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This newsletter will provide regular updates in additive electronics covering the full and broad spectrum of materials, processes, and applicaitons. The term additive electronics encompasses an exteremely diverse set of technologies and applications. We will cover all. To learn more visit TechBlick online or onsite (www.TechBlick.com). Wrap-around electrodes for microLEDs To scale up microLED displays to large areas, smaller displays can be titled. Because microLEDs can be truely edge-less devices, the tiling can function, yielding a seemless look. Each title should house the microLEDs, backplane, as well as driver electrodes. The microLEDs and the backplane sit on the front side of the glass substrate whilst the driver electrodes are tucked away at the back. Interconnects are needed to connect the two. Wrap-around electrodes (interconnects wraping around the edge to connect front and back) is an elegent solution which bypasses the need for a drilled and filled through-glass via. The wrap around electrodes can be printed or PVD deposited (both prefer chamfered glass) . The latter can yield better feature sizes and thin and conductive lines, whilst the former can increase productivity. The below images demonstrate various technologies. Screen printing is a robust solution with low TACT time. Applied Materials has demonstrated that it can screen print very narrow (30um) linewidths over narrow spacings (50um). These are excellent results. Note, by way of reference, that state-of-the-practice/production and state-of-the-art in screen printing of conductive paste on silicon solar PVs are 35um and 20um, respectively. In the process, first the top and botton electrodes are printed before the substrate is rotated (with excellent alignment) to print the electrodes over the edge. This technologies requires excellent machines. Applied Materials has launched a machine able to handle 230x230mm substrate with +/- 6um repeatability and a throughput of 1000pph. Note that optimization of the past and print process are critical. In general, a paste with very high conductivity (20% bulk Ag) with 5B adhesion onto glass will be needed. The target final printed thickness is 3-5um. The screen printing process should yield smooth surface with no peaks near the edge. Aerosol jet is also being proposed for additive deposition of wrap-around electrodes. The advantage of aerosol is that it can print over 3D surfaces and that it can in general deposit fine features than screen printing. To achieve wrap-around electrodes, two half-wrap electrodes must be printed (see below). In between the steps, the glass will need to be rotated. Optomec claims to achieve 18k full-wrap interconencts per hour (excluding the time it takes to rotate the glass). Note that the example below shows L/S 50um although, in principle, aerosol jet can go from down. In general, this is an interesting solution for the microLED market Impulse Printing- the master of all printed electronics process? Impulse Printing- unveiled and presented recently at TechBlick- seems to be an exciting technology. The technology details are not yet fully disclosed, and the development is still at a laboratory stage, but the disclosed results and claimed performance levels are incredible. As you can see below, the technology can digitally print tracks with resolutions as low as 2um and as high as one millimeter. It can print materials with an extremely wide viscousity range, from 0.1 to 10,000 Pa.s, meaning that it can print copper and silver inks as well as solder and epoxy(!) based conductive adhesives! The technique prints over 3D surfaces, able to print over gaps as short as 1um and as tall as 10mm. This digital printing technique can print sequential as well as simultaneous patterns at high speeds. The diversity in all paramters (resolution, print gap, viscosity of ink or pastes, etc) is very unique for any digital pritning process. Indeed, as shown in the chart belows, each technology occupies a given position in terms of resolution/feature size, viscosity, print gap, etc). The technology is still young and in development. Today, the print area is small (1x10mm2) but there is a roadmap to scale the tool to be able to print first at 20x20mm2 and then 96x96mm2. Watch this space as the technology will soon be spun out into a start-up! Taking the accuracy of printed electronics below 1um Printed electronics technology is evolving. A development direction is ultrafine line printing, increasingly allowing the technology to encroach into the realm of photolithography. The example here, developed by VTT, demonstrate a process for sub-micron printing. The process is reverse offset printing. Here, the PDMS roller is first coated with the ink. The ink semi-dries on the roller, partially through absorption into the PDMS. This semi-dried state allows one to overcome wetting-related issues when inks are in liquid state. The inked PDMS roller is brought into contact with a Cliche, or relief plate, removing parts of the inks. The patterned semi-dried inks on the PDMS roller are then transferred onto the final substrate. In this example VTT achieves 1µm direct printing of silver nanoparticle inks. The desktop RO printer was used to print a metal mesh on PET with 1µm linewidths. The reported sheet resisitivty is not very low (100Ohm/sqr), probably because the lines are very thin. In general, note that ROP can enable minimum resolutions between 0.5-5µm, printed thickness lines around 20-1000nm, overlay accuracy <2um, and printing speeds of 50mm/s (3m/min). Advanced Interconnect Solutions for Flexible Hybrid Solutions Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) brings together the best of printed and flexible electronics with rigid Si-based electronics. A critical and often limiting bottleneck is the interconnect between printed (often wide) and Si ICs (often narrow pitches). Normal solder can not easily be used because (1) substrate such as TPU (stretchable electronics) and PET (flexible electrodes) impose severe temperature limitation, often even below bismuth-based low-T solders, and (2) some inks, specially Ag inks, dissolve in solder. Furthermore, these interconnects need not only support the pitch sizes of the ICs, but also survive flexibling as well as stretching, and be compatible with standard industry processes. One option is to deploy particle filled (often Ag particle) epoxies to form the interconnects. Here, unless it is anisotrophic, then the pitch sizes will be limited. Furthermore, particle loadings are often high to achieve high conductivity, adding to cost. Sunray Scientific Inc has developed a novel solution: they disperse ferromagnetic particles within a two-part epoxy system. Under an external magnetic field, the particle align vertically, forming z-axis conductive paths. Here, the pitch can be down to 100um. The curing temperature can be as low as 80C, making compatible with TPU and PET. The material can sustain extreme repeated stretching. Furthermore, the process is, as shown below, compatible with standard SMT process. The material can be stencil printed or dispensed. Once the component is pick and placed, a magnetic pallet is used to align the particles before sending the film through a curing step (batch over, reflow, vertical oven) This is an interesting process. It of course lacks the self alignment properties of solder. The ptich is also currenly limited to 100um, which is too wide for many ICs. Solderable highly conductive Cu nanoparticle inks? A major challenge in printed electronics is the inability to solder directly on Ag paste (the most common ink and paste material) because no intermetallic layer is formed. With Cu, this can be different. Here, Copprint is showing results, demonstrating that one can directly solder onto their Cu pastes with good shear test results, even if sometimes the wetting is not the best. It also shows how a strong intermetallic layer is formed during the solder, for example, with the standard SAC305 solder on an FR4 substrate. This is an important advancement of the art because it makes printed electronics more compatible with standard SMT processes. Furthermore, the Cu ink is compatible with low-T solders too, enabling one to solder components directly onto a PET substrate with printed Cu lines. In general, Cu inks have had issues in the past. The conductivity has not been high enough, meaning more material is needed thereby eroding their $/Kg advantage vs. Ag. They have also required novel sintering steps with a new learning curve and with new equipment. The data from Copprint suggests that their ink can be sintered very fast and achieve conductivity levels outperforming those of classic Ag suppliers.

24 June | 2.00pm - 7.00pm CET | Virtual Event Platform TechBlick has announced its online Innovations Festival (24 June 2022 | 14:00 to 19:00 CEST | 8:00 to 13:00 EST), showcasing a broad spectrum of innovative technologies from around the world in the field of Printed, Hybrid, Flexible, InMold, 3D, Structural, and Textile Electronics. This must-attend event showcases exciting and cutting-edge advances from across the world. It brings together more than 400+ participants, 45 speakers and 55+ live exhibitors. The audience is truly global, coming together across many different time zones. See the full programme here and register here https://www.techblick.com/PE-festival-2022 There are 50 free spots thanks to our sponsors assigned on a first come first serve basis The LIVE virtual exhibitors in the special session will include: Coatema Machinery GmbH, Nagase, Eastman Kodak, Panasonic, Applied Materials, Nano-Ops, CPI, Elantas, Seristampa, Quad Industries, Brilliant Matter, Kimoto, Sateco AG, Fujikura Kasei, Metamaterials Inc, Fujifilm, ACI Materials, Fraunhofer IAP, Panacol, Keiron Printing Technologies, InnovationLab GmbH, Electroninks, Eastprint, Jet Metal, DuPont Teijin Films, Liquid Wire, Sunray Scientific, Asada Mesh, Copprint, Holst Center, Neotech AMT GmbH, XTPL, Brewer Science, Agfa, Belink Solutions, MacDermid, GiS, Voltera, DoMicro, DuPont, Raymor, Ynvisible, others. Full Agenda

