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Encres DUBUIT (ALDUB – EuroNext Paris) announced on January 3, 2022, that it has successfully completed the acquisition of POLY-INK, a world leader in conductive and transparent inks mainly based on nanomaterials and/or conductive polymers. This acquisition positions Encres DUBUIT as a key partner for major Printed Electronics applications by combining nanomaterials technology expertise together with application engineering capabilities, said Chrystelle Ferrari, CEO. Encres DUBUIT advances its strategy to expand worldwide by further enhancing its existing strong portfolio with sustainable and focused touch panel capabilities. With the addition of POLY-INK, Encres DUBUIT is now well-positioned to leverage its expanded customer base to create innovative biosourced solutions and substitute Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) in Sensors / Touch Screen / Flexible Screen / OLEDs / Photovoltaic Cells, said Pierre Blaix, Global Strategy Director. About Encres DUBUIT Since 1970, Encres DUBUIT’s expertise is high-technology inks and coatings dedicated to the industrial printing market, ranging from industrial marking and the use of functional inks. Encres DUBUIT serves the needs of global printers worldwide in sectors as varied as packaging, automotive, security, electronics. About POLY-INK POLY-INK, a French-based company is specialized in conductive inks. POLY-INK develops and commercializes highly-stable transparent and conductive through an innovative biosourcing process as a substitute to ITO (Indium-Tin Oxide). For more information, visit:

The PCBs are automatically placed on your fabric by the high-accuracy robotic feeder. The boards are stacked and stored in a magazine which can be automatically integrated into your E-Textile by a ZSK embroidery machine. The circuit boards are then fixed to the fabric by thread and needle. After the fixation of the PCB, the electrical connection can be embroidered by a conductive thread automatically. This way electrical connections between different PCBs can be embroidered in a fully automatic and highly scalable fashion. The embroidery machine can complete electrical circuitries including PCBs, sensors, actors, and tracks. Your E-Textiles can be completed automatically! By using the PCB Placement Devices with a multi-head embroidery machine, upscaling and mass-production of E-Textiles is easy. The PCB- Placement Device has been developed in cooperation with Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany. The PCBs can be individually designed and produced by BOSCH to suit your custom project needs. For further information please contact Ms. Melanie Hoerr, ZSK Technical Embroidery Systems, Manager of Technical Embroidery Applications, Smart & E-Textiles Email: melanie.hoerr@zsk.de

UBC researchers have created what could be the first battery that is both flexible and washable. It works even when twisted or stretched to twice its normal length, or after being tossed in the laundry. The battery is described in a new paper published recently in Advanced Energy Materials “Wearable electronics are a big market and stretchable batteries are essential to their development,” says Dr. Ngoc Tan Nguyen (he/him), a postdoctoral fellow at UBC’s faculty of applied science. “However, up until now, stretchable batteries have not been washable. This is a critical addition if they are to withstand the demands of everyday use.” The battery developed by Dr. Nguyen and his colleagues offers a number of engineering advances. In normal batteries, the internal layers are hard materials encased in a rigid exterior. The UBC team made the key compounds—in this case, zinc and manganese dioxide—stretchable by grinding them into small pieces and then embedding them in rubbery plastic, or polymer. The battery comprises several ultra-thin layers of these polymers wrapped inside a casing of the same polymer. This construction creates an airtight, waterproof seal that ensures the integrity of the battery through repeated use. It was team member Bahar Iranpour (she/her), a Ph.D. student, who suggested throwing the battery in the wash to test its seal. So far, the battery has withstood 39 wash cycles and the team expects to further improve its durability as they continue to develop the technology. “We put our prototypes through an actual laundry cycle in both home and commercial-grade washing machines. They came out intact and functional and that’s how we know this battery is truly resilient,” says Iranpour. The choice of zinc and manganese dioxide chemistry also confers another important advantage. “We went with zinc-manganese because for devices worn next to the skin, it’s a safer chemistry than lithium-ion batteries, which can produce toxic compounds when they break,” says Nguyen. An affordable option Work is underway to increase the battery’s power output and cycle life, but already the innovation has attracted commercial interest. The researchers believe that when the new battery is ready for consumers, it could cost the same as an ordinary rechargeable battery. “The materials used are incredibly low-cost, so if this is made in large numbers, it will be cheap,” says electrical and computer engineering professor Dr. John Madden (he/him), director of UBC’s Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Lab who supervised the work. In addition to watches and patches for measuring vital signs, the battery might also be integrated with clothing that can actively change color or temperature. “Wearable devices need power. By creating a cell that is soft, stretchable, and washable, we are making wearable power comfortable and convenient.” For more information, visit: https://news.ubc.ca/2021/12/09/stretchy-washable-battery-brings-wearable-devices-closer-to-reality/

