Technology highlights - additive and printed electronics - some highlights from California 2026 (part 1)
We would like to start our regular newsletters bringing you snippets of cutting edge knowledge and insights from our events across the world.
In this newsletter we share short selected videos showcasing key innovations in additive and printed electronics.
If you wish to learn more join us at the Future of Electronics RESHAPED conference and tradeshow in Berlin on October 20–22, 2026, where the entire industry meets to learn and do business.
See you in Berlin in less than two weeks? |
The entire additive and printed electronics industry will meet at the Future of Electronics RESHAPED show in Berlin on 20-22 OCT 2026. This is the most important event of the year featuring 100+ talks, 90 exhibitors, and 600 participants from around the globe. Register before 14 OCT 2026 (Next Wednesday) when final early birds end |
Can we bridge the gap between high-resolution sub-10 micron printing and industrial-scale manufacturing throughput for flexible packages? In this segment, Dr. Manish Ojha addresses the core bottleneck of low-to-mid volume manufacturing for flexible multi-layer semiconductor packaging. Standard high-resolution printing processes, such as electrohydrodynamic (EHD) inkjet printing, can print sub-10 micron features but suffer from painfully low throughput, requiring hours to print a single small package. The presentation introduces the FlySIP (Flexible System in Package) roadmap, designed to preserve ultra-fine resolution while scaling throughput to industrial levels. By moving away from single-printer dependencies, this hybrid approach aims to optimize manufacturing speed for conformable antennas and wearable RF sensors. This setup serves as a foundational paradigm shift for additive packaging. It lays the groundwork for combining high-throughput coarse printing with high-resolution fine-trace printing in a single seamless flow.
Can 2D Black Phosphorus Eliminate the Gluing Costs of Silicon Photonics? Silicon photonics has revolutionized data communication, yet the integration of active components remains a primary bottleneck. Today, manufacturers must physically glue discrete III-V semiconductor lasers, LEDs, and photodetectors onto silicon photonic chips. This hybrid packaging process is notoriously complex, precise, and accounts for up to 20% of the overall device cost. Iris Light Technologies is addressing this cost and manufacturing challenge by developing a direct-printing method using black phosphorus, marketed as "Nanoblack" ink. Black phosphorus possesses a direct, tunable bandgap and high carrier mobility, making it an ideal candidate for optoelectronic devices. By utilizing additive manufacturing on a wafer scale, this approach enables direct integration of active emitters and detectors onto silicon or silicon nitride waveguides. This additive printing strategy bypasses traditional epitaxial growth and pick-and-place packaging.
How do you build high-frequency RF antennas that survive high temperatures without cracking the ceramic substrate? Designing high-temperature spiral antennas presents a classic material science compromise. Traditional Teflon-based circuit board substrates offer excellent dielectric properties but fail at elevated temperatures, whereas switching to ceramics introduces high loss and severe manufacturing challenges. To solve this, engineers must find a way to minimize substrate thickness while depositing metal tracks without causing thermal shock. In this clip, the speaker details using Corning's ultra-thin 80-micron ribbon alumina ceramic as a low-loss, high-temperature substrate. However, attaching metal to such thin, delicate ceramic is highly problematic; traditional powder bed fusion and high-temperature sintering techniques inevitably thermal-shock and crack the fragile alumina. The solution lies in room-temperature, electrochemical additive manufacturing.
How can a three-dimensionally assembled carbon nanomaterial redefine the boundaries of electrochemical sensing and thermal management? The unique structural morphology of G, a three-dimensionally assembled carbon nanomaterial, yields an exceptional specific surface area ranging from 300 to 400 square meters per gram. This high active surface area, combined with its ultra-lightweight nature and high electrical conductivity, makes it an ideal electrode platform for advanced electrochemical applications. Furthermore, its inherent thermal conductivity opens up critical pathways for integration into high-performance thermal management systems. For biochemical and environmental diagnostics, G offers distinct surface chemistry advantages, notably an intrinsic resistance to biofouling that preserves active sites during biosensor operation. The material exhibits robust chemical inertness and corrosion resistance, demonstrating stability up to pH 10. Crucially, this upper pH limit is dictated by the physical constraints of the underlying substrate rather than any chemical degradation of the G material itself.
Tapecon | Brad Hull | The Evolution of Smart Labels: From Identification to Intelligent Interaction.
