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MicroLED technology is on its way to replacing traditional display technologies by bringing added value
propositions to the consumer market, including high brightness, excellent lifetime, high resolution,
and superior efficiency, with applications spanning from wearable devices, augmented/virtual reality,
and ultrahigh-definition TVs.
To date, challenges in scaling pick-and-place processes and producing highly efficient red and green
native microLEDs hamper microLED mass production. A quantum dot (QD) color conversion strategy
to produce an RGB display from an array of blue microLEDs is an elegant way to simplify the
manufacturing process and to overcome several technological challenges in the mass-transfer
process, the display brightness, and the driving electronics. QustomDot’s mission is to bring
unmatched colors to micro-LED devices through QD color conversion layers to overcome the
challenges above and facilitate market entry of miroLED-based devices.
Over the past few years, QustomDot has made a giant leap towards QD resins containing Cd-free
RoHS-compliant InP QDs. Our focus has been to formulate QD resins with ultra-high solid loading,
excellent shelf life, and processability, adapted for various processing methods, including
photolithography, nano-imprint lithography, and high-precision printing methods. In addition to
excellent processability, our QD resins result in QD films with high solid loading, excellent absorption
at the sub-10 µm thickness, and high conversion efficiency while matching, if not exceeding, the
reliability of commercially available InP-based QDs. Our talk will showcase our recent progress
towards optimization of our red and green QD resins to obtain color conversion films with optical
properties one step closer to fulfilling the challenging requirements of commercial microLED displays.

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Diode lasers are by far the most efficient method to introduce thermal energy into NIR absorbing materials. Fortunately, most conductive inks absorb the 940nm of the Hamamatsu cw SPOLD laser, allowing a homogeneous and rapid sintering result comparable to other thermal post-processing technologies. The use of laser line optics favours scalable, yet highly sustainable high volume production, for example in an R2R machine or ITO Touch display manufacturing. Hamamatsu's own developments in terms of lasers and optics make it possible to adapt to customer-specific requirements, materials and processes.

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S&S’s DOP, Direct On Paper is a sustainable paper RFID antenna solution which is both plastic-free and avoids chemical etching process. A HF loop antenna can be printed directly onto standard graphic printing paper with DOP solution.

More than 10 years ago, PragmatIC created a new type of integrated circuit (IC) called FlexICs, that are thin, flexible and ultra-low cost, aimed at connecting for trillions of smart objects. Today, PragmatIC comes to another milestone, smartphones are able to work with NFC FlexIC that can be embedded into high volume everyday items.

NFC FlexICs can be assembled with etched Aluminium loop antenna by providing the connection bridge across the two ends of the loop antenna. In our process concept, we use FlexIC's unique thin and flexible product characteristics (vs rigid silicon IC) with DOP's ultra-thin HF antenna loop. The benefits of this process concept are the material, process and resource saving during antenna production. By using a single loop antenna and eliminating the connection bridge, we avoid an additional printing process or double-sided Aluminium antenna substrate.

A tiny natural resource saving in one inlay with NFC FlexIC for trillions of smart objects ... and beyond.

nsm, based in Zofingen, Switzerland is a company which specializes in the developing and manufacturing of high-precision printing and coating systems in the field of Printed Electronics. Rolf joint nsm in 2022. He has over 30 years worked in the development of mechanical components. He gained a long experience in mechanical design, dimensioning, process analysis and structural simulations. He is responsible for the technological strategy and the implementation of customer requirements together with a team of technology experts.

With an increasingly large number of electronic additive-manufacturing processes available, it can be confusing to know which methods are applicable for your application. Printed Electronics Limited (PEL) is a manufacturer and product development company with very long experience printable electronics. PEL also represent some of the leading equipment manufacturers in the industry. In this short presentation we will provide some key pointers to assist in the choice of equipment and manufacturing approach.

Inkjet printed silver and copper can be considered “established” at least among printed electronics insiders – with their industry adoption starting to pick up speed. As a result, new variants of particle inks and innovations and curing have been emerging, which gives industrial producers a few curing options beyond brute heating. In contrast, the range of metals available for printing – esp. high precision inkjet printing, is still very limited. The talk will introduce two first-timers: printable platinum and printable palladium inks by OrelTech from Berlin. Just as all of their inks (including silver, silver transparent, gold, and more to come), they have a range of other advantages: 1) nanoparticle free, 2) low-temperature curing, and 3) high layer purity. Therefore, applications in the biosensor, medical and, more generally, printed flexible electronics market are in focus.