Some studies have shown that nicotine, an addictive substance in electronic cigarettes, increases the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disorders. But to get a full understanding of its potential health effects, a real-time nicotine monitoring device is needed. Such a device could also help vapers as well as non-vapers who encounter second-hand smoke measure their exposure. Now, researchers report in ACS Sensors that they have developed a battery-free, wearable device that could accomplish this task. E-cigarettes are designed to heat and aerosolize a mixture of nicotine, glycerine, propylene glycol, and flavoring additives, which the user then inhales. In the body, this mixture can affect multiple organs, including the respiratory system, where it alters airflow, increases oxidative stress, and impairs immunity. In addition, nicotine exposure can lead to lung cancer. But assessing that exposure under real-world conditions has been difficult. Current assays for measuring ambient nicotine levels are carried out in laboratory settings and require large sample volumes and days to weeks of sampling. Portable nicotine sensors are being developed as an alternative, but the two that have been reported are impractical because they rely either on the presence of sweat or sunlight to function. So Madhu Bhaskaran, Md. Ataur Rahman and Philipp Gutruf set out to design a lightweight, wearable sensor capable of detecting nicotine in real-time and sending the data wirelessly to electronic devices such as a smartphone. The team chose vanadium dioxide (VO2) on a polyimide substrate as the basis for their sensor. They showed that nicotine can bond covalently to a thin film of VO2, thereby altering the film’s conductivity to an extent that depends on nicotine concentration. The device detects the change in conductivity, amplifies the signal, and then transmits it wirelessly to a smartphone. When applied to the skin, the battery-free sensor can measure the wearer’s exposure to vaporized nicotine in the open air. The researchers say this approach expands the use of wearable electronics for real-time monitoring of hazardous substances in the environment. For more information, visit: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2021/december/wearable-sensor-measures-airborne-nicotine-exposure-from-e-cigarettes.html

Smart sensing technology to help farmers use fertilizer more effectively and reduce environmental damage has been created by Imperial bioengineers. The technology, which is described in Nature Food, could help growers work out the best time to use fertilizer on their crops and how much is needed, considering factors like the weather and soil condition. This would reduce the expensive and environmentally damaging effects of overfertilizing soil, which releases the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and can pollute soil and waterways. Overfertilisation has so far rendered 12 percent of once-arable land worldwide unusable and the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer has risen by 600 percent in the last 50 years. However, it is difficult for crop growers to precisely tailor their own fertilizer use: too much and they risk environmental damage and money wastage; too little and they risk poor crop yields. The researchers behind this new sensing technology say it could provide benefits for both the environment and growers. The sensor, named chemically functionalized paper-based electrical gas sensor (chemPEGS), measures levels of ammonium in soil – the compound that is converted to nitrites and nitrates by soil bacteria. Using a type of AI called machine learning, it combines this with weather data, time since fertilization, pH, and soil conductivity measurements. It uses these data to predict how much total nitrogen the soil has now and how much it will have up to 12 days in the future, to predict the optimum time for fertilization. The study identifies how this new low-cost solution could help growers yield maximum crops with minimal fertilisation, particularly for fertilizer-thirstyfertilization crops like wheat. The technology could simultaneously reduce growers’ expenses and environmental harm from nitrogen-based fertilizers – the most widely used fertilizer type. Lead researcher Dr. Max Grell, who co-developed the technology at Imperial College London’s Department of Bioengineering, said: “It’s difficult to overstate the problem of overfertilization both environmentally and economically. Yields and resulting income are down year by year, and growers don’t currently have the tools they need to combat this. “Our technology could help to tackle this problem by empowering growers to know how much ammonia and nitrate are currently in soil and to predict how much there will be in the future based on weather conditions. This could let them fine-tune fertilization to the specific needs of the soil and crops.” The researchers expect chemPEGS and associated AI technology, which are currently in the prototype stage, to be available for commercialization in three to five years with more testing and manufacturing standardization. For more information, visit: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232638/low-cost-intelligent-soil-sensors-could-help/

and Stable Organic Photovoltaics Speaker: Reed Eisenhart | Company: Phillips 66 | Date: 11-12 May 2021 | Full Presentation 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

Speaker: Vinicius Zanchin | Company: Ntrium | Date: 11-12 May 2021 | Full Presentation 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

