Electronics manufacturing is not exempt from the societal drive to improve overall sustainability, including materials and energy utilization. Multi-zone solder reflow ovens are a major energy uses due to prolonged operation at elevated temperatures necessary for reflowing traditionally-used SAC305 solder, both functionally for effecting the solder melt, as well as operationally to avoid their extended warm-up and equilibration times. At the same time, this same thermal process used for reflowing solder is a barrier to broader utilization of flexible hybrid electronics. Market demand for lightweight, conformal electronics has surpassed current traditional equilibrium-based thermal processes such as reflow soldering. Low-temperature, lightweight substrate materials such as PET, and electronic components such as cameras, sensors, and bioprocessors can typically not withstand sustained exposure to soldering temperatures.

The presenter will offer next-generation thermal processing, which decarbonizes the supply chain by utilizing as little as 15% of the energy of standard processing. Sustainable manufacturing practices often come at the sacrifice of performance and/or cost, with what can be referred to as a Green Premium. Through also providing improved performance and throughput, this new soldering technology dispels a notion of a Green Premium. The new soldering capability enables next-generation applications in applications such as medical and lifestyle wearables, consumer electronics such as AR/VR goggles, and opens the door to broader innovation while still meeting ideals and practice of sustainable manufacturing.

A look into Semiconductor industry and the role of lithography in that.

Meta Materials Inc. is developing discrete platform specific proprietary technologies for large-surface-area lithography, allowing the manufacture of nanostructures to be carried out in a cost-effective manner. Each platform employs a massively parallel patterning scheme, designed to be scalable to large areas of either rigid substrate materials and rolls of flexible films. In certain cases we use a phase-shift mask approach called Rolling Mask Lithography and in others, cast NIL printing – all allowing the creation of resonate plasmonic structures with feature sizes down to 50 nm.

In addition, we are also using a first of its kind Plasma deposition technology, which enables high speed coating of any solid material on any type of substrate. We use this metallization step in our roll-to-roll production process for functional films, including security films, which will significantly accelerate line speed and increase capacity. Large scale and efficient metallization coating of ultra-thin substrate with zero defect, is a critical step for volume production of safe reliable lightweight battery materials like separators, requiring hundreds of millions of square meters per year. Additional applications being brought to market include 5G reflection, transparent microwave shielding and windscreen and sensor-window heater functional films, all of which will be reviewed.

Panasonic Industry Co Ltd., Electronic Materials Division, a leading company in the electronics field, has developed a new high-performance film designed as substrate for FHE/PE applications. Featuring unmatched heat resistance, these stretchable films are based on a proprietary, non-silicone polymer system, freeing designers, and manufacturers from the constraints of conventional thermoplastic films like TPU and PET.
(i) Applicable to high-temperature processes: With a temperature resistance of greater than 260℃, these films withstand elevated drying temperatures for inks, coatings, and sintered materials. Even works well with typical SAC reflow processes.
(ii) High printability: It has excellent adhesion performance with a wide range of conductive materials.
(iii) Excellent reliability: The product exhibits a good durability in evaluations such as high temp/humidity tests, temperature shock tests, and insulation reliability tests.
This presentation will provide details of the substrate technology, test results, and use-case demonstration parts manufactured with these materials.

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Energy storage based on forest residues in combination with R2R manufacturing opens up for a new range of possibilities for the IoT market. Each sensor and display in the world needs powering. This power must be green and cost efficient in order to get the intended impact from the technology. The sensor and display units, in mass-production, need to be sustainable themselves in order to enable benefits like energy efficient buildings and better consumer decision making.
We will present our way to solve this challenge and the foundation for the Ligna S-power product. We will also elaborate on how this fundamental technology can be applicable and scaled also for other storage purposes.

