Industrial & Specialty Printing - November/December 2012 - 38

Is the printed revolution lacking in creativity?
richard Kirk
polyphotonix The long-promised revolution in electronics manufacturing—the printed revolution— has been a long time coming. Are we finally seeing some progress, towards the promised multi-billion-dollar markets? Are there any companies making money from printed electronics? Where is the promised golden land for printed electronics? I have noticed over the last few years that there has been significantly less noise about printed electronics than in the last decade. Is this because companies are just getting their heads down and getting on with it, or is it because they simply have less to talk about and nothing much is happening? Are we in a period of calm before a storm, or are we seeing progress from research to development? Where is the killer application that we have all been waiting for? No one talks about this anymore. In a sense, there is an increasing maturity in the industry; gone is the wild hubris, the extravagant claims to be reinventing the world. Weekly press releases claiming to be able to walk on water have been replaced by a new reality. In the real world, just how do you move from research lab to production? This move is harder than many had anticipated. The printed revolution is promising low manufacturing costs, energy-efficient devices, rollable and flexible screens, and many more desirable features and qualities. Most of these must-have features are no longer talked about with quite the same breathless excitement. Who now predicts a mass-market for flat, flexible display screen in the next three years? Flex is nice, but at what price? Large, global companies involved in printed electronics have large, high-profile research projects. They are addressing big challenges such as OLEDs for general lighting with global markets in mind. These companies need to see big, addressable markets to justify the big research budgets. Nothing else will feed these machines to justify the investment for future growth. Will the breakthrough ideas and devices come through these major international companies or will it be through the small SMEs working quickly and cheaply with low overheads going after niche markets? I see lots of great ideas in my travels within the printed-electronics industry. Many of these could be genuinely game changing. I personally know of quite a few printed electronic products that will come to market in the next 12 months. One or two of these, if we are lucky, will be killer applications, but not one of them is the result of innovations at large companies. They are the result of what could be described as organized serendipity—the results of a meeting of minds. I have long advocated the importance of inviting the wider creative industries to engage with the printed-electronics world. However, organizing this mix is harder to achieve than would be expected. The two worlds do not drink in the same bars. I know from personal experience that artists, designers, and creatives are fascinated by the hard science magic that scientists weave and, in turn, scientists are genuinely surprised by the ideas generated by a community that tends to use the right side of their brains. Opposites always attract. Creating opportunities for the two communities to engage is the key and this takes real effort. Many companies simply do not get it. They’ve never had the experience of working with creative and do not see the value in cross fertilization. Organized serendipity is usually arranged through governmental bodies, network transfer programs, design colleges, and university grant-funding programs; however, there are rare occasions, and these are increasingly few and far between. Also, many science- and researchbased companies struggle when faced with the difficulty of understanding a different vocabulary and creative language. This is a shame, because the magic happens at such meetings. We need more of it. We cannot leave product design and invention solely to science and research teams, where often we end up with fantastic science being shoe-horned into products that are too complex or are over-developed. We cannot afford solutions to problems that do not exist—or never needed solving. Simple, elegantly designed products that work sell; it’s not the science behind them. The printed-electronics industry needs to create more opportunities for organized serendipity. Those elusive killer applications will not invent themselves, and I know that the biggest and best of them all has not yet been invented. Is printed electronics coming of age? We are now learning to manufacture in volume. I expect to see a flood of press releases over the next year announcing real innovations and developments in printed electronics, but to take it to the next level we need to bring in the creative community.

38 | IndustrIal + specIalt y prIntIng www.industrial-printing.net

Industry InsIder
polyphotonix

rIchard KIrK

Richard Kirk is the CEO at PolyPhotonix, Sedgefield, County Durham, UK. Following a successful career as an artist, living and working if France, Kirk created PolyPhotonix in 2009, a UK-based OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) manufacturer. PolyPhotonix is creating new concepts for printed electronics applications and developing innovative processes for manufacturing OLEDs in high volumes.

Industrial & Specialty Printing - November/December 2012

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