This portable stress monitor, SKINTRONICS, is a comfortable, wearable device that utilizes fully stretchable, wireless skin-conformal bioelectronics, designed to provide precise readings of heart rate and sweat gland activity via galvanic skin response. Georgia Tech’s thin, conductive film and flexible layered electrodes with nanomembrane sensors create an impressive device that weighs less than 7 g, including its rechargeable battery. Other galvanic skin response wearable monitors may weigh (in volume) six times more than this technology or greater. Where other devices lack the ability to maintain adequate contact without pressure from a band or strap, this adaptable stress monitor can be applied directly to the skin and fits snugly to the natural curvature of the body at the wrist or shoulder. The bioelectric wearable device is designed for greater comfort—it is soft, thin, and less than 5 mm thick. The durability and performance of the portable stress monitor have been tested to confirm that it can endure the daily wear of its users. The quality of the data output of the high-sensitivity nanomembranes in this novel device was also tested and measured to be comparable, if not superior when concurrently compared to two commercially available devices. Georgia Tech’s portable stress monitor is designed to provide more accurate ongoing measurements and delivers an improved wearable design so that cardiac patients, infants in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), or even athletes may receive improved health monitoring with greater comfort. Benefits/Advantages All-in-one: The personal adhesive bandage-like single device platform offers wireless, multi-data sensing by simply mounting it on the skin. Disposable: This wearable device is fully disposable after use and the measured data can be simply sent to the cloud via a tablet or smartphone app. Compact: The unique, thin design of this bioelectric device is one-sixth the volume of current market offerings—weighing less than 7 g, including its rechargeable battery. Greater comfort: The pattern of the biosensor’s electrodes is constructed to allow more than 50% stretchability and 30% areal coverage to the skin without the need for a constricting band or strap. Durable: The device has been successfully tested for the flexibility and stability of its components with 1,000 cyclic stretching experiments to mimic daily use on the skin. Potential Commercial Applications Stress monitoring for cardiac patients Neo-natal monitoring in PICU Pediatric patient health monitoring Baseline metrics and ongoing monitoring of athletes Corporate and public employee wellness programs Background and More Information Stress monitors have evolved significantly from the originally wired electrodes—with limited placement near the palm/fingertips—to the wearable health monitors that multi-task as a pedometer, watch, and extension of the user’s cell phone. Though miniaturization of bioelectronics has improved the technology, the current market of monitors has been unable to break away from the combined plastic and metal frames that require a tight fit with a strap or band to conform to the body’s natural curvature at the wrist or ankle. Research shows that Georgia Tech’s wearable stress monitor brings greater comfort and flexibility without a constricting strap or band while providing accurate data about skin conductance changes, which is a quantifiable measurement of stress. For more information, visit: https://licensing.research.gatech.edu/technology/skin-conformal-wearable-stress-monitor-delivers-greater-precision-and-continuous-wireless