Energy storage based on forest residues in combination with R2R manufacturing opens up for a new range of possibilities for the IoT market. Each sensor and display in the world needs powering. This power must be green and cost efficient in order to get the intended impact from the technology. The sensor and display units, in mass-production, need to be sustainable themselves in order to enable benefits like energy efficient buildings and better consumer decision making.
We will present our way to solve this challenge and the foundation for the Ligna S-power product. We will also elaborate on how this fundamental technology can be applicable and scaled also for other storage purposes.

DesignLED combines the integration of electronics and micro-optics to create homogeneously and dynamically lit luminous surfaces. Innovations bring together printed electronics, surface optics and surface electrodes, with polymer encapsulation or in-mold structural electronics. designLED is a Faurecia Clarion Electronics company and part of the FORVIA group.

The presentation will discuss how OLED has mastered the extremely demanding requirements of automotive applications, what the present status of commercial products looks like and what OLEDWorks is working on for the future.

In Hybrid Electronics, the advantages of electronics based on discrete components are combined with those of printed electronics, in order to render new products at a price-point that would not be possible with either technology alone. Especially reel-to-reel produced Hybrid Electronics based IoT Tags promise to enable the Internet of Things vision due to their low price-point, combined with industrial reliability. The recent availability of single-chip Bluetooth Low Energy ICs in package-less form have brought about a vast amount of new possibilities, especially when combined with printed electronics based components, like printed batteries or OPV cells. In this talk, recent advances in this field are shown, based on real-life products, displaying the state-of-the-art concerning reel-to-reel produced hybrid electronics based NFC, UHF and Bluetooth Low Energy Tags

In this session we will look at the environmental impact of semiconductor manufacturing and how new manufacturing approaches can help in reducing its footprint. We will also explore the limitations of the present solutions and explain how novel flexible and hybrid electronics can lead to a reduction in carbon footprint by helping consumers, brands and retailers to reduce their waste and recycle the valuable materials that they use.

Brewer Science's vision is to design, build, and deploy connected gas and water sensors that monitor environmental contaminants on a large scale. For the last 10 years, Brewer Science has developed the technology to print cost-effective sensors that can measure contaminants in water, such as heavy metals (lead, cadmium), nitrate, and arsenic, as well as sensors that assess air quality by measuring gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen. Producing low-cost sensors with low-power electronics and wireless communication will enable the deployment of sensors over vast areas for real-time monitoring of environmental conditions.

INSIGHT Sense generates a 3D model utilizing new By-Measurement technologies to create a digital copy of the patient's socket that enables the analysis of objective data that shows the pressure map of the residual limb, both in static and dynamic acquisitions.

Many everyday products contain mass produced printed electronic components. Each mass-produced printed component is a replicate of the last, making their manufacture well suited for “analog” print manufacturing, such as flexography. The use of high-resolution printing enables smaller individual features and finer increments in size - enhancing the ability to print high-fidelity patterns with very complex shapes. These benefits, among others, enable improved form, fit, and function for the user of products manufactured using these techniques.
In this talk an overview of the benefits of high-resolution, additive manufacturing will set the stage for a more in-depth investigation of high-resolution flexography. The focus will then turn to addressing the challenges of making high-resolution patterns that are truly functional. A technical assessment of using print (or print-enabled) manufacturing to get sufficient material (z) height for function while maintaining the small x-y features will be presented. Examples will be shared from both lab-scale and production scale evaluations.

The use of traditional electronic manufacturing technologies has been long favored in the medical device industry. In light of rising costs due to trade wars as well as unpredictable supply chain issues, we decided to steer away from standard flex circuits and adopt a printed electronics approach to manufacture our disposable earpieces. These earpieces have to adhere to the skin and reliably deliver electrical stimulation pulses for a period of up to 24 hrs. to help people overcome opioid withdrawal symptoms. In order to minimize cost and increase the reliability of our disposable earpiece, we converted our original flex circuit design to a single-sided print and transferred all components to a specially designed double-sided spring-loaded terminal cable connector. We expect an FDA clearance for our printed electronics earpiece before the end of the year.