Introducing the Materials Informatics Platform (MIP) Demonstrated on Perovskite Solar Cells and Solid-State Batteries Basila Kattouf, Ph.D. - Customer Success - Materials Zone Contact: Contact@Materials.Zone, Set a meeting, Materials Zone presentation on TechBlick - Thursday, June 16, 2022 14:45-15:05 (CET) Visit our virtual booth The Materials Informatics Platform (MIP) Revolution Materials Zone is a Materials Informatics (AI/ML) Platform or MIP in short. Like the CRM revolution in marketing/sales before it, the MIP is the next organizational platform revolution for materials/products. Powered by AI/ML, it rapidly visualizes all the insights from all the data and serves multiple stakeholders - R&D, supply chain, manufacturing, and business. Thus, it accelerates materials/products innovation from discovery to commercialization. The MIP ingests multi-dimensional, unstructured, and dispersed materials data and transforms it into ML driven results for R&D, supply chain and manufacturing. It does so rapidly, cost-effectively, and sustainably on a collaborative organizational platform. Materials Zone is domain agnostic and has been proven on solar cells, solid-state batteries, hydrogen technologies, building materials, polymers, 3D printing, alloys, coatings, packaging, healthcare, metrology and more. Follow video links to platform demonstrations in the context of below examples. Fig 1: Materials Zone (MIP) - From Raw Data to Rapid Insights - Download short document We will demonstrate the platform via the perovskite solar cells (PSC) from the perovskite database project (www.perovskitedatabase.com), collected by 98 scientists, hosted on Materials Zone, containing over 42,000 devices extracted from over 15,000 research papers. The PDP was announced in nature energy magazine and enables researchers a better starting point, leveraging accumulated global knowledge. Then we shall augment with a brief demonstration with solid state batteries. Why are perovskites interesting? Perovskite Solar Cells (PSC) are predicted to be a disruptive technology in the PV industry as they are able to achieve a very high power conversion efficiency (PCE) increasing from 3.8% in 2009 to 25.7% in 2022 (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh1885). High efficiency, combined with the lightweight, flexible nature (having 1/10th of the weight per square meter as silicon) makes PSCs very attractive. Rethink Energy predicts PSCs can achieve 7% of global photovoltaic market share by 2025, increasing to >29% by 2030 (assuming predicted efficiency will increase by 30% and costs reduced by up to 50%). Allied Market Research estimates that global Perovskite solar cell market size will reach $6.6 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 32.4% from 2021 to 2030. A typical PSC is composed of five main building blocks: Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO). Electron Transporting Layer (ETL). Perovskite. Hole Transporting Layer (HTL). Back contact. Fig 2: A typical PSC stack; (a) direct architecture, (b) inverted architecture. Image credit: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.5b01049 The performance of each PSC device is measured using a solar simulator setup and the 4 main performance indicators (PCE, FF, Voc, Jsc) are calculated/observed from I-V curves. A day in the lab The day-to-day R&D activity includes fine tuning of multiple variables per each building block, such as: materials, compositions, deposition techniques, processes, temperature, other parameters etc. The PDP subset we selected, is per a particularly interesting preparation technique, with the 4 performance indicators each dependent on 40 descriptors. Each one of these 44 indicators and descriptors may be obtained directly from instruments and/or requires additional calculations. For each new sample (solar cell) tested this needs to be repeated. It is difficult to ascertain a priori, which are the most predictive descriptors, so all 160 (4 times 40) scatter plots need to be created each time a new sample is tested. These need to be reviewed and compared to design the next solar cell test. If not automated, this takes a lot of time/effort and leads to ‘trial-and-error’ instead of deduction. Hands-free zero-effort data visualization Materials Zone automates the ingestion of the 44 indicators and descriptors and instantly enables the researchers to visually zoom in on the data and the insights it projects. It indicates the most dominant descriptors by calculating all 160 plots instantaneously with an easily comparative search using the Pearson correlation matrix. Dark red and dark blue “squares” indicate the most significantly correlated plots and they are easily viewed by simply clicking the “square”. It also allows an intelligent “search” through the samples using a histogram view. This 60 second video shows it all from file ingestion to file visualization to correlation (scatter plot search) to histogram search (flow video) This allows the researchers to rapidly converge to the optimal solar cell in the following evolutionary cycle. In each step, the researchers define the next test where the data-driven conclusions might be to converge to the optimal design, or that not enough descriptors have been measured, or that there is not enough cell variety in the data set to build a predictive model properly. Fig 3: Demonstrating the flow starting from the researchers and back to them. Black arrow describes the jobs that the researchers do while the turquoise arrows describe the jobs that are automatically performed by Materials Zone. Click to view customer testimonial video explaining the above in the context of perovskites research. Rapid Insights Manually working on the I-V curves obtained from the solar simulator, then calculating the 4 performance indicators and then plotting 160 charts would take more than a full day of tedious work. Then sifting through