TNO at Holst Centre has developed an ultrathin conformable smart sensor mat that can detect a person's breathing rate, heart rate, and posture. The multi-modal sensing mat consists of a combination of printed piezo-resistive and piezo-electric sensors. In one implementation, the mat can be placed under a bedsheet, enabling long-term monitoring of patients in a hospital bed or babies sleeping at home. The mat can also be integrated into the seat and back of an office chair, increasing and extending the vitality of our workforce. When used in a car seat, the mat can monitor posture and driver alertness. Unobtrusive monitoring Approximately 26% of people between the ages of 30 and 70 suffer from sleep apnoea worldwide. People with sleep apnoea are four times more likely to have a stroke and many die each year from cardiovascular diseases caused by this condition. As the healthcare costs involved are increasing rapidly across the globe, the demand for a cure is on the rise. People suffering from sleep apnoea are often monitored in so-called sleeping centers, having to sleep there several nights under less-than-ideal circumstances. Peter Zalar, Program Manager Large-Area Sensors at TNO at Holst Centre, explains: "The posture, breathing rate, and heart rate of a person laying on a bed can be ascertained using a large-area matrix of piezo-electric and piezo-resistive force sensors. Because these sensors are printed on a thin elastomer, they are very sensitive, quickly picking up a signal again even if the patient has moved. This maximizes data quality, enabling patient monitoring to be performed completely remotely and reliably. Since the sensors are unobtrusive and do not cause discomfort, the patient does not notice the device – allowing for the accumulation of vast amounts of unbiased data. Furthermore, by combining multiple data sources, the state of the patient's health can be determined with greater certainty." A variety of applications in healthcare and wellness The smart sensor mat enables long-term monitoring, as it is a non-intrusive device. The mat simply disappears into the object in which it is integrated. There are many possible applications to use the sensor mat, for example in a baby bed to monitor an infant's activity and breathing rate. Peter Zalar: "Another field of application is in cars. When used in a car seat, the mat can monitor sitting posture and heart rate and give an indication of the driver's alertness level. Even with the advent of autonomous driving technologies, the driver formally still needs to pay attention, but the chance of being distracted or dosing off increases due to driver inactivity. The mat could prevent people from falling asleep behind the steering wheel, which could help save lives." Peter continues: "When integrated into an office chair the mat can signal when it is necessary to change position or even to get up and get some exercise. This helps increase and extend the vitality of our workforce. Additionally, it could help designers of office furniture to create more ergonomic chairs by identifying areas of a chair which can cause discomfort or harm to a person." Technology deep-dive Existing solutions for large-area pressure sensors are rigid and often based on capacitive sensors that are difficult to implement in practice. The sensor mat is entirely developed in-house, using a unique set of materials and design features. Peter explains: "At TNO at Holst Centre we have optimized the technology of large-area, multilayer screen printing and lamination, which means that a sensor array can be printed on substrates as large as 90x200 cm. We have also introduced the use of elastomeric substrates and laminates for piezo-electric sensors, increasing their sensitivity. Furthermore, in order to improve the sensitivity to compression, which is used to detect heartbeats, the piezo-electric sensor geometry has been optimized. To validate our approach, we have developed basic software and algorithms, as well as a new fast readout system to keep up with the volume of data produced by all the sensors. We have three submitted patents around these innovations." Cost-effective The number and ratio of piezo-electric and piezo-resistive sensors within the matrix structure can be adjusted. This makes the mat highly cost-effective in the long term, as more or fewer of either sensor type can be used on a larger or smaller surface. The algorithms can also be adjusted, so both the hardware and the software can be tailored to the application. Peter adds: "TNO at Holst Centre is currently working on adding new sensor modalities, such as (printed) temperature sensors, to broaden the application possibilities and prediction qualities of algorithms that take advantage of this data." For more information: https://www.holstcentre.com/news---press/2021/tno-at-holst-centre-develops-smart-sensor-mat/

