SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Printed, flexible electronics are slowly moving forward on a number of fronts, according to speakers and exhibitors at the annual IDTechEx event.
U.S. and China governments are funding small, separate research efforts that will have prototype production lines running next year. E-textile companies are making in-roads in specialty garments. Printed NFC tags are already being added to a handful of high-end consumer products.
Parker has started shipping a flexible strain sensor, and ST Microelectronics will sample a printed battery before the end of the year. It’s all good progress, but the Holy Grail of mainstream consumer products is still far off.
For example, experts from the Coca-Cola Co. and Unilever said in a panel session that the vision for NFC tags printed on every bottle of soda and detergent is still not practical. The tags could create interactive products that users tap with smartphones to get coupons or other information.
The consumer giants want tags that cost a penny or less, but today, they cost more than an order of magnitude more. The app also requires a lot of education among both marketers and consumers, they said.
“We don’t have a lot of margin, and beverage packaging has to endure travel, stacking, water, heat, and cold,” said Frank Fu, a senior technologist for Coke. With 15 million refrigerated dispensers around the world, the company is “exploring all kinds of possibilities” for reducing costs, increasing interactivity, and tracking assets.
“The consumer company and its tech suppliers both need new business models to enable smart containers,” said John Snow, a packaging manager for Unilever, which sells everything from soap to butter and ice cream. He suggested the consumer giant could think of NFC as part of the cost of an ad, rather than a product, but it has to teach consumers how “a smart bottle can talk to you … [and learn] what we can do with the data to make it valuable.”
“Printed electronics needs a big rain maker,” Snow suggested. “The big issue for us is integration. There are great ideas out there, but great ideas are only one piece of the puzzle — we need to put together all of the pieces to bring the technology to life, so we need a collaborative group.”
“Among other markets, glucose sensors for diabetics make up the majority of today’s $6 billion market for printed sensors,” said Raghu Das, chief executive of IDTechEx (see chart below). But the category is expected to decline as governments put pressure on companies selling for as much as 60 cents the strips that cost two cents to make.
Next page: Printed electronics ramp manufacturing
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