Asahi Kasei has been developing high-definition R2R printing technology using seamless roll mold (SRM). As a result, we have succeeded in seamlessly high-speed printing of continuous patterns at a resolution on the order of nm from several μm in R2R printing. On the day, we will explain a new business solution (Anti-counterfeit solution) that applies this R2R high-definition printing technology. Furthermore, as another application example, "UnPad", which is the product vision we have been advocating for a long time.
"A world where people can interact with data through a set of interconnected sensors, actuators, computing and storage devices"
As an example of embodying this, we will also introduce a touchless pointing device jointly developed with TNO Holst Center.

While the use of conductive inks is widely spread for electrodes manufacturing, in some cases it shows limitations regarding general performances and reliability. Thus, recent developments on technologies that are able of delivering reliable R2R thin film metal coating led to consider their use for printed electronics and more specifically for manufacturing various sensors electrodes.
The primary reason is the high demanding nature of a sensor that implies having good performances in terms of sensitivity, range of measurements, as well as stability over time. Pure silver offers highest electrical conductivity and, along with an extremely low roughness surface condition, this leads to a significant increase in both sensor dynamic range and yield compared to traditional conductive inks. Thin film electrode shows also better temperature stability and overall aging capabilities that extend the operating conditions of the sensor.
The metallic deposit is - by nature - not subject to any compatibility issues with sensing elements thus allowing the manufacturing of all kinds of sensors. A combination of thin film electrodes interconnected via printed conductive ink can be considered, improving the integration of this sensors within more complex systems. Finally, as for the environmental aspect, relying on thin thicknesses of metal ensures a very low material consumption and a final product that can be easily recycled.

Printed electronics are bringing to life the vision of manufacturing advanced flexible electronics devices in a scalable, cost-effective, and sustainable way. Organic semiconductors, which can be formulated as inks and then printed under ambient conditions, are poised to unlock even more disruptive applications in printed electronics. The tunability of these carbon-based materials allows them to achieve key performance and processing metrics in various applications. This presentation will outline how Brilliant Matters provides added value to projects in printed electronics by offering a unique scale-up platform for environmentally-conscious advanced materials such as organic semiconductors with applications in printed electronics. Highlighted technologies include energy harvesting, light sensing, and low-power displays.

One of the challenges in printed electronics is the large gap between costly, high-resolution lithography, and cost-effective – but also less refined – printing technologies. A brand new and revolutionary technology has been developed that fills that gap and enables the next generation of manufacturing to start today.

Impulse Printing is a novel additive manufacturing technology that transfers high-resolution patterns through rapid surface heating. When the solvent at the heated interface reaches its boiling temperature, rapid gas generation leads to pressure build-up. This pressure causes the ink to transfer to the substrate at incredible speed. Impulse Printing has several unique features. It can deposit feature sizes ranging from several microns to many millimeters, with aspect ratios of up to 0.5. Since the ink is released from a surface, it does not experience any shear forces, which means a wide range of viscosities can be deposited. Impulse Printing can therefore solve common manufacturing challenges, including printing on any surface topology with inks of extremely high viscosity. Patterns can even be wrapped around substrates.

Impulse Printing is a non-contact and high-throughput technology, so it is compatible with large substrates, like roll-to-roll processes. It was designed to be user-friendly and to have a low cost of ownership. It can therefore be seamlessly integrated into many current manufacturing set-ups. What’s more, the solution reduces waste associated with current manufacturing techniques, as it consumes low amounts of power and utilises ink with the highest efficiency.