NovaCentrix today announced that it received a 2021 Mexico Technology Award in the category of Soldering – Other for its PulseForge® Soldering In-Line. The award was announced at a ceremony that took place Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, during SMTA International in Minneapolis, MN. “We are delighted to be recognized for this prestigious award,” said Stan Farnsworth, NovaCentrix’ Chief Marketing Officer. “The capabilities of the newest PulseForge toolset open the doors to new product innovation and substantial reduction in energy utilization in manufacturing”. NovaCentrix’s new PulseForge Soldering In-Line, with NovaCentrix proprietary high-intensity thermal technology, reflows a wide range of traditional solders, such as SAC305, in seconds or less. Such fast processing allows , commercial packages, including transistors, LEDs, and resistors in traditional sizes, to be soldered to heat-sensitive substrates like plastic, films, textiles, and paper, without damaging the substrate. Additionally, temperature-sensitive components such as sensors, batteries, and cameras can be directly soldered without damage. Furthermore, because of the ultra-rapid processing speed, substantial energy savings have been demonstrated versus traditional thermal processing methods. The PulseForge tools offer meaningful decarbonization of the EMS/SMT supply chain. PulseForge® Soldering In-Line is SMEMA 9851 compliant with high throughput, and available with input and output buffers. Move past conventional, slow, inflexible soldering solutions and take back control of materials and design in electronics manufacturing – without damaging temperature-sensitive substrates and components. NovaCentrix’s high-speed, high-intensity thermal technology makes substrate and component damage during soldering a concern of the past. Product innovators and manufacturers can now utilize flexible, low-cost substrates, and deliver functionality never before possible with conventional oven and laser processing. The Mexico Technology Awards acknowledge the latest innovations available in Mexico produced by OEM manufacturing equipment and materials suppliers during the last 12 months. For more information, visit www.mexicoems.com/mta-awards.

As the world leaders gathered in Glasgow to discuss climate policies, there was inevitably constant discussion on energy transition towards sustainable renewable sources. Solar cells are unquestionably part of the answer. As shown below, photovoltaic technology has come far in terms of reducing $/W and expanding global production capacity. In fact, solar cells are now financially viable without subsidy in many regions of the world. The installations are also rapidly growing every year as solar cells become a major part of the global energy mix. The solar technology of choice today is of course wafer based silicon. As shown below, this technology is long established as the winning technology, limiting the space for other solutions including thin film solar cells. Given this dominance, an important question is whether Si will forever retain its current pole position? or will other technology options rise to complement and/or displace silicon? In most technology fields many technology transitions take place. These transitions brew in the background for decades, often with dim prospects, but they eventually come of age to displace the old guard. There is no fundamental reason to assume solar technology will be any different, especially as silicon as is appears to have matured, reaching limits of its performance. On the hand, silicon has proven extremely resilient in the electronic field. It never ceases to surprise and progress. However, even in this field, many non-silicon semiconductors now occupy mighty roles in, for example, high frequency or high power electronics. Furthermore, despite the unimaginable cumulative human hours of development time and capital thus far dedicated to silicon electronics, it remains an open question whether silicon alone can sustain the future roadmap, leaving an open space for alternatives such as 2D materials. At TechBlick, we have organized a live (online) conference exploring the future of photovoltaic technologies. In this conference, we will examine all the key trends in the development of new photovoltaic technologies. Here we consider perovskite, organic, CIGS as well as hybrid/tandem solar cells. We examine emerging production methods, considering the latest development in printing as well as R2R solution- or evaporation-based processing. At this LIVE online conference, you will hear from the key players advancing these technologies including CubicPV, Armor, Heliatek, 3M, Epishine, Flisom AG, National Research Council Canda, VTT, Saule Technologies, Sunew, ITRI, Dracula Technologies, Brite Solar, Solaire, Lightricity, Brite Solar Evolar AB, Ubiquitous Energy, Lusoco, KIT, DuPont, Faunhofer IAP, Swansea University, QDSolar, Solaires, Brilliant Matters, etc. In this article, we provide you with detailed background information, outlining the status and trends of these solar technologies for outdoor and indoor applications. This will help set the importance of the themes of this conference in context. Here we discus organic PV, perovskite PV, and techniques such as R2R processing, inkjet printing, etc. Source: data from charts by Fraunhofer ISE, adapted by TechBlick. Left: annual global production. Left: share of thin film PV technologies. The rest of the market share goes to Si. Become an Annual Pass holder to watch this content on-demand Perovskites: the winning technology of the future? There has been talk of the third generation of photovoltaics for decades. Two main classes of solar cell technologies studied were organics and dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC), which later evolved in the fastest improving PV technology: perovskite photovoltaics. The chart below shows the improvement trajectory of several non-silicon photovoltaic technologies at the champion cell level. All the red lines refer to perovskite PVs, either as standalone or in tandem form. Since appearing on the block around 2014, they have shown an