David Savastano, Editor09.22.21
Sustainability is a major emphasis globally. The ability to produce goods that are cradle to cradle, meeting the requirements of the Circular Economy, and can be completely reused, recycled or composted, is becoming of greater interest to consumers, governments and brand owners alike.
As a result, sustainability is a topic of increasing interest in the field of flexible and printed electronics, and industry leaders report they are hearing questions about sustainability from their customers.
Dr. Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, CTO of SEMI and executive director of SEMI FlexTech and SEMI NBMC, reported that various industry groups within SEMI are putting environmental sustainability of electronics high on the priority list.
“Moreover, the increase in the number of Millennials – a highly-aware generational grouping within the workforce – ensures most organizations consider sustainability throughout product development,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky added. “According to a recent Forbes survey, 50% of Millennials take sustainability into consideration when making product decisions, versus 34% of Generation X and 23% of Baby Boomers.
This number is expected to continue to grow.”
As a leader in organic photovoltaics, Heliatek GmbH is well positioned for any discussion on sustainability. Stephan Kube, Heliatek’s head of marketing, said that customers “very often” ask about sustainability.
“To secure the future of this planet and to curb climate change, a transition of energy generation towards renewables plays an important role,” Kube said. “That is why everyone is looking for green energy generation technologies. We provide a new innovative solar technology with unique features (light, thin, flexible and green) that will help this energy transition towards green energy generation.”
Rob Frueh, senior business development manager for Brewer Science, said that sustainability is an important topic for the industry.
“Brewer Science is always excited to engage with our customers in the topic of sustainability. Being a GreenCircle Certified company for over six years, Brewer Science recognizes the importance and focus required in this area,” said Frueh. “The current sustainability conversations have been focused on meeting or exceeding our customers’ current environmental requirements. We’ve also been engaging in more forward-looking conversations centered around the potential future water-soluble and compostable sensors and tags.”
VITO researcher Kévin Le Blevennec, a team member with the OE-A sustainability group, said that sustainability has become an important aspect in interactions with stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, investors, legislators and the public.
“I do hear more and more questions – it’s an important topic,” said Wolfgang Mildner of msw tech. “And if I don’t hear it in discussions with new product designs, I bring it up.”
Printed batteries are one of the key needs for flexible electronics, and Imprint Energy has moved forward in the field with its zinc manganese oxide solid state batteries. These are ideal for smart labels and wearables, among other applications.
“We’re the power source in a smart tag or smart label, and our solution partner may be making it for a logistics company to track sensitive and valuable goods, or a wearable medical patch for managing one’s chronic illness,” Imprint Energy CEO Christine Ho said. “Distinctive and useful IoT products will be everywhere, and their makers will ship many millions of devices.
“Logistics firms like DHL, UPS and FedEx, and the pharma and food companies that rely on smart sensors to tell them that their vaccines or other valuable products didn’t get damaged, are pushing ahead with their broad sustainability mandates and vision,” added Ho. “It’s led us and our partners to be more quantitative and share independent evaluation data on the sustainability impact and life cycle analysis of technologies beyond deployed.”
Advantages of Flexible and Printed Electronics
Le Blevennec observed that printed electronics (PE) or flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) offer manifold sustainability benefits by enabling new applications that are not possible with conventional electronics alone.
“Among others, the benefits are in energy savings, increased efficiency of supply chains, improved health and nutrition etc. Sustainability advantages will be specific to each end-users industry sectors, and can occur at different steps of a product life cycle,” added Le Blevennec. “Manufacturing processes can be more materials and energy efficient, generating less waste. Lightweight opportunities can allow the mobility sector to reduce emissions during the use phase.”
“There are advantages and disadvantages,” said Mildner. “On the positive side are materials which are easier and sustainable from their origin. The production process are mostly from an additive approach and therefore also better in their carbon footprint and sustainability.