Advancements in the development of flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) technologies and materials continue to progress rapidly; however, reliable, high-volume manufacturing of complex FHE-based products remains elusive. This issue becomes even more into focus when the objective is for printable, wearable technologies. Due to the nature of the stresses applied during use, such stretchable devices are expected to be mechanically robust and sustain their electrical performance under high tensile strain. Most of these stretchable electronic devices are hybrid in nature, comprising both soft and rigid electronic components. Hence, robust and reliable electrical interconnections between these soft and rigid components is necessary to ensure proper functionality of the device. Interconnections between the electrically functional control systems and wearable e-textile materials have a variety of current, traditional methods, such as high pressure and high temperature Anisotropic Conductive Adhesives (ACA), solder, snap/cinch connections, and isotropic epoxy adhesives. Each of these electrical connections pose issues with the necessary material sets for wearables/e-textile materials. There are significant drawbacks related to mechanical and/or thermal damage during the connection process; poor mechanical adhesion; inability to connect standard-pitch functional devices; and lack of robustness when connecting to nonplanar surfaces seen in wearable technology. And additional challenges exist which limit the high-volume manufacturing of these products. SunRay Scientific will present recent results in the development of a novel anisotropic conductive adhesive, ZTACH® ACE, for high-volume surface mount assembly of electrical components, including those to by mounted/attached to flexible, stretchable, textiles in wearable applications.

ZTACH® ACE technology demonstrates superiority in achieving environmentally stable and mechanically robust electrical connections. For improved manufacturability, it allows for pressure-less assembly, low-temperature cure, excellent adhesion to various substrates, and fine pitch reliability without sacrificing contact resistance or mechanical bond integrity. Because ZTACH® ACE can act as its own underfill and edge encapsulant, the rigors of use in typical wearable applications on host substrates like textiles and TPU, do not experience the same types of failures alternate competing technologies would experience without the addition of underfill and/or encapsulation. In providing superior adhesion, low contact resistance, and mechanical robustness during electromechanical testing, ZTACH® ACE proves itself to be a reliable interconnect between stretchable to stretchable/flex/rigid materials with high electrical conductivity. This enables easier and lower cost manufacturing of more flexible and robust applications through integration of SMD components directly onto e-textiles, without additional laminated protective layers. As a result, flexible, wearable printed electronics can finally be integrated into a wider range of cost effective, reliable end use application.

As industries evolve, designers are challenging the fundamental nature of materials and using carbon nanotubes, and nanotube hybrids, to exceed limitations once imposed by existing materials. Carbon nanotube technology is ushering in a new era of printed electronics, introducing transparent solutions for printed electronics that push the boundaries previously known for strength, reliability, and performance.

In this presentation, we will review several existing commercial applications of carbon nanotubes for printed electronics in the automotive, aerospace, healthcare, and consumer electronics industries. As optical cameras, RADAR & LiDar sensors, antennas and other innovations continue to become ubiquitous within these devices, new nanocarbon technology continues to evolve delivering heating, connectivity, and other performance advancements with full transparency and without the use of wires. Simply put, cutting edge-developments happening now using nanotechnology are the biggest innovations in the printed electronics industry that you will never see

C3Nano has developed a platform technology to empower a wide variety of electronics ranging from smartphones and solar cells to biomedical devices and transparent heaters and conductors for automotive applications. In this presentation C3Nano will discuss this platform consisting of the highest quality and scale Silver Nanowires (AgNWs) and novel Ultra-Nanowires with unprecedented stability and reliability, and its best-in-class ActiveGrid™ inks and coatings. We will also discuss how Nanowires are formulated into various inks and coatings incorporating our proprietary Nanoglue™ chemical fusing technology which engenders the best in-class solution coated transparent conductor; these conductive coatings have outstanding flexibility and mechanical properties and are compatible with a broad array of flexible, stretchable, and formable films. C3Nano will also describe a technology breakthrough wherein its new ActiveGrid™ LT ink series can be cured at room temperature incredibly quickly (~25 C for 1 min) to impart electrical conductivity to a variety of low Tg, soft, bio-compatible, and low-cost substrates targeting applications in life-sciences, packaging, displays, consumables, and anti-statics, among others. C3Nano will also explain how its NWs and Ultra-NWs are ideal conductive fillers achieving excellent conductivities at extremely low volume fractions (loadings) which opens up broad new applications and potentials in the multibillion-dollar conductive composites, conductive curable resins and adhesives and 3D-printing markets. Finally, C3Nano will discuss its some of its current commercial traction and how its technology platform is being used to generate smart surfaces and new functionality across several of the large aforementioned sectors. The ability to add electrical conductivity by depositing ActiveGrid ink as ultrathin layers on substrates, or by addition of low volume fractions of Nanowires and Ultra-Nanowires into composites, can unlock the imagination to enable new transformative electronics, devices, and HMI experiences.