incredibly fast EQE improvement trend. Interesting, this trend still has some room to continue, especially for tandem versions (perovskite/CIGS or perovskite/Si). The steep curve shown below has made perovskites the darling of the industry as well as investors worldwide. For some years, it also stole the limelight from OPVs. At TechBlick's live(online) conference you will hear from many key players advancing the art and the technology of this field towards industrialization. You will hear from CubicPV, Saule Technologies, Solaire, VTT, Brite Solar, Evolar, and others. Join TechBlick as an Annual Pass holders until 19 November and benefit from a 100 discount (coupon: Save100Euros to be applied at check out). With this pass, you can hear from and meet all the key players covering an entire spectrum of advances from best-in-class efficiency and lifetime results, to progress towards R2R and inkjet printing of perovskites, to advances in stable perovskite ink formulation, to turnkey thin film solutions, and beyond. Source: TechBlick. Adapted from NREL data. Become an Annual Pass holder to watch this content on-demand Despite the fast cell-level improvements, technology barriers to full scale commercialization still remain. One challenge is that the transition away from small champion cells to larger cells and modules is accompanied by a steep loss in efficiency. This is shown below. This data is from 2020/2021 and there are constant improvements. Nonetheless, this area still needs to be addressed. At this conference, you will hear from the likes of CubicPV who are reporting record stability results and plan on investing more than $1Bn in scale-up. Another challenge has been the high rate of degradation of perovskite solar cells, limiting their useful lifetime. There is improvement though at both the cell and module levels, as shown below on the right. Here, you can see the degradation rate of PCE of cell- and module-level perovskite PVs compared to well established technologies such as crystalline Si, polycrystalline Si, CdTe, a-Si, and CIGS. Interestingly, the gap with acceptable commercial degradation level is generally shrinking, and there are also specific reports where this gap is fully bridged. At the conference leading researchers such as those from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology will passivation technologies for perovskite tandem cells. Another challenge is of course with the presence of lead in best performing perovskite PVs. This is important issue but due to lack of space in the article, we will not address it further. Become an Annual Pass holder to watch this content on-demand Manufacturing perovskites, be they single or tandem cells, is an important question. Physical vapour deposition currently gives the best results. Most firms pursuing tandem cells use this technique as it yields more stable cells thank to better control of the thin film properties. In perovskite-only cells, thin film deposition techniques may prove cost competitive against wafer-based silicon. This did not turn out to be the case with amorphous silicon. However, perovskites are far more efficient than a-Si and can thus halve the $/W cost even with the same equipment costs and production parameters. In tandem perovskite cells, thin film processes offer an immediate approach for compatibility with existing silicon lines, enabling one to leverage perovskite solar cells to increase the efficiency of the well-established silicon cells. Without this booster technology, silicon may have reached the limits of its performance, exposing it to risk of technological disruption. Therefore, perovskite thin film cells can be the saviour of silicon photovoltaics if proven stable and non-toxic enough. To achieve scales beyond what wafer technology can reach, many are developing printing R2R-based approaches, borrowing from the learnings of the OPV development. Here, some are targeting 1.5m webs running at an incredible (for this sector) 30m/min web speeds for unwind-to-wind fully-R2R perovskite PVs. The cleaner interlayer interfaces, compared to the interweaving donor-acceptor morphology of OPVs, might make it simpler than OPVs provided good perovskite inks are developed. At the conference you will hear from leading researchers working on solution processing as well as R2R coating of perovskite photovoltaics as VTT and Swansea Universities. These will be overview talks, outlining the state-of-the-art and offering unbaised benchmarking. At the same time, you will hear from companies trying to commercially R2R produce perovskite PVs or start-ups developing novel perovskite inks such as Solaire Enterprises. We also highlight R2R production of tandem quantum dot-perovskite solar cells by the likes of QDSolar, a novel early-stage approach that might combine the best of both emerging technologies. Finally, perovskite solar cells can also be inkjet printed. This has the advantage of freedom of design as well as the ability to integrate materials. You will hear from Saule Technologies, scaling up inkjet printed solar cells (42k sqm per year) with a strong application pipeline, and from Brite Solar scaling up inkjet printed photovoltaics to larger area solar cells. Left: EMC’s high speed R2R solar pilot line with flexographic printed metal mesh transparent conductive layer on 100um Corning glass. Right: Inkjet printed perovskite PVs by Saule Technology on glass and some indoor application examples. Become an Annual Pass holder to watch this content on-demand. Organic