Welcome to the ink-jet age
Published: 06 Jan 2006 18:15 GMT
...the technology of flexible plastic screens, in the full knowledge that such displays will probably be the key component of the next generation of mobile electronic gadgets.
One such company is Philips, which is using a four-head industrial inkjet printer with 256 piezoelectric nozzles to print the fine arrays of organic light emitting diodes that will be used on paper thin computer and television screens. In Korea Samsung have already announced that they will be in volume production of 15.5inch OLED displays by May 2006, and Epson have said that they will be launching a 40inch OLED screen at about the same time. Other companies working in the same area include Toppan Printing of Japan, Cambridge Display Technology of the UK, and Universal Display Corporation of the US.
In another approach to the construction of flexible plastic displays, HP engineers in Bristol are using inkjets to print arrays of tiny liquid-crystal cells onto a flexible plastic substrate, an array of electrodes printed onto the flexible plastic turn the LCD cells on and off. The result is a full-colour display manufactured entirely using ink jet technology that the researchers believe could, around 2010, rival the printed page in flexibility, lightness of weight, colour and resolution.
Organic electronic circuits
Meanwhile in Cambridge, Plastic Logic have just demonstrated the first engineering samples of a flexible display that uses an organic electronic active matrix backplane and electrophoretic frontplane. The company expect such displays to be in commercial use in e-publication readers by 2007. Once again the ink jet is a crucial technology in their manufacture, industrial ink jets from Xaar and Litrex are used in Plastic Logic's production line to print the matrix of very small organic electronic circuits directly onto a flexible plastic substrate. When bonded to the flexible frontplane the result is a thin, light, flexible display that can be viewed, like paper, from all angles and in any type of light.
Sensors are another area where printed electronics and the ink jet are opening up new markets. In Austria a new factory is being built by Nanoident Organic to produce organic photo-detectors using ink jet printers. This new generation chip factory will use intelligent, highly efficient manufacturing technologies.
Flexonics
In the light of these developments researchers around the world are now asking the question — if ink jet printers can be used to create electronic circuitry, why not do away with conventional assembly and build complete devices using an ink jet printer? At the University of California at Berkeley engineering professor John Canny is experimenting with ways of doing just this using a concept he calls flexonics. Research which could soon lead to a 3D ink jet being used to print out complete devices, including the case, electronics, battery, and all mechanical components such as switches and plugs.
High-resolution 3D ink jet printers from companies like 3D Systems, Z Corporation and Stratasys are in fact already being used to 'print out' prototypes of a wide range of manufactured products. Hundreds of companies around the world are now using them, Motorola used one to produce prototypes of the casing for its latest mobile phone, and Hyundai have used a 3D printer to make prototype vehicle dashboards.
Some companies in Europe and the US are even using them as '3D data faxes' to send design prototypes between their design and marketing departments and their Asian manufacturing facilities. "Communication is so much more effective when you can get a physical product into a customers hands rather than a drawing or text," says Marina Hatsopoulos, the...
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