Printable Electronics: Canada’s Opportunity · 2019-06-03 · 613.795.8181Printable Electronics: Canada’s Opportunity Ottawa, Canada 2 It’s time for Canada to step up Printable

613.795.8181 Ottawa, Canadawww.cpeia-acei.ca

The united voice of Canada’s Printable Electronics sector

Printable Electronics:Canada’s OpportunityPrintable Electronics (PE) is already all around us. It has incredible potential to change how we work, live and play.

January 2015

Copyright © the Canadian Printable Electronics Industry Association (CPEIA), January 2015. May not be copied or distributed in any way without the express consent of the CPEIA.


Contents

Beyond silicon: What’s next? ..................................................................................................................................1

It’s time for Canada to step up ................................................................................................................................2

PE Applications: A World of Possibilities .............................................................................................................3

Aerospace & Defence ............................................................................................................................................4

Healthcare .................................................................................................................................................................5

Secure Printing .........................................................................................................................................................6

Consumer Electronics (& Wearables) ................................................................................................................7

Marketing, Advertising & Commerce .................................................................................................................8

Packaging ..................................................................................................................................................................9

Big Opportunity in Electronic Components .....................................................................................................10

Let’s work together ..................................................................................................................................................11

Copyright © the Canadian Printable Electronics Industry Association (CPEIA), January 2015. May not be copied or distributed in any way without the express consent of the CPEIA.


1Printable Electronics: Canada’s Opportunity

Beyond silicon: What’s next?A sheet of paper that displays video and plays audio. Biometrics to monitor your health, built into a shirt or even a disposable band-aid. Smart labels on packaging that react to environmental changes.

Not so long ago, this was the stuff of science fiction. With advances in Printable Electronics (PE), these kinds of products will be available to the average consumer within a few years.

PE combines new materials with cost-effective, large area production processes that open up new fields of application. Conventional printing processes, such as screen-printing, flexography, gravure, offset lithography, and inkjet, are used to deposit conductive inks onto a variety of flexible substrates, such as plastics, papers and fabrics.

The result is a whole new world of electronics that are low cost and consume little power. They can be disposable, biodegradable, flexible and stretchable.

PE overcomes many of the shortcomings that typify rigid silicon-based electronics, and they can be easily mass-produced. PE promises to be a key foundational component of the so-called Internet of Things, as more and more of the items, tools and devices in our daily lives become wirelessly connected.

Some PE components are already all around us. These include the biosensors in the disposable glucose test strips used by diabetes patients, embedded antennas for mobile devices and touch displays.

According to research firm IDTechEx, the global market for printed and potentially printable electronics, including organics, inorganics and composites, will rise from about US$24 billion in 2014 to $70.4 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 40 per cent. Those amounts jump dramatically when you include the total market value of the products that do, and could, incorporate PE components.

Canada and Canadian firms can stand on the sidelines of this market, or make smart investments and take advantage of an explosive opportunity.

Where is that opportunity? Key challenges remain to develop new materials, micro-circuits, manufacturing equipment and processes, and information systems that connect PE-enabled devices or objects, to realize the full potential of PE. Government organizations, startups, OEMs and systems integrators around the world are investing billions of dollars in R&D to revolutionize existing products and create new ones with PE. The potential applications are staggering, and impact a host of market verticals.



It’s time for Canada to step upPrintable Electronics (PE) lies at the convergence of several industries in which Canada has a strong track record – advanced materials, micro-electronics, information and communications technologies, printing and advanced manufacturing.

Based on IDTechEx’s market forecasts, if Canada were to capture only 10 per cent of the estimated North American market by 2020, that would result in combined industry revenues of $1.2 billion for domestic companies.

This is only the beginning. The global market is estimated to reach $340 billion by 2030.

The opportunities are vast in a number of Canadian market verticals. These include:

• ICT (for systems that will connect PE-enabled devices and objects)• Energy (including oil and gas)• Security• Environment• Packaging• Advanced Manufacturing• Aerospace• Automotive

After almost a decade supporting various PE projects, the National Research Council of Canada in 2012 launched a new flagship PE initiative, and spearheaded the creation of the PE Consortium (PEC), which includes 14 Canadian companies that are already active in this exciting technology space. It has already invested tens of millions of dollars, alongside industry, to advance R&D.

But more is needed.

To capitalize on the global PE opportunity, Canadian stakeholders in the sector need an Association that will serve as their common voice, to lead and assist Canadian industry in achieving rapid and sustained growth and competitiveness in global markets through PE.

This is the role of the Canadian Printable Electronics Industry Association (CPEIA).

