The quarterly printed electronics workshop was held at the new Sonoco Institute at Clemson University, SC, last Thursday. Flextech (formerly the U.S. Display Consortium, USDC) is an organization whose members include companies involved in all aspects of printed, flexible and organic electronics. FlexTech works closely with academia, industry and government to promote and develop these electronics. Speaking at the workshop, Mark Hartney, FlexTech, described how the organization currently has 24 active projects with a total spend of $4.51 million. The majority of this money comes from grants from the US military.
The workshop was held at the new Sonoco Institute at Clemson University. The Institute is focused on packaging design and graphics, and set up courses on printed electronics applied to this. The new facilities are impressive - from design capabilities through to manufacture. Indeed, the Institute will shortly be receiving a printer from Omet with interchangeable flexo and gravure stations. Retail shelves have even been constructed so that consumer studies can be conducted on the effectiveness of new packaging designs versus existing ones.
Kenneth McGuire of Procter & Gamble (P&G) gave a fascinating talk on the general needs they have from printed electronics. P&G is the largest consumer packaged goods company in the World, with sales last year of $83.5 billion. They have over 300 brands, of which 23 brands make more than half their revenue.
Kenneth described P&G's famous "two moments of truth" - one when a consumer is in the store and decides whether or not to choose their product and the other when the consumer uses the product. P&G is interested in using printed electronics to enhance products at those moments. Kenneth highlighted that printed electronics does not necessarily have to be cheap - value is more important. For example, he cited how P&G launched teeth whitening Crest strips, which are sold for about $50. This was in comparison to spending $350 and an hour at the dentist or purchasing uncomfortable gum trays from stores. P&G deals in high volume product throughput so scalability is crucial for them to consider projects, as is safety, affecting, for example, the materials that can be used. Kenneth would like to see more printed electronics providers offering final products rather than just components.
Robert Reuss, a consultant for DARPA, explained that the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is developing large area flexible sensors to monitor stress on aircraft bodies. Dr Shawn Decker, of the Printed Electronics Applied Research Lab (PEARL) is creating a database of technical information of materials and manufacturing/prototyping processes, working with FlexTech. The database will consist of technical details about materials, and vendors can upload product information. Users will be able to leave feedback on the materials and their experiences. Dr Decker invites companies to participate.
For more information about FlexTech see www.flextech.org 
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.To learn more attend Printed Electronics Asia 2009 or Printed Electronics USA 2009.