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NETO Innovation specializes in setting up projects to finance your R&D: Horizon Europe projects, EIC (Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator), Eureka and National French projects. Our team is composed of 3 PhDs with expertise in green energies (solar, hydrogen, batteries, bio-energy, carbon capture and storage), printed and flexible hybrid electronics and their related applications (IoT, EMI shielding, in-mold electronics, sensors, displays, OLEDs, OPVs), healthcare (immunology, oncology, and medical devices) and innovative materials (biomaterials, nano-based materials, metal oxides) from manufacturing to application.

Integrated circuits (ICs) have revolutionized computing and communication in the last couple of decades. There are many efforts to use similar principles to develop low-cost Internet of things (IoT) devices to help solve societal grand challenges in water, food and healthcare. Here, we present development of a low-cost printed sensor platform as well as its hybrid integration with ICs for electronics, communication and networking for field deployment.

Most existing commercial chemical and gas sensors are expensive, work in well-controlled environment and require frequent calibrations. It is very challenging to achieve high sensitivity and selectivity and stable continuous operation in a harsh environment. Roll-to-roll manufacturing and printing can be used to make low-cost functional films and sensors. However, printed devices have inherently more variability than traditional vacuum processes for ICs. We show examples where in-line characterization and imaging during manufacturing enable reducing the device variability by up to 80%. We also present a novel design paradigm where sensor diversity and physics-guided machine learning and statistical techniques are used to make accurate measurements in noisy and harsh outside environment. We demonstrate continuous nitrate measurement with 3ppm sensitivity in an agricultural field with LoRa network over two weeks. Similar ideas for robust sensors for pharmaceutical manufacturing, marine environment, as well as point-of-care devices will be briefly mentioned. Roll-to-roll manufacturing of composite polymer films can also be used to make large-area physical sensors and actuators. We will describe flexible semi-transparent piezoelectric vibration monitor and loudspeakers.

In some "drop and forget" applications, one can eliminate the readout electronics completely. We present novel battery-less chipless RFID sensors with drone read-out electronics for characterizing moisture and microbial activity in the soil. This can be fully biodegradable working for couple of weeks to months. Similar sensors can be used for food safety and freshness for supply-chain monitoring.

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In this presentation, we will talk about new inks for Heaters in the field of InMold applications. Autonomous driving comes more and more important for the automotive industry. For that reason, we need Radar System which can work under every weather conditions. We will introduce the challenge of thermoformable silver conductive ink in the field of thermoforming process and how to avoid “Hot Spots”.

Smart packaging is becoming increasingly important in the context of steadily rising packaging waste.
Plastic films and paper materials are used in a wide range of daily life products. The largest amount of this use is attributable to the packaging industry e.g., food and pharmaceutical packaging. Global production of packaging-related materials is continuously growing and as a result the industry and consumers are producing more packaging waste than ever before without considering the recyclability.
The response from politicians, industry and society is to introduce new policies and stricter regulations, as well as new societal expectations to the industry.
To handle the resulting ecological requirements, the industry faces new technological and logistical challenges. Beside the use of recyclable and biodegradable materials for products, the digitalization of production processes and the implementation of intelligent and smart products are essential for maintaining competitiveness.

In this context, this presentation emphasizes the rising importance of printed electronics in terms of sustainable smart packaging and addresses how the aforementioned challenges can be overcome by implementing ecological solutions on an industrial scale.
Work from various EU-funded projects dealing with the further development of sustainable and smart packaging as well as the introduction of industrial roll to roll process steps for the realization of the developed approaches will be presented.

Many flexible heater products are produced using printing techniques. As applications requiring transparent antennas increase in number, it makes sense to use similar additive manufacturing techniques for flexible heaters. In all cases, each mass-produced heater is a replicate of the last, making their manufacture well suited for “analog” print manufacturing, such as flexography. The use of high-resolution printing enables the additive manufacturing of custom transparent heater designs – built from copper micro-wires for transparency and function.

This talk will provide an overview of the requirements for different transparent heater applications and how these requirements can be achieved with copper micro-wire patterns. Examples and data will be shared from lab-scale and production scale evaluations.

