All the elements for great new businesses in digital functional printing are now in place. There are a vast array of new functional ‘inks’ providing conductivity as well as capability for sensing, light emission, light detection, charge storage and energy harvesting. There are digital printers capable of printing inks with a wide range of characteristics.
Novacentrix
Drying and curing technology has improved immensely with many options including photonic flash sintering for certain types of material. The barriers and encapsulation needed to protect the functional materials are available. The QC processes for digital functional printing are also well established and there are now a number of pioneering companies making money in the field. So… why not start a new business digitally printing functional materials?
Meyer-Burger
Clariant
Of course, the answer is nuanced. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it. Digital Functional Printing is a new manufacturing process to make a functional item that could typically be produced in other ways. “Conventional electronics” is a remarkably successful suite of device architectures and manufacturing technologies that can be brought together into systems on printed circuit boards. Why would printing functional materials be a better approach? In most cases the answer is clear – it isn’t. But, importantly, there are market opportunities for electronic products that aren’t well satisfied by the conventional approach. Often this is driven by a form-factor which is non-standard. It might be a very large or long item that is greater than conventional PCB assembly will allow. Or it might require ‘stretchability’ – perhaps for incorporation in a garment or for incorporation onto a surface with curvature in more than one direction. In general, functional printing doesn’t lead to a cheaper volume product, so the choice to build a business on it is best based on doing something that conventional approaches either can’t do or find it difficult to do. Digital functional printing is yet another nuance and it is at the complex intersection of manufacturing run-length, manufacturing capex costs, materials costs, testing costs and product functionality to meet market needs that business plan decisions must be made.
Dupont
The benefits of digital printing for customisation are well understood from graphics markets and there are great business opportunities to print functional materials digitally to enable rapid prototyping and customisation. Sometimes very expensive materials are used, such as precious metals or biomolecules and here again, digital printing provides value in significantly lowering waste. Functional 3D printing of both structural and functional materials within a product provides yet another exciting opportunity for digital manufacturing.
With big industries such as automotive, aerospace and healthcare monitoring now taking up products comprising printed electronics, and with the expected explosive growth of the internet of things, the time is ripe for another look at the opportunities for digital functional printing.
If you’re interested to know more, why not join us at the Innovations in Large-Area Electronics (innoLAE) 2020 event being held in Cambridge, UK in January.
by Chris Rider, Director of the Cambridge Innovation and Knowledge Centre, University of Cambridge, UK