Approximately 900 people attended the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe conference in Dresden last week, the biggest event on the topic in Europe and a focal point for the industry and those interested in its growth.
At the end of the first day - which included keynote presentations from companies such as NOKIA, P&G, Sharp, DARPA and Total - this year's IDTechEx Printed Electronics Awards were presented during the conference Gala Dinner.
The awards were judged by Professor Iain McCulloch, Imperial College, The University of London, UK, and Professor Elvira Fortunato, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. There were more than 35 award applications in total.
Printed Electronics Europe Champion award
Mr Dirk Hilbert, Deputy Mayor of Dresden, presented the award which was sponsored by the City of Dresden. This year's winner was Professor Edgar Dörsam, Director of the Institut für Druckmaschinen und Druckverfahren of Technische Universitaet Darmstadt. His previous experience working with MAN Roland facilitated his efforts to achieve the necessary interaction between the printing and the electronics industries, a collaboration that's necessary in order to grow the printed electronics market.
Left, Professor Edgar Dörsam with Deputy Mayor of Dresden Dirk Hilbert, Right.
Organic Materials Development award
Due to the amount of research and development work going into materials development, there were two materials awards this year: one for organics and one for inorganics. The organics award went to Polyera for the development of printable, air-stable, polymeric and molecular n-type organic semiconductors for OTFTs. This enables CMOS architectures to be used.
Inorganic Materials Development award
The Inorganic Materials Development award was given to Novacentrix for their work enabling inexpensive printed copper conductors through copper oxide ink reduction. The process utilizes their PulseForge sintering system which reduces the copper oxide ink to copper in room temperature and atmosphere conditions.
Manufacturing award
The manufacturing award was given to E2M, a company that has developed a UV curing system for changing the physical state of a (UV-curable fluid) liquid to a solid. The product offers superior levels of system maintenance and fast throughput.
Academic award
The Academic award was given to Professor David Britton and Professor Margit Härting of the University of Cape Town, South Africa for their work on printable silicon. They have demonstrated semiconducting functionality from silicon nanoparticle based inks deposited under ambient conditions without further (usually high temperature) processing.
Product Development award
This award recognizes efforts in creating a new product (without having necessarily been commercialized yet). The winner was Novalia, for creating a self contained printed electronics control unit. By attaching this unit the printed material is empowered with interactivity. The unit contains a power source and has a microcontroller with embedded drive electronics enabling 'touch-sensitivity' for user input and sound/display for output.