those charts to search for insights might take a while longer. As seen on the demo video, on Materials Zone it took less than a minute to discover the bright red correlation “squares” that immediately pointed to the following charts: Fig 4: Charts showing the four performance indicators (Jsc, Voc, FF, PCE) vs ETL thickness. The negative correlation between ETL thickness and PSC performance, per this preparation technique from the Perovskite DB, may or may not surprise researchers. For sure the likely implication is that far thinner ETLs need to be tested to find the optimal thickness and control for other factors. Further Materials Zone modules are required to obtain an accurate predictive model. Why are Solid-State Batteries interesting? Solid-state batteries have a promise to have higher energy density than current Li-ion batteries with liquid electrolytes. Furthermore, they don't have the risk of explosion or fire. So in addition to the safety value in itself there is also no need to have components for safety, thus saving even more space. Therefore, especially for EV applications, solid-state battery technology is a leading candidate. Batteries have at least as many dimensions as PSC. In addition, they need to be tested in very long cycles of repetitive charging and discharging cycles. That’s more data per each sample and more time to conclude sample testing. Thus it is ever more difficult, costly and time consuming to collect, model and analyze this data. So, in addition to what you have already seen from Materials Zone up until now, please see the following video showing how researchers can rapidly analyze these cycles amongst all batteries tested using analytical tools provided by the platform. Thus accelerating their processes and reducing efforts and elapsed time. In summation We have briefly discussed and demonstrated the following: R&D activities for developing materials-based products (such as solar cells and batteries) is a multi-dimensional problem. For analyzing multi-dimensional problems efficiently, a holistic view presenting all the dimensions and the correlations between them in a single view is essential. We have shown how a holistic single view of the project progression can significantly help the researcher make better R&D decisions about next steps. We demonstrated how the Materials Zone Platform can automate and significantly improve the efficiency (factor of x10) of harvesting, databasing and analyzing R&D data, towards recognizing insightful patterns.

Speaker: Ionel Stefan | Company: Amprius | Date: 9-10 Feb 2022 | Full Presentation The silicon nanowire anode technology addresses silicon swelling by enabling silicon to expand and contract internally, in a very robust mechanical structure. As a result, over 1200 Wh/L and 450 Wh/kg levels of energy density were achieved in lithium-ion cells with a cycle life in the hundreds of cycles and fast charging in under 10 minutes, enabling new devices and applications. Join TechBlick on an annual pass to join all live online conference or online version of onsite conference access library of on-demand talks (600 talks + PDFs) portfolio of expert led masterclass year-round platform https://www.techblick.com/ Our next battery-related event will take place on 15-16 FEB 2023, covering 1) Solid-State Batteries: Innovations, Promising Start-Ups, & Future Roadmap 2) Battery Materials: Next-Generation & Beyond Lithium Ion The speakers include: General Motors, Graphenix Development, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fraunhofer IKTS, RWTH Aachen University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Meta Materials Inc, Skeleton Technologies, Solid State Battery Inc, Argonne National Laboratories, OneD Battery Sciences, VTT, Leyden Jar Technologies B.V., b-Science, Rho Motion, Wevo-Chemie, LiNA Energy, CNM Technologies, Ionblox, Empa, Zinc8 Energy Solutions, Avicenne Energy, Echiontech, South8 Technologies, Basquevolt, NanoXplore, Chasm, Li Metal, Sila Nanotechnologies, Quantumscape (tentative), Fraunhofer ISI, etc https://www.techblick.com/

Contact: Fernando Zicarelli, North America Business Manager – Asada Mesh Co., Ltd. Email: fernando@asada-mesh.page website: edu.asada-mesh.com Applications like HMI for automotive, home appliances, medical and aeronautical markets are driving the development of flexible transparent, capacitive switches. These switches enable a high level of differentiation and design freedom to make thin, ergonomic, and functional surfaces with attractive backlit schemes. To produce, functional layers of a Transparent Capacitive Switch (TCS) circuit are printed on a production scale screen printing line at e2ip technologies. Sun Chemical’s silver paste allows us to screen print <30 micron resolution of transparent metal mesh electrodes. The inks are printed on commercially available PET substrates (Ikonics) with Sun Chemical SunTronic inks (silver conductive ink, UV dielectric ink, carbon ink and other supplementary inks as needed for the target design) and using high-quality stainless screen mesh by Asada Mesh and screens prepared by Sefar Inc (with the latest emulsion technology from Kiwo). Fine Mesh Wire Technology (9-15 microns) allows for Thinner Depositions (2-5 microns). Visit our virtual booth High-Resolution Emulsion Technology allows for better edge definition and ultra-fine