Hummink will present its revolutionary nanoprinting technology that enables the deposition of any material, on any surface, with a unique freedom of design. By combining a nanometric pen with an oscillating macro-resonator, Hummink performs capillary deposition of liquids with micronic and sub-micronic resolutions, opening a new era for electronics manufacturing. Simple, fast and versatile

User interfaces with machines have long relied on tactile feedback to give crucial information to users. Whether pressure felt through a steering wheel or a clear detent on a pushbutton, people intuitively rely on this type of embodied information to communicate the state of the system under control. As machines incorporate more robotic elements this tactile feedback will need to become a 2 way street. Textiles, which are the only artificial technology human beings tolerate being in constant close physical contact with, provide an ideal platform for both sensing and active haptic communication between robots and the people who they serve. Incorporating smart textiles into apparel and active upholstery such as anti-bed sore platforms will pave the way for advanced soft robotics that can operate comfortably in close contact with people.

Step into smart buildings of the future and you might not see a difference. Combining the scalability of coatings and building materials contemporary sensing techniques opens-up an incredible range of possibilities for predictive, preventative, and responsive maintenance. For Henkel, a global leader in specialized and cross-functional ink formulations for printed electronics, and Laiier a smart surface technology provider, the next decade will see the rise of smart buildings that integrate new capabilities into the built environment. Whether it’s office facilities that warn of leaking pipes, walls that heat our rooms, or floors that tell us when an elderly relative has suffered a fall, many of the core technologies are already here. Today, the challenge besides the technology innovation is more about building networks and creating markets.
The presentation will cover the unique ecosystem required to bring this vision to life that includes the whole value chain from construction, materials, manufacturing industry to IoT integrators. The session will take the attendees through technical explanations and customer use cases demonstrating clear ROIs and customer insights.

Step into smart buildings of the future and you might not see a difference. Combining the scalability of coatings and building materials contemporary sensing techniques opens-up an incredible range of possibilities for predictive, preventative, and responsive maintenance. For Henkel, a global leader in specialized and cross-functional ink formulations for printed electronics, and Laiier a smart surface technology provider, the next decade will see the rise of smart buildings that integrate new capabilities into the built environment. Whether it’s office facilities that warn of leaking pipes, walls that heat our rooms, or floors that tell us when an elderly relative has suffered a fall, many of the core technologies are already here. Today, the challenge besides the technology innovation is more about building networks and creating markets.
The presentation will cover the unique ecosystem required to bring this vision to life that includes the whole value chain from construction, materials, manufacturing industry to IoT integrators. The session will take the attendees through technical explanations and customer use cases demonstrating clear ROIs and customer insights.

This presentation highlights critical design, manufacturability, sustainability and reliability aspects related to development of novel stretchable devices for the wearables market based on thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and nanocellulose substrate platforms. We will present examples of several fully integrated functional devices such as a stretchable wireless electrocardiography (ECG) smart patch and a disposable enzymatic amperometric biosensor for real-time sweat monitoring. Developments and upscaling aspects on Roll-to-Roll manufacturing will cover double-sided printing and via-forming, component assembly, lamination and encapsulation, structuring of PDMS films and sustainable substrate materials for single use devices.

Heraeus has in-house developed a full system solution consisting of particle-free metal inks, equipment and processes for the selective coating of semiconductor packages. Large scale inkjet printing and photonic curing on 300mm wafer frames has become a reality. Experience the advantages of this solution such as design freedom, material efficiency, high print accuracy and many more in various applications ranging from EMI shielding to metallization or plating replacement.