Silicon dominates the solar power landscape, but it isn’t the best material for making thin, lightweight solar cells needed for satellites and drones. Atomically thin semiconducting materials such as tungsten diselenide and molybdenum disulfide, which are already being considered for next-generation electronics, hold promise for low-cost ultrathin solar cells that can also be flexible. And now, engineers have made tungsten diselenide solar cells that boast a power-per-weight ratio on par with established thin-film solar cell technologies. The flexible solar cells reported in the journal Nature Communications have a light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 5.1 percent, the highest reported for flexible cells of this kind. Their specific power, meanwhile, is 4.4 W/g, comparable with thin-film solar cells—such as those made of cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium selenide, amorphous silicon, and III-V semiconductors. With further engineering to reduce the substrate thickness and increase efficiency, the technology has the potential to get to 46 W/g, “way beyond what has been shown for other photovoltaic technologies,” says Koosha Nassiri Nazif, an electrical engineer at Stanford University who led the work with his colleague Alwin Daus. It’s a thousand times thinner than silicon but with the same amount of absorption as a standard silicon wafer. Silicon’s efficiency is hard to beat for the cost, and silicon solar panel costs have been dropping every year. But “silicon is pretty suboptimal for emerging applications,” Nassiri Nazif says. Such applications include wearable and conformable electronics, smart windows and other architectural uses, unmanned aerial vehicles, and electric vehicles. “Another important application is the Internet of Things,” he says, “where you can extend the battery life or completely remove the need for batteries to power small sensors and devices.” High specific power is critical for those uses, he says. Today’s thin-film technologies and newer perovskite solar cells all have higher specific power than silicon, with perovskites holding the record at 29 W/g. But tungsten diselenide and molybdenum disulfide, which belong to a class of materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD), have advantages over other materials. They are more lightweight than the thin-film CdTe or CIGS cells used in aerospace now. They’re also more stable than perovskites and organic photovoltaic materials—and are more environmentally friendly than lead-containing perovskites. Furthermore, TMD materials boast some of the highest light absorption capabilities of any photovoltaic material. “So you can have an ultrathin layer a thousand times thinner than silicon and still have the same amount of absorption with proper optical design,” Nassiri Nazif says. Yet, the best TMD solar cells so far have had efficiencies of less than 3%, and less than 0.7% when made on a lightweight, flexible substrate. The materials’ theoretical efficiency, however, is 27%. Daus says they are simply newer on the scene and need more heavy engineering to improve efficiency. All photovoltaic materials face charge-extraction challenges. That is, once the material absorbs a photon and produces electrons and holes, those charge carriers have to be quickly extracted before they can recombine. The trick is to find the right contact material to shuttle the charge carriers from the semiconductor to the electrodes. The researchers chose a transparent graphene sheet for that. Then they coated it with a molybdenum oxide layer, which is also transparent and enhances graphene’s ability to extract charge carriers, Daus explains. Another key advance that lets them make high-quality flexible solar cells is the transfer method they have developed, he adds. The first deposit tungsten diselenide flakes on a silicon substrate, deposit gold electrodes on it and then coat it with a thin flexible plastic substrate. Then they put the whole ensemble in a water bath to gently peel off the flexible structure from the silicon. Finally, they flip the structure over so the tungsten diselenide is on top and coat it with graphene and molybdenum oxide. The whole device, in the end, is only 350 nm thick. The solar cells are tiny at this point, Nassiri Nazif points out, about 100 x 100 µm. “To get to the point where it can be commercialized, we need at least 1 x 1 cm devices,” he says. “The good news is that large-area, high-quality TMD growth has already been shown.” But most efforts have focused on making monolayer TMD materials for electronics, says Daus, whereas for solar cells you need thicker 100–200 nm films. The Stanford team has already started making 2 x 2 cm films of TMDs, but so far the thicker films haven't reached the same high quality as the smaller flakes they used in the paper They hope that this work inspires more research in the area of TMD solar cells. “Our goal is to build a foundation for TMD photovoltaic applications,” Nassiri Nazif says. “These materials have a fundamental advantage over other technologies. If we solve the engineering issues, it could be the material of choice for next-generation photovoltaic technology.” For more information, visit: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ultrathin-solar-cells