resolution (10-30 microns below). Visit our virtual booth PET Substrate technology has improved to help in the areas of Adhesion, Temperature Dissipation, preventing Paste Spread and obtaining Smaller Feature sizes. Visit our virtual booth The design, manufacture and assembly of this switch is done at e2ip technologies. A screen-printed TSC circuit is adhesive bonded to LED circuit for backlighting the icons, a light guide film and finally to a dead-front graphic label to make a thin and curved control panel demonstrator with single and multi-touch capability. The backlighting of the icons can be activated by touching the specific area. Being sensitive to the manufacturing costs, we advise everyone to consider individual screen printing cycle times of 3-6 seconds for a single pass to help reduce overhead costs. This means faster Takt times (the rate at which you need to complete a product to meet customer demand) are possible. Typical jobs that today range around 10k parts with a 6 second cycle time will take roughly 16.7 hours to complete. As a comparison, if you take a cycle time of 5 minutes per circuit (competing technologies), this will take 833,3 hours to complete. Screen printed fine-metal-mesh based TCS designs provide a more reliable, more cost-effective and more environmentally friendly solution than conventional electronics (i.e., copper flex), all of which are the key drivers and trends in above-mentioned markets. The combination of the right Mesh Technology, Emulsion Technology, Paste Technology, Substrate Technology and a professional screen-printing shop allowed us to reduce both the feature size and layer thickness. Innovations Festival: Printed, Hybrid, 3D, InMold, Textile Electronics 24 June 2022 | 14:00 - 19:00 CET | Virtual Event Platform Asada Mesh will be having a virtual booth at the Innovation Festival. Visit Asada Mesh virtual booth

Soldering onto flexible substrates has been a challenge because even standard bismuth-based low temperature solders are not compatible with substrates like PET or even heat stabilized PET which cannot tolerate high temperatures. To overcome this challenge, many deploy conductive adhesives. This is a good solution but has several shortcoming: (1) one misses the automatic self-alignment feature of solder which is an essential feature in SMT processes; (2) conductive adhesives can contribute to overall resistivity, putting flexible hybrid electronic further beyond standard PI-based FPCB techniques (lower conductivity of printed ink vs bulk copper plus lower conductivity of conductive adhesive interconnects vs standard solder); and (3) narrow pitch sizes will be difficult to support. Digital thermal processing developed by Pulse Forge Inc (spun off from NovaCentrix) offers a solution. As shown below, a rapid pulse of light raises the temperature of the surface of the substrate very fast, whilst the substrate itself remains relatively cool, allowing one to sinter inks on low-T temperatures such as PET and paper. This feature has been extensively used in connection with printed inks. Incredibly, it has recently been demonstrated to also work with solder. The second slide shows how the PulseForge technology can in less than a second reflow standard SAC305 solder, creating good joints and also benefiting from solder's automatic realignment feature. Next slide shows how the PulseForge technology can be deployed to solder on Al on PET, enabling, for example, R2R production of LED foils on Al metallized PET substrate. Interestingly, this technology can also be applied onto FR4 substrates. Here, there are two crucial benefits: (1) rapid reflow in just a few second (1-3s), saving time (standard reflow process can be 235C for 120s, for example), and (2) low energy reflow at 10% of the energy required for standard reflow ovens, making the process 'greener'. The slide below shows that the shear strength of the solder joins made with intense pulse light technology and the standard reflow oven technology are comparable. The next slides shows that the joints are of a high quality with very low void content and that a good thin intermetallic layer is solder after pulse light reflow. Can one can solder joints where no direct line of sight exists? Results on QFN and other packages where joins are not directly visible demonstrate that it is possible, although it will, in our guess, require notable optimization. In fact, our guess is that significant operator know-how is required to optimize exposure parameters based on solder, substrate, and packages on a board to enable intense pulse light soldering, as it is still a non-standard SMT reflow technology with a new learning curve. Note that the inline versions of the PulseForge machines can handle 300m wide substrates. These are fantastic results. The tool solves an important problem in flexible hybrid electronics. It can also certainly make a meaningful impact in general SMT business on standard substrates like FR4 given its rapidity and low-energy nature. The impact in the SMT world will not be overnight though as the technology still has to prove and develop itself further to become a standard process, especially if it ever wishes to be a drop-in replacement for the well-established incumbent reflow which can handle all solders on complex large-sized boards containing a vareity of IC and joint types.

