Thin Film Electronics ASA Enters into New Joint Ventures

OTB Engineering ("OTB") of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, a leading company in the design, development, engineering and manufacturing of production equipment, and Thin Film Electronics ASA ("Thinfilm") of Oslo, Norway with R&D facilities in Linköping, Sweden announced last month that they have entered into an agreement for a Joint Development Programme. The aim of the Joint Development Programme is to develop reliable inkjet inline manufacturing processes and to specify the corresponding inline manufacturing machines and equipments required for volume production of Thinfilm's memory technology.

 

 

This joint development agreement will build on Thinfilm's Intellectual Property for soluble memory materials, and OTB Engineering's Intellectual Property for production & processes and printing technologies.

 

Marcel Grooten, CEO of OTB Engineering recently commented, "OTB has successfully delivered a fully integrated Display production system which, similar to Thinfilm's technology, is based on solution processed polymers. We will now jointly with Thinfilm develop a similar production process that integrates the complete Thinfilm memory manufacturing in an in-line process. This will enable Thinfilm's and OTB's customers, in the rapidly growing Printed Electronics market, to produce Thinfilm's memory devices at low cost with high yield, giving them a competitive edge in the market."

 

Earlier this year Thin Film Electronics ASA also entered into an agreement with Soligie, Inc., a market leader providing integrated printed electronic solutions to jointly develop processes for producing printed memory in commercial volumes. In the agreement, Soligie has been granted an option to acquire certain production and commercialization rights to Thinfilm's memory technology under a Patent and Know How License Agreement.

 

Johan Carlsson, said that "Given Soligie's expertise, dedication and focus on the production of printed electronics, Soligie is an ideal partner for high volume manufacturing and commercialization of our technology. The collaboration with Soligie will open exciting new opportunities for the printed electronics industry by enabling a programmable memory feature into products such as smart labels, smart packaging, game cards, smart cards, toys and RFID tags."

 

"Thinfilm has demonstrated a printable material with unique memory characteristics, and we see a market need for standalone products using printable, re-writeable memory on flexible substrates. Furthermore, as the printed electronics market continues to mature we see numerous opportunities to integrate re-writeable memory with other electronic functions. Soligie continues to add new, innovative technologies to our repertoire, expanding our capability to manufacture integrated products for our clients. We're very excited to be working with Thinfilm on this project" commented Matt Timm, President of Soligie.