photovoltaics: Renaissance? As shown in the efficiency vs year chart, organic photovoltaics have had a development history of 20 years already. The technology had a setback after the bankruptcy of Konarka, stalling commercial and technological development. This is reflected in the slow incremental growth of OPV efficiency between 2011 and 2018. However there have been jumps in efficiency since then with OPV cells exceeding 18% certified efficiency. The material developments, and the mastery of the art of nanoscale donor-acceptor morphology control, will further sustain this development trend. In particular, in recent years, the transition to non-fullerene acceptors has rejuvenated the development trend, leading to ever higher efficiency level. All manners of material developments now continue apace, shaping the future of OPV technology. At the TechBlick live(online) conference on 1-2 December you will hear from the likes of Brilliant Matters, Phillips 66, Solaire, and others discussing development of organic and perovskite materials. Source TechBlick. Adapted from Swansea University data. Become an Annual Pass holder to watch this content on-demand In parallel, and equally important, there is now significant accumulated production level technical learnings in the industry. At first, Konarka raised enormous sums of money but the bubble of hype around OPV technology burst with its bankruptcy. Konarka suffered from bad timing at that time. China massively expanded Si cell production capacity through financing and other state-support backings, changing the competitive landscape with the plummeting $/W prices. However, Konarka also made technology errors. It wanted to scale up too soon and tried to scale up using an existing non-custom ex Polaroid 1.5m-wide web machine which could not be optimized to boost the efficiency of the OPV cells. As such, despite the investment, it never managed to approach the 5% efficiency level and never ran the machine close to its intended web speed levels. The industry has learnt these lessons. In fact, despite this set back, the industry continued its developments. There was some degree of technology consolidation through mergers and acquisitions, and more importantly excellent built up of technical expertise. As shown below as an example, companies can now process on wider webs with good uniformity. This specific example is from Sunew in Brazil. They print on 0.5m webs with lengths upto 1.5Km. They have five print stations and 32 printing lines (with double sided it becomes 64). As shown below, they can maintain a thickness uniformity across the web of <2%. Furthermore, they achieve a relatively constant EQE as the web is scaled. This is no easy feat to achieve. Furthermore, they reduced the number of dummy runs to reach consistency between runs to <<3. You can also see various installation examples, showing that this technology is still not ready for utility-level energy production, but is finding niche unique uses elsewhere. Sunew is not alone in scaling up R2R production of organic OPVs. Armor (ASCA) is also scaling up solution processed bulk heterojunction OPVs. Heliatek is mastering the complex art of R2R evaporation of tandem OPVs. At TechBlick's LIVE (online) conference on 1-2 December you can hear from all the key players in this field including Sunew, Armor, and Heliatek live. You can also meet the speakers from these firms in the interactive 'in person virtual' rooms to mingle and discuss further. You will also hear from equipment manufacturers such as Coatema whose expertise and custom coating machines play a pivotal role in the development of this industry. Data from Sunew. Adapted by TechBlick. Become an Annual Pass holder to watch this content on-demand Not everyone is also focused on outdoor or BIPV applications. This makes sense as OPV efficiency and costs are not yet close to being good enough for competing directly with Si or CdTe technologies. In contrast, a strong selling point and a differentiating factor for OPVs has always been their ability to outperform standard Si cells under low-light indoor conditions. In some cases, as NRCC will show at our conference, the efficiency indoors can approach 30%. This explains the strong focus on indoor energy harvesting applications of OPVs, especially seeking to offer a fully integrated module to replace coin cell batteries or extend their lifetime such that they become fit and forget solutions. At the TechBlick conference, Enerthing, for example, will discuss their approach to OPV-based energy harvesting modules. One barrier against the adoption of OPV energy harvesting is the high cost of energy production by OPVs. To overcome this, R2R techniques may become useful. Epishine, another speaker at TechBlick's live(online) conference, will discuss its fully R2R line- from production to conversion- for mass producing OPVs at high speeds and low costs. As you will learn, these companies are going further than ever before and almost all of them are directly benefiting from the technology developments of previous generation of players in the field. Some have taken over equipment at lower costs which was originally intended for other applications, whilst others have absorbed the intellectual property as well as technical know-how of previous players. Therefore, one can easily recognize a long running thread within, and a shared heritage across, all these developments. Customization of design or free-form design has been another differentiating feature of organic solar