To serve the increasing demand for low-cost and easy-to-use point-of-care (POC) diagnostic systems for healthcare and lifestyle, upscaling of the underlying biosensor system concepts using novel functionalization strategies for sample preparation or signal generation is crucial. The Molecular Diagnostics competence unit of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH addresses this need by investigating key research issues for low-volume (picoliter/nanoliter) inkjet printing or “high volume” spotting techniques (microliter), and therefore, works on the development of printing processes and (bio)inks for reproducible batch production, e.g., for functional (bio)sensors, immuno- or enzymatic assays, as well as nucleic acid diagnostic devices. In this presentation, we will review results related to these aspects from the ELSAH project (H2020, No 825549). ELSAH aims at the realization of a wearable, microneedle-based biosensor system for the continuous monitoring of glucose and lactate in the interstitial fluid for lifestyle diagnostics. Formulated bioinks comprise direct electron transfer (DET) enzymes containing PEDOT:PSS inks (PEDET ink) and hydrogel precursors inks. The developed spotting techniques allow local deposition of glucose- or lactate-sensitive PEDET inks and hydrogel protection layers on microneedle-based amperometric sensors.

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Organic photovoltaic technologies are a 3rd generation solar technology which has been steadily improving in the past decade due to rapid evolutions in materials design, device stacks and processing strategies. Due to their high efficiency, non-toxic nature and low-cost-high-volume manufacturing potential, several market-ready applications are now emerging for this technology. For instance, photovoltaic modules for indoor energy harvesting, for integration into buildings such as greenhouses, office buildings or even vehicles. In this presentation Brilliant Matters will outline some of the current challenges in the field of high performance and scalable OPVs from a materials chemistry perspective and will discuss novel materials systems for efficient and scalable OPV devices.

InnovationLab presents a novel printed circuit boards (PCBs ) production method based on additive manufacturing, which helps to meet higher environmental standards for electronics production while also reducing costs. The circuits are screen printed and are compatible with a conventional reflow soldering processes.

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The technology for integrating dies is an important enabler for the realization of advanced applications. This includes applications with power modules. Critical steps for the integration of such modules are in the micro assembly, for example in the wire bonding and the die attach. This presentation will highlight results from work on these steps in a project for prototyping power modules for electric vehicles (EVs).

Important for applications such as EVs and renewable energy supplies is the availability of reliable and efficient power modules. These are needed for converting from AC to DC, from DC to AC, for driving an electric motor and for various other purposes. SiC-based solutions are often preferred for high end applications, because they offer a higher efficiency, higher switching frequencies, reduced switching losses, higher operation temperatures and a better robustness as compared to traditional silicon components. A challenge in the integration of power modules is in the wirebonding. The problem is that wirebonding is a major source of failures because of thermal or mechanical stress, and therefore causes a reduced life time. Improved micro assembly processes can bring solutions for this problem.

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The demand for printed sensors is constantly growing over the last few years. Of special importance for various industrial applications are force sensors. They measure stress or bending along one or more axis. Conventional sensors need a time consuming gluing process to mount the sensor onto the substrate. The force sensors from binder are printed directly onto the component where measuring is needed.
For three dimensional or structured substrates pad printing is used. The challenge of this printing process is to apply a defined electrical resistor with high precision and reproducibility. The resistance can be adapted to typical conventional sensor values of 350 or 1kΩ. A typical line width is 80- 100 µm and a layer thickness of 8-15 µm. Normally a full bridge design is printed in order to compensate for thermal drifts. Different designs allow the customer to measure bending of the substrate, stress along an axis or torque. Typical K factors are between 2- 4 depending on the composition of the printing paste.
To connect the sensor with the analysis unit a great variety of connection methods can be applied. A simple solution is conductive glue. Sensors on a copper basis can also be connected via a low temperature soldering process.

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In this presentation, ImageXpert will discuss new technologies in inkjet for evaluating and optimizing processes in R&D and production. These tools allow you to build a better understanding of your inkjet process, improve the performance, and accelerate the rate of development. We will explore the latest analysis tools, from new dropwatching technologies to smarter prototyping printers.

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NextFlex, together with its extended ecosystem network, has been exploring the potential for novel electronics packaging and integration on a system level. This includes electronics integration in wearables, textiles, medical, and high-density integration of RF circuitry, all the way to integration of antennas on the skins of aerial vehicles. Such high-level integration is enabled by the combination of thinned bare die, additive manufacturing, printing, robotics, laser imaging, novel materials and plastics technologies. NextFlex established a unique Technology Hub with a diverse set of tools and know-how to support the needs of government and industry partners. This presentation will discuss system-level integration and packaging implementations with examples of wearables, safety devices and industrial monitoring, as well as very large scale integration on airframes. The talk will address design methodology and the manufacturing process flow used on the devices including additive printing, assembly, test, and final encapsulation. Hybrid electronics is an exciting trajectory for future electronics, enabling new shapes and form factors.

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