How do we guarantee absolute traceability for high-value biological samples when conventional RFID and optical labeling fail? The integrity of genetic material and critical bio-specimens demands a level of security and durability that standard labeling technologies simply cannot provide. Traditional QR codes are highly vulnerable to mislabeling, physical degradation, and detachment under harsh laboratory conditions. Even radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, while offering non-line-of-sight reading, suffer from severe security vulnerabilities, as demonstrated by the widespread commercial cloning of RFID chips used in consumer peripherals. To overcome these limitations, advanced microtransponders are emerging as a highly secure alternative for high-value tracking applications. These microscale devices are virtually impossible to clone due to their highly proprietary, specialized fabrication recipes, which require sophisticated semiconductor foundry capabilities to replicate. This inherent hardware security makes them an ideal choice for safeguarding critical intellectual property and sensitive biological assets against counterfeiting and tampering.
How do molecular precursor inks achieve near-bulk conductivity without particle fillers? Traditional conductive inks rely on suspended metallic nanoparticles combined with resin binders and fillers. During sintering, these organic additives often leave behind voids and polymer residues that compromise electrical performance. In contrast, particle-free or "molecular precursor" inks use reactive silver chemistry that reduces to pure metal during thermal processing. Because there are no organic binders or fillers left in the final track, the resulting film is completely dense and void-free, as demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy. This allows printed traces to achieve near-bulk electrical conductivity at exceptionally low sintering temperatures, making them highly compatible with thermally sensitive polymer substrates. This digital additive approach dramatically reduces manufacturing waste, bypassing the heavy environmental toll of traditional copper etching. By leveraging printhead compatibility and fast low-temperature curing, molecular inks enable high-yield digital printing for flexible electronics and complex multilayer circuits.
How does mesh geometry determine whether your conductive paste prints like a "skyscraper" or a flat "factory"? In high-precision additive manufacturing, screen printing remains a dominant technique because of its deposition efficiency. Selecting the correct mesh morphology dictates the wet film deposition characteristics. Comparing variations of a standard 325 stainless steel mesh illustrates how open area percentage and mesh opening size dictate paste transfer dynamics. A higher mesh opening percentage (such as a 50% open, 56-micron wide opening) prints short, wide cubes of paste, which are easier to release from the mesh. Conversely, a smaller mesh opening with a taller profile acts like a high-aspect-ratio nozzle, printing tall, thin "skyscrapers" of paste that are harder to deposit cleanly. Engineers must design around wet film thickness requirements, as the wet print thickness typically matches the physical thickness of the mesh itself, assuming full cavity fill and proper squeegee pressure.
Can we bypass the high cost of silver in conductive inks without suffering from copper's extreme oxidation issues? The electronic packaging industry faces an urgent material challenge due to the skyrocketing cost of silver, driving a transition to lower-cost conductive metals like copper. However, copper readily oxidizes in fine particle form, which degrades electrical performance and ruins long-term reliability in high-density interconnects. To solve this trade-off, Tatsuta has developed silver-coated copper particles that leverage a core-shell architecture. This morphology combines the low bulk resistivity of a copper core with the excellent oxidation resistance and surface contact stability of a thin silver shell. By engineered control of the particle coating, this paste overcomes the historical limitations of conventional copper and silver inks. It delivers a stable, cost-effective conductive path suited for high-density electronic packaging and flexible printed circuits.
Why is buying conductive ink based on cost per kilogram a major engineering mistake? Evaluating conductive inks purely by their price per kilogram hides the true cost of electronic manufacturing. Senior engineers must look at cost-performance, which depends heavily on solid content and volumetric coverage. An ink with 50% solid content requires you to pay for volatile solvents that evaporate during sintering, whereas 90% solid content delivers far more active material per dollar. Electrical resistance requirements dictate the volume of material actually needed to complete a circuit. If a copper ink has superior electrical conductivity, you can print much thinner lines and use significantly less total mass to achieve the target resistance (such as one ohm across a trace). This volumetric efficiency means high-conductivity inks often cost less per finished device, even if their raw material price is higher.
Can you print defect-free organic semiconductors without using any chemical rheology additives? Adjusting the rheology of functional inks usually relies on organic binders and leveling agents, but this approach fails for the light-emitting polymer layer. Because the final active film must maintain absolute chemical purity to function, any non-volatile additives would act as charge traps and instantly degrade the device's quantum efficiency. Consequently, process engineers must rely entirely on solvent selection and evaporation kinetics to control film morphology. To dry perfectly flat and uniform, the solvent blend's surface tension must decrease continuously as evaporation proceeds. Tuning the ratios of binary or ternary solvent systems dictates the ink's Marangoni flow during drying. Finding the precise thermodynamic balance ensures the film levels completely within the brief dwell time on the high-speed printing press.
