is extensively covered in the conference by Boeing, Konarka, Solarmer, Plextronics, MIT and ASU alongside advances in laminar batteries.
New displays, materials and printing technology
Electronic displays from billboards to retinal projection will be covered including OLED advances, a new ultra low power electrochromic display from AJJER and the latest ultra thin and flexible electrophoretic e-books, shelf labels, remotely programmable apparel pricing and so on. Kraft and other users describe their experiences. In addition, there is much on new materials and printing processes and the challenge of some materials becoming scarce. The new hot topic of printing copper to replace silver is center stage and then there is replacing indium.