In the ongoing race to develop ever-better materials and configurations for solar cells, there are many variables that can be adjusted to try to improve performance, including material type, thickness, and geometric arrangement. Developing new solar cells has generally been a tedious process of making small changes to one of these parameters at a time. While computational simulators have made it possible to evaluate such changes without having to actually build each new variation for testing, the process remains slow. Now, researchers at MIT and Google Brain have developed a system that makes it possible not just to evaluate one proposed design at a time, but to provide information about which changes will provide the desired improvements. This could greatly increase the rate for the discovery of new, improved configurations. The new system, called a differentiable solar cell simulator, is described in a paper published today in the journal Computer Physics Communications, written by MIT junior Sean Mann, research scientist Giuseppe Romano of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, and four others at MIT and at Google Brain. Traditional solar cell simulators, Romano explains, take the details of a solar cell configuration and produce as their output a predicted efficiency — that is, what percentage of the energy of incoming sunlight actually gets converted to an electric current. But this new simulator both predicts the efficiency and shows how much that output is affected by any one of the input parameters. “It tells you directly what happens to the efficiency if we make this layer a little bit thicker, or what happens to the efficiency if we for example change the property of the material,” he says. In short, he says, “we didn’t discover a new device, but we developed a tool that will enable others to discover more quickly other higher performance devices.” Using this system, “we are decreasing the number of times that we need to run a simulator to give quicker access to a wider space of optimized structures.” In addition, he says, “our tool can identify a unique set of material parameters that have been hidden so far because it’s very complex to run those simulations.” While traditional approaches use essentially a random search of possible variations, Mann says, with his tool “we can follow a trajectory of change because the simulator tells you what direction you want to be changing your device. That makes the process much faster because instead of exploring the entire space of opportunities, you can just follow a single path” that leads directly to improved performance. Since advanced solar cells often are composed of multiple layers interlaced with conductive materials to carry electric charge from one to the other, this computational tool reveals how changing the relative thicknesses of these different layers will affect the device’s output. “This is very important because the thickness is critical. There is a strong interplay between light propagation and the thickness of each layer and the absorption of each layer,” Mann explains. Other variables that can be evaluated include the amount of doping (the introduction of atoms of another element) that each layer receives, or the dielectric constant of insulating layers, or the bandgap, a measure of the energy levels of photons of light that can be captured by different materials used in the layers. This simulator is now available as an open-source tool that can be used immediately to help guide research in this field, Romano says. “It is ready, and can be taken up by industry experts.” To make use of it, researchers would couple this device’s computations with an optimization algorithm, or even a machine learning system, to rapidly assess a wide variety of possible changes and home in quickly on the most promising alternatives. At this point, the simulator is based on just a one-dimensional version of the solar cell, so the next step will be to expand its capabilities to include two- and three-dimensional configurations. But even this 1D version “can cover the majority of cells that are currently under production,” Romano says. Certain variations, such as so-called tandem cells using different materials, cannot yet be simulated directly by this tool, but “there are ways to approximate a tandem solar cell by simulating each of the individual cells,” Mann says. The simulator is “end-to-end,” Romano says, meaning it computes the sensitivity of the efficiency, also taking into account light absorption. He adds: “An appealing future direction is composing our simulator with advanced existing differentiable light-propagation simulators, to achieve enhanced accuracy.” Moving forward, Romano says, because this is an open-source code, “that means that once it’s up there, the community can contribute to it. And that’s why we are really excited.” Although this research group is “just a handful of people,” he says, now anyone working in the field can make their own enhancements and improvements to the code and introduce new capabilities. “Differentiable physics is going to provide new capabilities for the simulations of engineered systems,” says Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not associated with this work. “The differentiable solar cell simulator is an incredible example of differentiable physics, that can now provide new capabilities to optimize solar cell device performance,” he says, calling the study “an exciting step forward.” For more information, visit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010465521003441?via%3Dihub#preview-section-recommended-articles https://scitechdaily.com/mit-and-google-brain-create-tool-to-speed-development-of-new-solar-cells/

Speaker: Rahul Raut | Company: Alpha Assembly | Date: 11-12 May 2021 | Full Presentation 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

An international research group led by Jaana Vapaavuori of Aalto University in Finland has produced an extensive review of the opportunities of plant biomass, or lignocellulose, for optical applications, replacing less environmentally friendly but commonly used materials such as sand and plastics. As reported in Advanced Materials [Kaschuk et al. Adv. Mater. (2021) DOI: 10.1002/adma.202104473], the group showed how to produce solar cells and glass from biowaste as a viable substitute for unrenewable resources. The team summarized what is needed for producing and applying plant-based optically functional materials in new smart material applications. As Vapaavuori said, “We wanted to map out as comprehensively as possible how lignocellulose could replace the unrenewable resources found in widely used technology, like smart devices or solar cells”. Lignocellulose, which is composed of carbohydrate polymers such as cellulose and hemicellulose, and the aromatic polymer lignin, is present in nearly every plant. When such biomass is broken down into extremely small parts and then put back together, it can be used to develop totally new biocomposite materials such as particle panels and wood/plastic composites for construction. However, its characteristics such as transparency, reflectiveness, UV-light filtering, and structural colors mean the material can also be used in optical applications, as investigated in this study. The use of combinations of its properties could lead to the development of light-reactive surfaces for windows or materials that react to chemicals or steam, and perhaps even UV protectors that can soak up radiation, thus providing a sunblock to surfaces. This is helped by an ability to add functionalities and customize lignocellulose, such as replacing glass in solar cells to improve their efficiency and light absorption. The strategies for isolating the key building blocks of the material are examined in the review, along with the effects of fibrillation, fibril alignment, densification, self-assembly, surface-patterning, and compositing in terms of their role in engineering optical performance. Also highlighted is the extent of unused lignocellulose produced by industry and agriculture every year, estimated to be over a billion tons of biomass waste. The review pinpoints that to scale up such lignocellulose for commercial use would need new uses for bio-based waste from both research and government regulation to help push demand for renewable alternatives for optical applications. Although such scaling up has been seen as overly expensive, it is becoming more realistic with reductions in energy consumption and cost of production. However, another challenge, that of water use in its processing, remains problematic. For more information, visit: https://www.materialstoday.com/optical-materials/news/how-biowaste-can-be-used-in-optical-applications/