Speaker: Sagi Daren | Company: PrintCB| Date: 10-11 March 2021 | Full Presentation The race for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and sustainable energy resources creates big opportunities for advanced materials. Copper, although a widely used material in electronics, has not played a major role in car manufacturing, mainly due to its tendency to oxidize fast when printed, thus losing its conductivity. PrintCB has developed a novel copper-based, materials platform that enables straightforward use of copper in various applications while maintaining stable electric and thermal conductivity. During the presentation, the technology will be reviewed alongside new solutions developed to address real-life challenges in vehicle electrification. Join TechBlick on an annual pass to join all live online conference or online version of onsite conference access library of on-demand talks (600 talks + PDFs) portfolio of expert led masterclass year-round platform https://www.techblick.com/ And do NOT miss our flagship event in Berlin on 17-18 OCT 2023 focused on Reshaping the Future of Electronics. This event attracts 550-600 participants from all the world and offers a superb ambience and dynamic exhibition floor. To learn more visit https://www.techblick.com/electronicsreshaped To see feedback about previous event see https://www.techblick.com/events-agenda

Silver nanoparticle inks improve every year. These improvements are often incremental, but very important. One ever-present direction of development is towards inks which offer ever higher conductivity levels at a low curing temperature and a short curing time. This a critical figure of merit because it opens more substrate choices, saves time, and lowers energy consumption costs. Here, we highlight the progress by Agfa, who offers both solvent and water based, as well as screen and inkjet printed (IJ) Ag nanoparticle (NP) inks. The first slide below shows the progress in curing time and temperature of a solvent-based IJ printable Ag NP inks. The left picture is the zoomed up version of the right picture. The compares the properties of two different solvent based IJ Ag NP inks: SPS201 and SPS210 sintered at different temperatures (110C, 130C, and 150C). For a given sintering temperature, we can see that SPS210 reaches a lower resistivity level at a shorter time compared to SPS201, clearly demonstrating this incremental but important advancement of the Ag NP ink technology. As seen in the following slide, the SP2010 Ag NP IJ ink can achieve 3mOhm/sqr/mill when sintered at just 130C for 10min. These are excellent results. IJP Ag NP inks are beginning to find suitable applications. In the last slide, you can see printed Ag NP lines as narrow (70um) metallization line on a thin film photovoltaic technology (note: screen printed lines on Si PV are now 34um). Next to it, you can see a transparent heater application. Here, the application is a photochromic laminate for motor sport visors. The visor can change optical transmission to maintain good visibility in different outdoor light levels. One limitation of the photochromic laminate is that it can change its transparency state only slows. This can be a challenge when the driver enters, for example, a tunnel, transitioning from intense sun light into darkness quickly. To overcome this limitation, the laminate can be heated to accelerate the transition. To this end, a CNT or ITO solution is deployed. The result are ok however homogeneous heating can still take too long (40s or longer). To overcome this limitation, a metal mesh with linewidth of 70um and pitch of 2mm is inkjet printed using Ag NP inks (SPS211). As seen in the slide below, it reduces resistance to 11ohm, and achieves uniform heating in just 20s, which meets requirements.