cells. Here, inkjet printing can become very design, enabling one to rapidly try out different designs as well as different active materials and green solvents. At the TechBlick conference on 1-2 Dec 2021, you will hear from Dracula Technologies, one of the pioneers in this field. Dracula has plans to push capacity to 5000k pcs by mid 2023, thus showing that inkjet printing can also be a good choice for industrialization of OPVs targeted at indoor applications. Finally, when it comes to photovoltaics (organics, CIGS, QDs), passivation is a key component. Often higher permeability levels are required (>10E-4g/day/sqm), mandating multi-layer structures consisting of pairs of organic-inorganic layers. This, and currently low production volumes, add to costs of barrier films. These films in turn are a major cost component, driving up the price of OPVs and other solar cells. It is a classic chicken-and-egg problem for this industry. Despite this, good technical solutions are now available, and maturing. The prices have also been falling fast, even if not fast enough. In addition to barrier properties, additional features like UV protections are also introduced. At this conference, you can hear the latest from two leading players, 3M and ITRI. The former is a major player in the field and the latter has a very novel unique solution. Join TechBlick as an Annual Pass holders until 19 November and benefit from a 100 discount (coupon: Save100Euros to be applied at check out). With this pass, you can hear from and meet all the key players working in OPV developments such as Sunew, Armor, Heliatek, Epishine, Dracula Technologies, Brilliant Matters, Phillips 66, Coatema, InfinityPV, and others. There is really no other forum where you can meet everyone. One final point is that printing or R2R processing are not unique to organics or perovskites. CIGS can also be R2R produced. Those with a history in the industry might remember some well-funded companies seeking to R2R print CIGS inks. At this conference we will hear from interesting approaches towards R2R processing of CIGS. FlisomAG with technology from Empa is very advanced in terms of R2R production with off-the-shelf ready-to-sell product portfolio of high-performance flexible CIGS. Source: Inkjet printed OPVs from Dracula. 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Researchers at BYU have created microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices using a new 3D printing technique that could help doctors find preterm birth defects and treat patients suffering from lung diseases, among other applications. Their research work has been published in Nature Communications paper "Spatially and optically tailored 3D printing for highly miniaturized and integrated microfluidics" where they detail a generalized 3D printing process that enables the fabrication of much higher resolution 3D components without increasing the resolution of the 3D printer. Microfluidic devices are tiny, coin-sized microchips that include a set of nearly microscopic channels, valves and pumps etched into the material of the chip. They’re designed to sort out and analyze disease biomarkers, cells, and other small structures from samples of liquids, like blood, through their channels. “We have taken the conventional 3D printing approach and generalized it to something that is broader in scope and has significantly more capability,” said BYU engineering professor Greg Nordin. Currently, the process to create these devices is time-consuming and expensive. Due to the precision needed, new prototypes are typically created and tested in a cleanroom—a designated lab environment free from dust and other contaminants. This process makes it difficult to manufacture and distribute the lab-on-a-chip technology on a large scale and puts major limitations on the size and type of devices that can be made. To overcome these obstacles, Nordin and his team changed the traditional uniform method of 3D printing to one that altered the thickness, order, and a number of layers stacked. These small changes resulted in dramatic advantages that now allow for the chip to be manufactured at a fraction of the cost, and at a much smaller scale than before. “People have been working on lab-on-a-chip devices for 20+ years, but making prototypes in cleanrooms is an inhibitor to success,” Nordin said. “The road to market stops with clean rooms. With 3D printing, there is a road to market.” Nordin and his team are hoping that their new development will set in motion more microfluidic research and development because of the lower cost it now takes to create these devices. “Our new approach gets you over some of the big hurdles that block using this technology in real-world applications,” said Nordin. “We have yet to see that someone takes that and runs with it, but we certainly hope they will.” For more information: https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/byu-researchers-develop-innovative-medical-devices-from-new-3-d-printing-process https://news.byu.edu/lab-on-a-chip-devices-smaller-than-ever-thanks-to-new-3d-printing-techniques-from-byu/

