IMA March-April 2016 Flexible Electronics

Injection Moulding Asia Flexible Electronics

The thinner the better Chunky devices are no more a trend. The

while consumers favour PTDs in their devices, like smartphones, tablets and E-readers, to allow for portability and convenience.

GIA added that the Asia Pacific region represents the largest market for PTDs worldwide amid the strong demand for a wide range of portable electronics and supported by growing employment opportunities, rising income levels, and increasing 3G and 4G penetration.

market is now focusing on lightweight, flexible, yet durable materials for more feature-packed devices, says Angelica Buan.

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Innovations in the field Flexibility and being ultra-thin are FEs winning formulae, but a major hurdle is mass production and lack of new methods to produce printable and flexible electronics and energy devices.

To further this, the Washington Research Foundation is collaborating with NextFlex, a consortium of 30 academic institutions and industrial partners. “Flexible electronic systems include things like flexible sensor arrays that could detect faults in engines or electric-car battery compartments as well as on-body devices to monitor health and fitness,” it says. With US$75 million funding from the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Silicon Valley-headquartered NextFlex is expected to develop scalable, cost-effective and sustainable methods for FEs applications.

The AFRL and the Army Research Laboratory have developed a flexible and wearable patch that monitors performance and body signatures from electrocardiogram to temperature, and is capable of using Bluetooth to send data to a handheld device for evaluation. While the AFRL says the BioStampRC Wearable Sensing Platform can be used to evaluate a soldier’s wounds on the battlefield and help prioritise who needs urgent care, the technology also has the potential for use in the larger force for wellness management. The military already uses biometric devices, but the BioStampRC is smaller and less intrusive than those used in the past.

Another healthcare innovation is a postage stampsized flexible sensor developed at the University of California that can be made into “smart” wristbands or

end it, twist it, roll it or fold it. No, we are not talking of toys or chewing gum but the latest innovation in the field of electronics, i.e., flexible electronics (FEs). Despite the flexible features, they are robust enough to withstand damage and deformity for applications in the military & defence, consumer electronics, healthcare/medical and energy/power generation sectors.

According to Future Market Insights (FMI), the global FEs market has the potential for double digit growth in the coming years, with applications ranging from smart watches and smartphones to batteries and medical implants.

Mostly made of plastics, FEs offer various advantages because they are ultra-thin, lightweight and compact, consume little energy and generate low heat, plus feature everything that is flexible from the displays, batteries and sensors to the memory. However, the cost, compared to traditional electronic devices, is an impediment to growth.

Nonetheless, it is expected that with continuous technological development in the consumer electronics market, demand for FEs will grow, especially in North America and Asia Pacific including South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines and Singapore.

Meanwhile, paperthin flexible displays (PTDs) are anticipated to attract a following, according to the Global Industry Analyst (GIA) report, PaperFlexible electronics are the way Thin Displays: A Global forward Strategic Business Report.

The PTD market is projected to reach nearly US$20 billion by 2020, driven by the increasing consumer demand for thin and flexible displays in portable electronic devices, in line with the miniaturisation trend.

While possessing paper-like thickness, PTDs are light weight, shatter-proof and bendable.

For manufacturers, reducing the overall display thickness is a challenge, and PTDs are a viable solution,

UC Berkeley’s smart wristband that is able to measure chemicals in sweat

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Injection Moulding Asia Flexible Electronics headbands and provide continuous, real-time analysis of the chemicals in sweat. The prototype includes five sensors on an array connected to a flexible circuit board to measure glucose, lactate, sodium and potassium, and also monitor skin temperature, while the circuit board analyses the data collected and can transmit it to other devices. The end goal of the research, which is reported in Nature, could be a device everybody wears that helps doctors monitor the health of whole communities at a time.

Meanwhile, Dutch start-up Eurekite at the University of Twente has developed a tissue-like ceramic material known as Flexiramics, with the flexibility of paper and the lightness of a polymer. Made using a proprietary ceramic nanofibre process, Flexiramics is cheaper than boron nitride and more durable than polymers, the researchers said. During a laboratory test, when subjected to continuous heat up to 1,200°C for 24 hours, it neither burnt nor melted.

Eurekite’s plan is to use it to manufacture flexible ceramic printed circuit boards for heavy-duty electronics that would combine the light weight of a polymer with the thermal and dielectric properties of a ceramic. And while there are other companies that offer flexible ceramic films for electronic uses, the Dutch team claims to be the only one that is able to make it in thicknesses ranging from “a few micrometres to over a millimetre.”

The first breakthrough was forming an inversion-hole layer in a wide-bandgap semiconductor. Once this was achieved, a unique combination of semiconductor and insulating layers were constructed that allowed the injection of “holes” at the MOS interfaces, thus increasing the chances of an electron tunnelling across a dielectric barrier. Through this type of quantum tunnelling, a transistor that behaves like a bipolar transistor was created.

The dimensions of the device itself can be scaled with ease to improve performance and keep up with the need for miniaturisation. Moreover, the transistor also has power-handling capabilities at least ten times greater than commercially produced TFTs. OLEDs roll into vehicles FEs as well as printed electronics are also making inroads in the automotive sector and likely to offer a US$5.5 billion opportunity in the coming decade, IDTechEx Research reported. The projected growth of in-mould electronics and OLED technologies will lead in the breakthrough of the billion dollar market opportunity.

Meanwhile, OLED displays, being a premium display technology for many consumer products, such as smartphones, tablets, televisions, and wearables, remain the biggest success of organic electronics.

The report says the industry is now moving from glass to plastics, following the trend towards flexible displays, with the two largest manufacturers, Samsung Display and LG Display, investing in new production lines. Aside from performance advantages that OLEDs bring to the table in terms of colour, contrast and power consumption, the benefits of flexible display integration in vehicles include lighter weight and robustness and in many cases, versatility in design and form.

Aside from the adoption of flexible OLED panels, the automotive industry may also start incorporating transparent displays to transform the windows of vehicles into screens that display information for drivers such as vehicle speed, navigation instructions and location-based facts, when inside the car.

And when outside of the car, the rear windshield can be utilised to communicate safety warnings and other notifications to fellow motorists, such as the vehicle’s speed and signals for when the car is braking, IDTechEx Research added.

To paraphrase an oft-said idiom, “Do not judge an FE by its dimension,” may justify why industries that require sinewy performance are turning to FEs.

The UAlberta team has filed a provisional patent on the TFT it created and expect to put it to work “in a fully flexible medium and apply these devices to areas like biomedical imaging, or renewable energy”

Yet another creation, dubbed as the first in the field of FEs, is a thin-film transistor (TFT) developed by the University of Alberta. The team was exploring new uses for TFTs, which are most commonly found in lowpower, low-frequency devices like a display screen.

Efforts by researchers and the consumer electronics industry to improve the performance of TFTs had been slowed by the challenges of developing new materials or improving existing ones for use in traditional architecture, known as metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET).

However, the researchers improved performance by designing a new transistor architecture that takes advantage of a bipolar action. Thus, instead of using one type of charge carrier, as most TFTs do, it uses electrons and the absence of electrons (referred to as “holes”) to contribute to electrical output.

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