Competencies

To cope with the task "printed electronics", physical, chemical and electrotechnical coherences have to be understood and developed further. To meet this challenge, PolyIC has built up a team of specialists from several fields of research (amongst others chemists, physicists, electrical and mechanical engineers), who work in interdisciplinary teams on materials, on the design of the electronic chips and optimize the printing process for the chip constantly.

PolyIC has extraordinary competencies in physics, in chemistry, and electronics and process engineering. With this combination, the print of electronics is made possible.

Chemistry:

Printed electronics is based on soluble polymers which are electrical conducting or semi conducting. These polymers can be printed or coated in form of a treated formulation similar to ink. Usually, the polymers are printed onto a polyester film. Our material specialists together with partners from the chemical industry work hard to pick the right polymers as well as the right film and to optimize them to make it possible to integrate them into a printing process.

Physics:

The design of electronic devices such as transistors, capacitors, diodes or rectifiers is developed, modelled and realized with physical means. Very important here is the coherence of chemistry with electrical and mechanical engineering. On the one hand, there is know-how in semi conductors from conventional electronics that can be used, on the other hand all designs and processes have to be adapted to the special requirements of polymer electronics.

Electronics engineering:

To build electronic circuits, you need conductive materials and moreover materials whose state of conductivity can be modified, e.g. by applying a voltage. In classical electronics, these tasks are performed by semi conductors such as silicon. After intensive research and development, nowadays polymers can be used to semi conduct and therefore, electronic devices can thus be realized from soluble polymers.

Process engineering:

To design printed electronics, technical expertise in mechanical and process engineering is very important as the requirements on resolution, cleanliness and homogeneity in contrast to regular printing processes is considerably higher. Therefore, existing processes are constantly optimized or new printing machines are build to be able to produce printed electronics in high quality and volume.