It is now generally accepted that printed electronics is headed to be a business of the order of $300 billion yearly in about twenty years time. A number of large companies realise that this creates the opportunity to create ten billion dollar activities and some of these are finding the determination and funding to get there.
Pull through marketing helps. This is where a company at the beginning of the value chain gets involved in making finished devices in order to create a new market more quickly, thus bringing forward the need for the specialist materials required. For example, the world's largest chemical company, the Euros 57 billion BASF, making organic semiconductors and dielectrics has invested in Heliatek which is developing organic photovoltaics. Previously, organic photovoltaics had an annoying habit of being destroyed by the sun, making it analogous to a chocolate frying pan.
To maximise sales, the most ambitious putative suppliers to the emerging printed electronics sector must not box themselves into a corner. For example, the majority of the materials expenditure for printed electronics concerns inorganic materials and a rapidly growing number of printed electronic devices employ composites. Those seeking to be biggest in the business cannot therefore stick to purely organic chemistry.
It is therefore interesting that the largest chemical company in the USA, the $54 billion Dow Chemical has just bought the $8.7 billion Rohm and Haas materials business for a heady $15 billion - this adds a huge capability in inorganic, not just organic electronic materials to Dow Chemical. In the new electronics, Dow was previously best known for organic materials such as those it sold to Sumitomo Chemical as IP.
In 2006, Merck KGaA, a leader in organic dielectric, conducting and semiconducting inks, signed a five year agreement with the Technical University of Darmstadt to establish a jointly operated research laboratory to research novel inorganic composite materials that could be suitable for use as printable components in high-performance electronic applications. The initial area of focus is printable transistor circuits based on inorganic materials for use in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Series production is the objective. Then we have DuPont and Honeywell that have been heavily involved in both organic and inorganic electronic materials for some time.
The strategic options for those seeking a multi-billion dollar business in printed electronics do not end there, however. Although it is usually considered imprudent to make devices if you make materials, because you end up competing with your customers, some are finding this a manageable option. For example, one may make one type of device while selling materials for others.
Consider Bayer, the world's oldest chemical and pharmaceutical company, with highly profitable sales of Euros 32.4 billion. When it sold its HC Starck subsidiary that makes conductive organic inks, some felt it was leaving the printed electronics business.
However, Bayer electroluminescent polycarbonate film for lighting and displays has been developed by collaboration with Lumitec and it is marketed by two year old Bayer subsidiary Lyttron Technology. Bayer makes the Makrofol™ polycarbonate film that is used.
Formable electroluminescent films from a Bayer MaterialScience company, Lyttron Technology GmbH, smooth the way for luminous plastic components for industrial and consumer markets. They bring light wherever there is dark, in a range of different colors, and without generating any heat in the process. Photo: Bayer MaterialScience AG
An innovative luminescent film technology developed by Bayer MaterialScience and the Swiss electronics specialist Lumitec bathes the cockpit of the Rinspeed concept car "Senso" in a dazzle-free ambient light. This surface technology, which is based on electroluminescence, celebrated its world premiere in an automotive application in 2005. Photo: Bayer MaterialScience AG.
The first series production of the special electroluminescent film was for illuminating the inside of ladies' handbags. The technology used at LYTTRON enables films that light up when an electric current is applied to be molded into any shape, opening up endless design possibilities. Photo: Bayer MaterialScience AG
Bayer subsidiary Bayer MaterialScience AG is also now able to produce cheap, high quality carbon nanotubes, on a commercial scale. The multinational company plans to market the nanomaterials worldwide under the trade name Baytubes. Bayer is also into "mechoptronics," that is, "the interaction between mechanics, optics and electronics".
Electrical wiring diagrams, whose conductive tracks are thinner than 20 micrometers and thus invisible to the naked eye, can now be produced by inkjet printing using new BayInk® nanoparticulate silver inks. The aqueous nano dispersions were developed by Bayer MaterialScience AG in cooperation with Bayer Technology Services and screen printing versions are also available.