USA has completed the commercial launch of its GEN3.0 CVD Graphene manufacturing line and a portfolio of application-specific CVD products. This 20m long state-of-the-art production facility, has the capability to produce single and multi-layer graphene in large sheets or long rolls, up to 400mm wide. Programmable in both scale and size, polycrystalline and large scale, preferred copper orientation graphene sheets can be manufactured on this production line. Using patented processes, General Graphene focuses on providing low-cost, large sheet, CVD graphene. The latest GEN 3.0 state-of-the-art production line delivers more than 100,000 m2/yr. sheet graphene; a 1000-fold increase in production compared with the previous GEN 2.0 machine, and with advanced levels of control and precision. GEN 3.0 technology is scalable and enables General Graphene to supply affordable, highly consistent CVD graphene in industrial volumes. This capability is a game-changer. Now the industry can accelerate the development of advanced products and devices with confidence in supply and consistency of performance. With a thickness of just 0.345nm, CVD graphene provides a flexible, biocompatible, transparent, and conductive ultra-thin film barrier, opening new design options for researchers and industrial engineers. General Graphene is currently partnering with industrial leaders in the electronics, sensors, life sciences, industrial metals, and packaging markets, to unlock the potential that these ultra-thin, 2-D carbon crystal sheets provide. These partnerships are critical and will drive this technology to higher levels of industrialization and cost reduction. Speaking from the headquarters in Knoxville TN, USA. CEO, Vig Sherrill commented “We always believed that the industrialization of CVD graphene technology was mostly an engineering problem. To increase volume and reduce cost, this had to be solved using a continuous roll-to-roll process, rather than a traditional batch process. For the past 6 years, we have focused exclusively on this challenge and are pleased to announce our latest GEN 3.0 production system has completed commissioning and is online. As our technology evolves and costs continue to fall, advanced, CVD graphene-enabled products are primed to emerge across many industries”. For more information: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:30e0096c-7694-40ca-a975-27f87d0a0519

Speaker: Aaike van Vugt | Company: VSParticle | 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

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) have used 3D printing to create a sustainable new class of supercapacitors. The fully-3D printed battery, composed of a flexible cellulose and glycerol substrate, patterned with conductive carbon and graphite-laden ink, is able to withstand thousands of charging cycles while maintaining its capacity. Thanks to its biodegradable base, the novel cell can also be composted once finished with, potentially making it an ideal tool for tackling the world’s electronic waste issues. According to the EMPA scientists, the recent boom in electronic wearables, packaging, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, has seen the global number of these devices rise to 27 billion. However, given their short life cycle, and the fact they tend to be powered by non-renewable lithium-ion or alkaline cells, many such products will eventually be landfilled, worsening the global ‘e-waste’ problem. The researchers’ findings are detailed in their paper titled "Fully 3D Printed and Disposable Paper Supercapacitors". In an effort to develop more eco-friendly energy storage devices, scientists have therefore begun to experiment with electrical double-layer capacitors, or ‘EDLCs.’ These high-capacity, fast-charging supercapacitors can at least partially be manufactured from biodegradable materials, potentially making them an ideal replacement for normal batteries, which often require specialized disposal services. Although a significant amount of research has gone into EDLC R&D, their varying parts such as electrodes and current collectors can be difficult to produce via a single manufacturing process. What’s more, many prototype EDLCs are partially-3D printed at most, necessitating their time-consuming and expensive assembly or post-processing, which makes them unattractive as commercial ventures. To streamline EDLC production and create an eco-friendly battery of their own, the EMPA team turned to DIW 3D printing, which they used to manufacture two half cells before folding them together. In practice, this meant printing the unit’s substrate base first, then depositing its electrode and conductive graphite-infused electrolyte layers on top, in a process that after some tweaking, yielded a functional battery. “It sounds quite simple, but it wasn’t at all,” said Xavier Aeby of EMPA’s Cellulose & Wood Materials lab. “It took an extended series of tests until all the parameters were right until all the components flowed reliably from the printer and the capacitor worked.” He added, “As researchers, we don’t want to just fiddle about, we also want to understand what’s happening inside our materials.” Once their supercapacitor prototype was ready, the scientists sought to test its charge retention by charging it to 0.5 V, before measuring its open surface voltage. According to the researchers, their device still had 30% of its charge remaining after 150 hours, putting its performance “in line with that of state-of-the-art carbon-based supercapacitors.” Interestingly, the researchers found that the capacity of their supercapacitor also fluctuated for two weeks after fabrication then settled, while it later remained functional after eight months in storage, and when they had finished their experiments and attempted to compost it, they were able to dissolve around 50% of its mass over the course of nine weeks. During testing, the team’s device was ultimately capable of powering a 3V alarm clock under mechanical stress, as well as operating at wildly varying temperatures. As a result, with further R&D, they say it could be deployed on a wider scale, to sustainably power low-voltage smart devices such as those used within environmental monitoring, e-textiles, or healthcare applications. For more information: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/scientists-3d-print-biodegradable-battery-with-the-potential-to-slash-electronic-waste-198196/