Current substrate technologies impose severe limits on potential of stretchable or flexible hybrid electronics. This is because (a) they often limit curing temperature of conductive inks which limits conductivity levels far below bulk metal and (b) they rule out compatibility with standard SMT processes and materials such as solder reflow. The table below is a comparison of common flexible and stretchable substrates. The most common ‘flexible’ substrate is PET, which is low cost, resistant to chemicals, and offers a good surface energy for printing of inks. It however has poor heat resistance, generally making it incompatible with SMT processes and imposing temperature constraints on the curing of the ink, which can limit achieved conductivity levels. The most common ‘stretchable’ substrate is TPU which offers excellent stretching as well as a good surface for printing, but has very intolerant of heat and humidity, and imposes even more severe constrains on ink and solder/conductive adhesive processing temperatures than PET. Therefore, there is a need for a substrate that it flexible and stretchable and offers compatibility with SMD and higher temperature processes. Panasonic is developing such a product based on a novel patented fully cross-linked thermoset polymer system. Below you can film stretch comparison, showing how the new thermoset substrate survives 100% stretch cycle without deformation, unlike even TPU. In the next slide, it can be seen how this substrate survives a solder float operation (1m@260C) whilst PET and TPU are fully damaged. This clearly demonstrates more compatible with standard SMT processes. Next you can see the thermal stability of the film- it maintains its elongation and tensile properties even after 1000 thermal cycles (-55 C to 125C). To demonstrate some applications, they sintered Cu inks at 230C to form highly conducting copper inks. They also demonstrated a stretchable LED foil together with stretchable Ag inks. It is of course relatively early stage. Cost and volume questions will need to be addressed, paste makers may need to adjust paste formulations for good printing on this substrate, printers will need to learn how to process on this substrate. Nonetheless, this substrate is promising because it can enable more conductive pastes and SMT processes. It is not a solution looking for a problem, and clearly address a market need

Coatema Coating Machinery GmbH has demonstrated exciting developments, showing a pathway ultimately towards autonomous self-optimising coating and printing machines within the next decade or so. As can be seen below, Coatema develops multi-station printing and coating systems, inline integrating R2R slot die coating, inkjet printing, drying, laser processing, intense light sintering, winding/unwinding, etc. The example below is a machine installed at the OET - Organic Electronic Technologies P.C. in Greece. Of course, printing and coating are complex technologies with a large multi-parameter pace. Just some of the parameters are shown below. Therefore, product development and transition from lab-to- fab can be time consuming and challenging since finding as well as maintaining optimal printing, coating, drying, and sintering conditions across such as complex multi-step system can be a significant challenge, particularly for printing multi-layer devices or structures and for lab-to-fab transition. Coatema now integrates multiple measurement points inline within its machinery (see below). The result is millions of data points per minute as output, giving insights at every stage of the process. To make sense of all these data points, Coatema, together with partners Panda, is developing AI algorithms, which, for example, enable automatic identification of the location of the anomalies on the coated or printed surfaces. This automatic AI-based anomaly detection can be done in the time series as well, allowing one to identify the location as well as the time stamp of the anomalous coating or printing step. To identify such anomalies, as seen below, the algorithm is constantly analysing the data coming out of the multi-station fully-integrated printing and coating machines. These developments by Coatema demonstrate the future evolution of printing and coating machinery. This level of insight will enable accelerated product development , optimization and lab-to-fab transition, as well as excellent uniform quality maintenance over large production print runs. From the long-term perspective, it begins to lay the groundwork for autonomous self-optimising printing machines which find and maintain optimal print conditions with little human intervention.