"Our nano inks achieve ten percent of the specific conductivity of elemental silver with only a relatively low percentage of silver by weight. At the same time, they adhere very well to a wide variety of substrates, such as polycarbonate, polyethylene terephthalate, thermoplastic polyurethane and glass," explains Dr. Stefan Bahnmüller, nanotechnology expert in the New Technologies group at Bayer MaterialScience. The curing temperatures of the new nano inks are well below 130 ºC - much lower than those of most commercially available silver inks. Therefore, BayInk® can be printed on a variety of plastics that would otherwise not be able to withstand the thermal load during the curing process. In addition, the printed conductive tracks are very flexible and extensible. "This is, for example, particularly important for plastic films that are shaped using the film insert molding process after the wiring diagram has been printed, and are then back-injected," says Bahnmüller. Bayer MaterialScience is working with the Universities of Jena and Marburg to reduce the width of conductive tracks made of BayInk® still further.
With sales of EUR 10.7 billion in 2005, Bayer MaterialScience AG is one of the world's largest polymer manufacturers. Its main fields of activity are the production of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products used in many areas of everyday life. The main consumer sectors are the automotive, electrical/electronics, construction, sports and leisure industries. Bayer MaterialScience has production facilities at 40 sites around the world and a workforce of approx. 18,800. It is well able to mount a major entry into printed electronics. Its current research focus is:
- BioBased Materials and Processes
- Optoelectronics
- High Performance Polymers
- Nanocomposites
- Functional surfaces and coatings
- Catalysis
Solvay, the Euros 9.75 billion chemical giant did some hard thinking in 2006, and then leapt into the business in 2007/8. As its 2007 annual report says,
"Work carried out in previous years has enabled us to clarify which fields offer particular potential for the Group. Three key applications have been selected:
- OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) for flat-screen displays and for lighting from flexible light sources;
- Third-generation (organic) photovoltaic cells, produced economically, in a continuous process, on flexible supports using printing technologies
- Printed electronics, for example for radio frequency identification (RFID) systems.
New agreements were signed in 2007 in addition to our earlier ones with the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, and with the Pangaea Ventures Fund II in Vancouver (Canada):
- A USD 10 million investment in Plextronics Inc. of Pittsburgh, PA (USA) - Plextronics specializes in developing and marketing polymer-based technologies for printed electronics applications like screens and lighting, solar cells or "intelligent" labels for radio frequency identification;
- An agreement with Thin Film Electronics ASA, a Norwegian company based in Oslo, for the joint development and production of printable electronic components like ferroelectric polymers for use in printed electronic memories."
Maybe all this will lead them into device manufacture. However, ambitious as all this may be, the prize for sheer investment in printed electronics goes to the $20 billion Sumitomo Chemical, which has bought the above mentioned IP from Dow then bought the company Cambridge Display Technology for $280 million in order to get the key Polymer OLED "POLED" patents and IP. This year, it announced that it will not stick to materials but it will even make POLED displays, presumably both rigid large area and flexible, reading to the strengths of that technology. Ambitiously, the first product launch is slated for 2009. IDTechEx believes that such an attempt to leapfrog the leading OLED manufacturers such as Samsung may cost Sumitomo Chemical one billion dollars. Sumitomo is clearly planning to create a multibillion dollar activity in printed electronics.
The various strategic options for such huge involvement are summarised below.
Top image: In collaboration with Bayer MaterialScience, scientists from Bayer Technology Services have succeeded for the first time in producing high-quality carbon nanotubes on an industrial scale at considerably lower costs than before. They are considerably stronger than steel, enable electricity to travel through plastics and improve the mechanical properties of ceramic materials. Bayer MaterialScience AG plans to market the nano-sized materials worldwide under the trade name Baytubes®. Photo: Bayer MaterialScience AG.
IDTechEx provides market research, technology forecasting, assessment of emerging competitive landscape, acquisition and other studies to those in printed electronics, from the largest to the smallest. For USA contact CEO Raghu Das on r.das@idtechex.com and for elsewhere contact Dr Peter Harrop p.harrop@idtechex.com.
For more attend Printed Electronics USA.