A research team led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), in collaboration with clinical partners from Singapore General Hospital, has developed a smart wearable sensor that can conduct a real-time, point-of-care assessment of chronic wounds wirelessly via an app. A world’s first, the novel sensor technology can detect temperature, pH, bacteria type, and inflammatory factors specific to chronic wounds within 15 minutes, hence enabling fast and accurate wound assessment. The research was published in the journal Science Advances "A flexible multiplexed immunosensor for point-of-care in situ wound monitoring". With a rapidly aging population, healthcare providers are seeing more patients suffering from non-healing wounds such as diabetic foot and chronic venous leg ulcers. It has been estimated that about two percent of the world’s population suffers from chronic wounds. The healing processes for these chronic wounds are often interrupted due to reasons such as infection and repeated trauma, leading to severe stress, pain, and discomfort to afflicted patients. For patients with diabetic foot ulcers, this can lead to more severe outcomes such as foot amputation. Timely care and proper treatment of chronic wounds are needed to speed up wound recovery. However, this requires multiple clinical visits for lengthy wound assessment and treatment, which adds to the healthcare cost. The NUS team’s innovation can help mitigate these consequences and relieve patients with chronic wounds from unnecessary distress. Current clinical assessments of wounds rely on visual inspection, or collecting and sending wound fluid to a centralized lab to detect and analysanalyzee specific biomarkers. The whole process usually takes about one to two days and may impede proper, timely, and precise medical interventions. Although there are recent developments in flexible sensors designed for wound care, they can only probe a limited set of markers such as acidity, temperature, oxygen, uric acid, and impedance to diagnose wound inflammation. In response to these current limitations, the researchers developed VeCare, a point-of-care wound assessment platform consisting of an innovative wound-sensing bandage, an electronic chip, and a mobile app. The bandage comprises a wound contact layer, a breathable outer barrier, a microfluidic wound fluid collector, and a flexible immunosensor. VeCare is the first wound assessment platform that can detect bacteria type and probe inflammatory factors, in addition to measuring acidity and temperature, within a single 15-minute test. The immunosensing bandage enables rapid assessment of wound microenvironment, inflammation, and infection state by detecting multiple chronic wound-specific biomarkers from wound fluid using an electrochemical system. The microfluidic wound fluid collector attached to the sensor directs and boosts wound fluid delivery to the sensor by up to 180 percent. The design ensures reliable sensing performance regardless of the ulcer shape or size. In addition, a chip integrated with flexible electronics is connected to the sensor to transmit data wirelessly to an app for convenient, real-time wound assessment and analysis onsite. The chip component, powered with a rechargeable battery, can be reused for subsequent applications. For more information: https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/smart-bandage-shows-promise-for-chronic-wound-monitoring.html

Curved and flexible displays have risen in popularity in recent years and will continue to do so with high demand coming from several sectors. This is most visible, of course, in smartphones and tablets, where there is a constant need for innovation in order to keep consumer interest. Further demand is also emerging at a rapid pace from the automotive and lighting sectors. Thus R&D into next-generation displays remains strong. All of these applications require dedicated features for the control of light-guiding and outcoupling due to the curved geometry. However, most microtextures for beam shaping are designed for flat devices, and their appropriateness for curved geometries needs to be evaluated. In this video tutorial, Dr. Urs Aeberhard demonstrates how to use the Optics module of Laoss to rapidly model a curved display backlight unit. Urs is using Fluxim’s 3D ray-tracing tool Laoss Optics to determine the impact of curved geometries on beam shaping. He is also demonstrating how to design suitable structures to control light outcoupling via microtextures in backlight units for LCD displays. More information: https://www.fluxim.com/news/22/10/curved-displays-mastering-light