Our focus is on the full breadth of technologies and applications that relate to, can benefit from, enable, or be enabled by PE. This includes flexible, organic, embedded and integrated electronics, materials and wearable technologies.



PE Applications: A World of Possibilities

Secure Printing Defense Packaging Health & Wellness Marketing & Commerce Consumer Electronics• Secure banknotes• Lottery• Personal identification• Biometric signatures

• Biometrics• Smart materials• OLED lighting• Touch displays• Flexible displays• Wearable sensors• Flexible solar cells

• RFID• Inventory management• Food packaging• Logistics• OLED lighting

• Wearable sensors• Medical packaging• Diagnostics• Home/remote monitoring• Biometrics• Smart materials

• Near field communications• Smart loyalty/rewards cards• Touch displays• Out-of-home advertising• Flexible displays• Secure banknotes

• Smart materials• Touch displays• Flexible displays• Printable batteries• Wearables• ePaper• Flexible solar cells• Infotainment systems



Aerospace & Defence

Today’s battlefield is high tech. Soldiers rely on mobile devices for real-time situational awareness. The command centre also wants to monitor the health of personnel in the field.

The need is for electronic components, systems and displays that are lightweight, low power and rugged. Procurement budgets also demand low-cost solutions.

PE serves all these needs.

With PE, biometric monitoring and flexible solar cells can be built into smart materials – a shirt becomes a wearable sensor for vital signs, while a backpack can serve as a solar cell to provide power and recharge battery packs.

PE also allows for flexible, even rollable touch displays that are far more robust and rugged than the typical rigid device with a glass screen. OLED (organic light-emitting diode), a key component of flexible and low-power displays, can be manufactured more rapidly and at lower cost with PE, compared to traditional processes.

As materials and processes continue to evolve, the advantages of PE will extend beyond the soldier in the field to the cockpit displays for military aircraft and other vehicles.



Healthcare

Printable Electronics processes are already used to manufacture the biosensors in the disposable glucose test strips used by diabetes patients. For medical applications, and overall health and wellness, this is only the beginning.

With PE, a whole new standard of low power, low cost, ultra-thin, flexible and even stretchable technology is possible. PE-enabled products and applications can drive a fundamental change in how we manage healthcare service delivery and patient care, to reduce costs and improve patient outcomes.

Consider disposable sensors placed on, or even inside, a patient’s body, to provide physicians with real-time feedback during a procedure. Cancer researchers who want to deliver localized treatments to patients are already experimenting with advanced 3-D printers to create microfluidic devices that can circulate drugs through a patient’s body. Another application for this kind of technology is to build custom implants such as tissue scaffolds that dissolve harmlessly inside the body.

For remote healthcare and health and fitness, wearable technology is a hot industry. But what if that wristband or other device could be replaced with a single smart patch that resembles a band-aid and communicates data wirelessly in real-time? That patch could even be used to deliver medication as an alternative to being plugged into an IV drip.

With PE, the stretchable conductive inks, component materials and manufacturing processes already exist to make these applications a reality. Effective patient care and treatment, like never before, can take place, safely and economically, outside of the clinical or hospital setting.

The value of PE also extends to the medical packaging industry, to create new intelligent packaging solutions. With low-cost PE labeling, packaging can monitor temperature, humidity and even PH, and can raise an alert through OLED lighting or wireless communication. Intelligent packaging can also track when patients open or take their medication.



Secure Printing

From passports to banknotes, lottery tickets and various means to control property access and secure physical assets, secure printing has been big industry for decades. It’s an ongoing war against counterfeiters and other perpetrators of fraud or theft.

PE is the latest weapon in the arsenal.

Cost is a huge factor in this industry. Many printed products are themselves low-cost commodity items. It simply isn’t feasible to employ conventional electronics as security measures due to the prohibitive cost of such solutions.

With PE, security features can easily be produced and incorporated at a very low cost. New and improved security features are also possible. These include biometric signatures that use physical identifiers such as a fingerprint, and electronic track and trace, in which a user can use their mobile device to scan and verify the legitimacy of a printed product.



Consumer Electronics (& Wearables)

In the Harry Potter movies, the newspaper of record for wizards everywhere is the Daily Prophet. But this isn’t your typical newspaper. Photos are in fact video clips, complete with audio. It’s Youtube on paper.

Thanks to PE, this flight of fantasy is well on its way to becoming a reality with ePaper. In fact, if you have used a USB flash drive with a capacity meter that displays how much storage space is left, you have already seen ePaper in action.

ePaper is just one example of how PE promises to revolutionize how we use technology and consume content.

