Process

• Clean room process
• Lab printing process
• Production process

In the phase of research and development, polymer electronics is fabricated in clean room conditions and with the respective processes. Those processes are comparable to those in the field of classical electronics, e.g. silicon. However, flexible polyester film is used as substrate in contrast to a silicon wafer and the coating is conducted differently.

By applying these established processes, polymer electronics is developed up to the point where the understanding of the functionality of the devices and their interaction in a product is well advanced. This is necessary to apply the results in high-volume printing processes. In this, combinations of different processes are being evaluated to pick the best.

The big advantage of polymer electronics is that after concluding the development phase, it will be produced on printing machines that do not run in clean room conditions. This saves an enormous part of costs that would occur for the purchase and operation of a clean room. Polymer electronics is planned to be printed as fast and low-cost as newspapers from 2007 on.

Clean room

Here, standard clean room processes such as spin coating, photo lithography, evaporation, wet etching and others are used for the basic development of polymer electronics.

Lab printing

Lab type "desktop" printing machines for pad printing, doctor blading and gravure printing as well as screen printing and others are used to develop the basic printing processing know-how for printed electronics.

Production process

Production scale printing process such as flexography printing, offset printing, gravure printing, screen printing and others are used to produce printed electronic products for low cost high volume applications.