A research team in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at the Toyohashi University of Technology has developed a MicroLED neural probe for neuroscience. This MicroLED tool can optogenetically control and observe neural activity in the brain. The work "Development of a neural probe integrated with high-efficiency MicroLEDs for in vivo application" was published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. An LED probe with 16 MicroLEDs was fabricated in one shank and it was reported to effectively activate neural activity in the depth direction in the cerebral cortex in vivo. This design allowed for the realization of complex neural activity manipulation; however, electrophysiological experiments require the use of neural recording electrodes to capture the manipulated neural activity. Because the LED probe and neural recording electrode probe are different, it is necessary to precisely control the position of each probe and insert both devices for observation. Thus, the development of an integrated MicroLED and neural recording electrode probe is essential. New optogenetic technology that enables the manipulation and recording of single neurons in the deep regions has been realized; however, there are a few reports of such integrated probes. Furthermore, among those that have been reported, they are not suitable for neuroscience research because the light output of MicroLEDs is as low as several μW because of their small size. Although an increase in the MicroLED size leads to an increase in light output, this size increase also lowers the spatial resolution and increases the amount of stimulation-induced heat, resulting in more heat damage. As such, it is necessary to optimize the trade-off between light output and device size; in addition, the installation of highly efficient LED devices that suppress Joule heat is required. In this study, a neural probe with six micro-light-emitting diodes (MicroLEDs) and 15 neural electrodes was fabricated for optogenetic application. Local field potentials, which provide information about the neural activity, were successfully recorded using the neural probe, indicating the effectiveness of the neural electrodes. The MicroLEDs on the probe exhibited highly consistent current-voltage characteristics and sufficient light output of 20 mW mm−2 at 1 mA to manipulate neural activity. The light distribution in brain tissue was simulated to estimate the optical stimulation area and a number of optically stimulated neurons. The increase in LED temperature, i.e. ΔT, was investigated because high temperatures can damage brain tissue. A curve illustrating the relationship between ΔT and the wall-plug efficiency was derived. The wall-plug efficiency was increased 1.8 times by installing an Ag mirror on the back of a MicroLED. These results suggest that the MicroLED neural probe would significantly contribute to the development of neuroscience research-purposed optogenetic technology. More information:https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-microled-neural-probe-neuroscienc

Speaker: Rudy Ghosh | Company: NovaCentrix | Date: 11-12 May 2021 | Full Presentation Bio As the Technical Program Lead at NovaCentrix, Rudy Ghosh helps translate technical innovations into customer ready products. He works closely with NovaCentrix’s customers, technology partners, and collaborators across the world to solve technical challenges and identify new avenues for the application of NovaCentrix’s industry leading technologies in PulseForge tools and Metalon inks for printed and flexible electronics. As a technical expert in the printed electronics industry, he is often an invited speaker for a variety of printed electronics conferences. Rudy also works with the global business team to define and engage in commercial opportunities related to the technical program and furthers those areas of opportunity through industry outreach and engagement. Before joining NovaCentrix, Rudy was a Post-Doc at the Microelectronics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where he led the Center’s research into the synthesis of 2D materials. Rudy holds a PhD in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a MS in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Rudy has authored over 30 publications in a variety of technical journals. 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

DuPont Microcircuit Materials introduced an advanced suite of silver-bearing thick film paste conductors to enable In-Mold Electronic devices. The new conductors ME102, ME604, and ME614 have key advancements to improve thermoformability, conductivity, and fine line performance. These offerings enable high productivity, improved mechanical and electrical properties allowing extended freedom in the electronic design of In-Mold Electronics devices. These devices include next-generation LiDAR systems for autonomous driving or touch steering wheels with transparent 3D-shaped surfaces for enhanced user experience. Key advancements of the new ME range include: ME102 as a highly conductive thick film conductive paste for antennae, heater, and RFID functions ME604 as a general-purpose thick film conductive paste with improved thermoformability and conductivity ME614 thick film conductive paste with added laser ablation property for very fine line applications “This innovative new offering demonstrates a range of superior technical properties to meet different customer requirements. We are excited to introduce the ME product range to the market globally and expect a positive impact in accelerating the wider adoption of the emerging In-Mold Electronics technology”, said Peter Weigand, global automotive segment manager, DuPont Microcircuit Materials. For more information, visit: https://www.dupont.com/news/dupont-microcircuit-materials-introduce-silver-pastes.html