How do we overcome the exponential complexity barrier when scaling soft robotic systems to infinite degrees of freedom? Modern robotics is rapidly approaching a critical scaling paradox. When designing conventional systems, increasing the degrees of freedom from ten to one hundred does not result in a linear tenfold increase in system complexity; rather, the complexity scales exponentially, surging by a factor of ten thousand. To prevent this mathematical bottleneck from halting progress, the industry must transition away from traditional top-down engineering paradigms. This scaling crisis is particularly acute in soft robotics, where structural compliance yields practically infinite degrees of freedom. Managing such physical complexity is mathematically and computationally impossible using standard centralized architectures. To realize the promise of highly adaptable, resilient soft actuators and sensors, we must fundamentally re-engineer how we approach system integration and physical control loops.
Can Carbon Nanotubes realistically match the carrier mobility benchmarks of bulk silicon for Edge AI? Silicon-based FinFET architectures demand carrier mobilities between 1,000 and 2,000 cm²/Vs to support switching speeds, lower operating voltages, and heat dissipation limits. For high-performance AI data centers, matching these bulk or strained silicon baselines is a rigid requirement to manage thermal envelopes and power distribution. However, for Edge AI applications, these constraints are significantly relaxed. Flexible sensors require mobilities exceeding 1 cm²/Vs, flexible logic demands 10 cm²/Vs, and competitive flexible AI processing peaks around 100 cm²/Vs. This allows carbon nanotube thin-film transistors (TFTs) to immediately step in as a high-performance alternative. By utilizing 99.9% enriched semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), researchers at Peking University demonstrated stretchable CNT-TFTs achieving a field-effect mobility of 221 cm²/Vs.
Why is edge-detection registration alone insufficient for high-precision, multi-layer functional printing? Achieving sub-micron alignment accuracy across eight sequentially printed layers is a major challenge when dealing with thick, rigid substrates like two-millimeter polycarbonate. Variations in substrate cutting edges and the presence of protective films introduce optical irregularities that defeat traditional edge-detection methods. To overcome this, a dual-mode camera-based positioning system is deployed. The system utilizes CCD cameras to capture substrate edges for the initial baseline layer, then dynamically switches to target-based registration utilizing previously printed registration marks for all subsequent layers. The final micro-alignments are executed via high-resolution, closed-loop servo-driven adjustments. This dual-method approach isolates physical edge tolerances from the functional print pattern, securing highly precise layer-to-layer registration. In this short video, you can learn: * The limitations of edge-based optical registration on rigid substrates with cut imperfections.
Can we eliminate PCB complexity by printing a 5-layer architecture down to just 3? Traditional multilayer printed circuit boards (PCBs) introduce significant weight, cost, and process complexity, especially when utilizing multiple insulating layers. This segment explores how flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) can collapse a conventional five-layer architecture down to a streamlined three-layer, double-sided printed device. By using vertical interconnect access (via) printing, engineers can pack more functionality into tighter spaces while preserving mechanical flexibility. Transitioning to this additive, roll-to-roll manufacturing framework eliminates heavy substrates and chemical etching waste. These ultra-thin, bendable foils support robust interconnects and are perfectly suited for weight-critical systems like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Integrating this process into high-volume, high-speed lines allows manufacturers to scale up double-sided surface-mount device (SMD) assemblies effortlessly. This approach represents a major paradigm shift toward sustainable, lightweight electronics that replace standard rigid-flex boards in the one-to-four-layer application space.
Can printed silver ink reliably repair open-circuit defects in advanced 3D semiconductor packaging? As the semiconductor industry advances beyond Moore's Law, chipmakers are increasingly turning to 3D chip stacking and panel-level packaging to boost density and computing power. However, these complex architectures suffer from yield-killing open defects in their copper redistribution layers (RDLs). This makes physical circuit repair an invaluable strategy for salvaging high-cost, multi-die packages. In collaboration with Hanyang University, a highly precise solution was demonstrated using capillary-printed silver ink to mend broken copper RDLs. This additive process deposits silver directly into the open defects with sub-10 micron resolution, bridging the electrical gap without risking thermal damage to surrounding active components. Rigorous thermal cycling tests have confirmed the structural and electrical reliability of these repaired RDL traces.
Best regards,
The TechBlick team
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