PE opens up a whole new world of low-cost, low-power and easy-to-manufacture electronics. This make it possible to print batteries, create touch displays and solar cells that are flexible and even rollable, develop a new generation of wearable tech that is ultra-thin and rugged, and incorporate biometrics into smart fabrics to help us manage health and wellness.

Consider a large flat-screen television you can roll up and take with you like a yoga matt. Even the humble Halloween mask can become an affordable piece of advanced technology – a flexible, low-cost display that can change its ghoulish image at any time.

The advantages of being able to quickly manufacture low-cost, low-power, flexible touch displays also extends to the infotainment systems popular in today’s automobiles.



Marketing, Advertising & Commerce

Consumers have already grown accustomed to out-of-home advertising. From digital signage in food courts and along busy roads, to bench advertising at the bus stop and the humble restaurant placemat, it’s everywhere. Much of this advertising is static, but that’s poised to change with PE.

The means to quickly manufacture low-cost, low-power, flexible touch displays of various sizes gives brands a whole new way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Even that restaurant placemat can become an interactive touch display.

PE is also fundamental to driving customer loyalty and retention. How many reward cards do you carry from various retailers? With PE, it becomes economical and feasible to turn these into smart cards that can store data and interact wirelessly when you walk into a store, for promotions and other features to personalize your shopping experience.

From a commerce perspective, PE is also crucial to stay ahead of counterfeiters and fraudsters. New and improved security features can be incorporated, at a low cost, into banknotes, credit and debit cards and personal identification to ensure you can transact without fear of identity theft and privacy breaches.



Packaging

With PE, the packaging industry is definitely thinking outside the box.

Members of Canada’s PE Consortium are already working on ways to turn packaging, in any form, into a data point, switch or even a sensor, to take advantage of a multi-billion-dollar global market for smart packaging devices.

For example, physical products, such as packaging, can be printed with invisible touch-sensitive coding using conventional printers. This coding, which will activate the touchscreen of any mobile device, is far more versatile and less costly to produce than traditional RFID tags, more secure and dynamic than QR codes, and eco-friendly. It can be used as an added security measure, and as a tool for gamification, media and content publishing, and branding.

This is just one example of how PE is powering new ways to manage inventory, track items as they are shipped, monitor environmental conditions and turn the humble box into a smart device, with labeling and tagging solutions that are capable of wireless communication in various ways.



PE isn’t only about exciting new products and applications. In fact, the greatest potential in the near term may be found in the replacement market, where PE can revolutionize, if not replace, conventional electronics and manufacturing processes.

On the one hand, new PE processes can replace current manufacturing methods for circuitry, displays and secure printing products, such as currency and passports, to reduce time, complexity and cost of production.

One example is organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS), which are used to create the next generation of digital displays. Many organizations are investing in methods to replace the current vacuum deposition method of manufacturing OLEDs, with a printed process that would substantially reduce the production cost.

PE components can also replace some conventional components altogether, such as rigid silicon chips, capacitors, resistors and bulky batteries. The benefit again is a reduction in time, complexity and cost, as well as additional advantages in terms of product size, shape and flexibility that open up new applications and new markets.

In almost any application, the conventional printed circuit board can be replaced, whole or in part, with PE. For electronics manufacturers looking for ways to cut costs and production cycles, and to create new revenue models in what has in many ways become a commoditized industry, PE may be the key to their future.

Consider the automotive market, for example. Today’s vehicles can have up to 150 subsystems. This is a substantial amount of weight and technical complexity, with all the wiring and components. But PE components can be printed on or embedded within vehicle parts. This can reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of wiring required throughout the vehicle and the bulk of conventional silicon.

Big Opportunity in Electronic Components


Printable Electronics: Canada’s Opportunity 11

Let’s work togetherThe role of the CPEIA is to lead and assist Canadian industry in achieving rapid sustained growth and competitiveness in global markets through PE. We assist industry by working with all the key stakeholders, including end users, customers, government and academia, to mobilize resources toward common goals.

End customers and end users of PE applications, startups and SMEs, university and government research labs, systems integrators and OEMs, and venture capitalists and angel groups – any individual or organization with a vested interest in PE willing to participate in the growth of Canada’s PE sector – is a welcome addition to the CPEIA’s Membership.

Together, we can achieve the critical mass to generate billions of dollars worth of new activity in our knowledge economy, create jobs and strengthen the Made in Canada brand abroad.

For more information, please contact Executive Director Peter Kallai at [email protected]

Printable Electronics: Canada’s Opportunity · 2019-06-03 · 613.795.8181Printable Electronics: Canada’s Opportunity Ottawa, Canada 2 It’s time for Canada to step up Printable

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