Andy Behr, Technology Manager, Panasonic Electronic Materials andy.behr@us.panasonic.com North America website: https://na.industrial.panasonic.com/products/electronic-materials Visit our virtual booth The simple and direct answer is - because this is how we have always made them. And, for the last 80 years or so, this planar approach has served humanity pretty well. IC chips are flat and rectangular. Circuit boards are flat and rectangular. Displays are flat and rectangular. And we make these things by the millions! However, it’s challenging for designers to create alternative form-factor devices when all the primary functional components available are hard, flat, and rectangular. But, as Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a-changing. Creative companies have realized that there’s an enormous and emerging demand for new form factors across a wide variety of industry verticals. Advances in printed electronics, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, roll-to-roll processing and soft electronics are enabling new devices in sectors as diverse as medical/wellness/healthcare, automotive, aerospace, robotics, extended reality, sports, fashion and more. But there are significant challenges to be addressed. For example, conventional circuit board fabrication and assembly have had decades to optimize the entire manufacturing process and supply chain based on panel formats to create reliable circuit assemblies in a stream-lined and cost-effective manner. The materials used in these processes generally require a high degree of chemical and temperature resistance to survive manufacturing processes like copper etching, multilayer lamination and reflow soldering. It’s clear that, if new form-factor circuits will be manufactured using all or part of the established printed circuit board fabrication and assembly infrastructure, new classes of materials will be required. One way that Panasonic is contributing to this new form-factor evolution is through innovative materials development. Researchers at Panasonic Industrial division headquarters in Osaka, Japan have invented a truly novel polymer technology designed to drive the development of softer, more pliable, and even stretchable electronic circuits. Early work in this field had borrowed commercially available soft and stretchable polymers intended for other applications, primarily thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and silicone. While both materials are soft and stretchable, each has significant challenges for use in pliable circuit assemblies. For example, TPUs have generally very low-temperature online streamlined resistance (130°C or less) and suffer from hysteresis (the permanent deformation after strain, such as stretching.) Silicones generally don’t play nice with other electronic materials and addressing compatibility issues can be a headache for designers and fabricators. The proprietary polymer system from Panasonic Electronic Materials features some very attractive characteristics. It has very high-temperature resistance, with a thermal degradation temperature above 300°C. It has a high surface energy and is high-temperature compatible with a wide variety of inks, pastes, films, coatings, and adhesives. It is very soft (a modulus of less than 5 MPa), which makes it attractive for on-body applications or where conformity to complex geometries is required. It’s stretchable up to 200%, has ultra-low hysteresis, less than 0.1%, and can be stretched for thousands of cycles. Panasonic’s first-generation product based on this unique chemistry, branded BEYOLEX, is a transparent film designed for printed electronics applications. It is 100 microns of BEYOLEX film delivered on a PEN carrier with a PET top sheet. The high-temperature PEN functions as a mechanical stabilizer during processing and the PET protects the film during transportation. Packages containing five sheets of BEYOLEX part number MUAS13111AA can be purchased on-line from Digi-Key. More film products and delivery formats based on this polymer system are being developed by the Panasonic research team. At the same time, we continue working with customers and partners around the world on new products unconstrained by the flat and rectangular electronics paradigm. Panasonic Electronic Materials is committed to enabling the next generation of electronic devices that fit our world.

Process for High Energy Li-ion Batteries Speaker: Nicolo Brambilla | Company: Nanoramic Laboratories | Date: 9-10 Feb 2022 | Full Presentation Nanoramic’s Neocarbonix™ at the Core technology enables Tier-I battery companies and automotive OEMs to achieve next-gen battery performance using existing equipment and manufacturing processes. Neocarbonix™ at the Core uses PVDF-free cathode electrodes manufactured with an NMP-free coating process, resulting in environmentally friendly, lower-cost, high-power and energy-dense batteries that are compatible with any cathode chemistry. Neocarbonix™ at the Core is also an enabler of Si-dominant anodes, using a water-based coating process and inexpensive forms of Si. Join TechBlick on an annual pass to join all live online conference or online version of onsite conference access library of on-demand talks (600 talks + PDFs) portfolio of expert led masterclass year-round platform https://www.techblick.com/ Our next battery-related event will take place on 15-16 FEB 2023, covering 1) Solid-State Batteries: Innovations, Promising Start-Ups, & Future Roadmap 2) Battery Materials: Next-Generation & Beyond Lithium Ion The speakers include: General Motors, Graphenix Development, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fraunhofer IKTS, RWTH Aachen University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Meta Materials Inc, Skeleton Technologies, Solid State Battery Inc, Argonne National Laboratories, OneD Battery Sciences, VTT, Leyden Jar Technologies B.V., b-Science, Rho Motion, Wevo-Chemie, LiNA Energy, CNM Technologies, Ionblox, Empa, Zinc8 Energy Solutions, Avicenne Energy, Echiontech, South8 Technologies, Basquevolt, NanoXplore, Chasm, Li Metal, Sila Nanotechnologies, Quantumscape (tentative), Fraunhofer ISI, etc https://www.techblick.com/