Last week Dr Harry Zervos, IDTechEx technology analyst, traveled to Sweden to give the opening keynote at the iPack Center's workshop taking place in Sigtuna, in the Uppland part of Stockholm County.
The center is a multi-disciplinary research platform and meeting place that establishes collaborations between the Swedish forest products industry, the electronic and the bio-medical industry, in the area of intelligent packaging for biomedical applications and hybrid media.
At the workshop everyone agreed how important it is, in order for Printed Electronics to achieve further penetration, to understand end users and interact with them, so as to be able to better comprehend their needs and requirements. That way, the identification of applications becomes more focused and would lead to the development of new products that would be desired by a wide range of end-user companies. The importance of end-user input in potential product definition was highlighted multiple times and in that respect, IDTechEx's proposed multiclient study offers an example of a large scale implementation of this principle.
iPack will be funded over a ten-year period (2007-2016) by VINNOVA, KTH and industry partners and has just been green lighted to continue on to its 2nd year, focused on packaging innovation. The projects run at the centre are varied as they look into fundamental materials research all the way to integrating solutions, sensor networks etc.
Industrial collaborators include Stora Enso, Billerud, Note and Xaar Jet. An example of the types of projects run at the iPack is a project on CDM (controlled delamination materials). These adhesive materials, provided by Stora Enso, are sandwiched between two electrodes and when current goes through them, one of the sides delaminates on demand. Stora Enso would like to use this as tamper proof packaging. For example, if you have the correct RFID tag, current starts to flow which leads to delamination (package open), if you have the wrong tag, the signal is not recognized, current doesn't flow hence, the seal doesn't open.
Acreo on the other hand, with their basic technology, are moving on with the commercialization of their display technology. Being a research centre similar to VTT of Finland, part of their requirements is the creation of spin off companies and their electrochromic display technology is one example of an activity that has led to a spin off. They do believe that its basic characteristics would make it interesting for low cost electronic applications as, the display itself costs approximately €0.005/cm2.
For more information on the iPack center, please visit www.ipack.kth.se 
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.For more information on the IDTechEx multiclient study please contact Dr Peter Harrop at p.harrop@idtechex.com.
Also attend Printed Electronics Europe 2009.