“But the targeted products are mostly systems which contain combinations of materials and processes, and this makes the overall concept more complicated,” Mildner added. “This means that even if the components are simple and sustainable, their combination is not. If separation is needed, a recycling concept is challenging. The consequence is that this needs to be thought through already at design and concept level.”
Frueh noted that Brewer Sciences’ current smart devices and printed electronics programs offer sustainability through several key approaches.
“For instance, the smart devices have the ability to offer savings through reductions in energy, labor and even maintenance in a variety of applications. A few examples might include smart HVAC systems, production or process monitoring, and even smart buildings and facilities,” Frueh observed.
Frueh added that additive manufacturing is a sustainable means of production.
“Flexible and printed electronics play another means of sustainability through additive manufacturing – meaning only what you need where you need it,” Frueh noted. “This optimized approach to waste means a smaller total amount of materials only being used in the end product.”
Dr. Gity Samadi, SEMI FlexTech program manager, also noted that printing electronics is an additive process, and additive manufacturing equals less waste and potentially less demand for natural resources (e.g. water, electricity) and lower capital expenditures than traditional electronics manufacturing.
“Flexibility also brings functionality and provides more practical footprints for electronic devices,” Dr. Samadi noted. “Comparing the manufacturing processes for glass versus plastic, plastic also wins in energy efficiency. Once we have biodegradable and recycled plastic, it will further lower the energy equation and consumption of valuable raw materials.”
Kube said that there are several sustainability advantages to Heliatek’s organic solar solution.
“First, we use very few material inputs for producing our films,” Kube reported. “Our solar active area in total is only a few hundred nanometers thick. We do not use toxic heavy metals such as lead or cadmium, do not use rare earths and in general we use naturally abundant raw materials (carbon-based molecules). So we do not use scarce raw materials, but can synthesize the material we need with desired characteristics. It’s like a toolbox.
“We also think, that recycling at the end will be more environmentally friendly as with conventional PV based on the advantages mentioned above,” Kube observed.
Dr. Gerardo Hernandez-Sosa, group leader Printed Electronics Group at InnovationLab, noted that printing technology is a processing approach that is material efficient.
“By depositing the ink only in the place we need, waste is reduced,” observed Dr. Hernandez-Sosa. “Furthermore, by being a solution-based technique and using plastic substrates, most of the pre and post processing needed happens at low temperatures, reducing energy costs.”
Recycling and Reusing Flexible and Printed Electronics
There is work being done on creating flexible electronics products that can be recycled or reused, but Mildner noted that more needs to occur.
“My impression is that we need to do more,” said Mildner. “A clear concept which separates disposable and reusable parts, for instance for patches, is needed because of hygienic reasons but also due to sustainability.”
Imprint Energy’s flexible batteries can be recharged, which makes this a more sustainable solution.
“Our solution partners want a sustainable power source,” Ho said. “Our solid state battery, with a polymer-based electrolyte, gives them a greener solution with an extended life. You can make the battery smaller knowing you can cycle it multiple times.”
“Within SEMI FlexTech, sustainability was one of four topics for project funding, and we expect that emphasis to remain through future Requests for Proposals (RFPs),” said Dr. Samadi. “One proposed approach was to consider multi-use products rather than single-use disposables, for example, developing an electronic label which can be used multiple times rather than just once.”
“The Brewer Science smart devices and printed electronics program currently has several key focuses on recycling and reusability,” Frueh reported. “One of those is the goal that our products not become consumables. This brings the attention in certain applications on making our sensors not only recyclable or reusable, but also plug and play. Having the ability to rapidly exchange a component or sensor means a reduction not only in the total amount of waste, but in potential down-time, service contracts and overall ownership costs.”
“As we are just starting our series production, we are still in the evaluation process of the end-of-life treatment,” Kube noted. “With only using very small material amounts, there are no scarce or highly valuable materials in it, a recycling process that is economically and ecologically reasonable is the challenge. So, at the end it might be that incineration could be the most eco-friendly way at the end of life, because you even generate electricity by burning. Some recycling processes are quite resource and energy consuming, so it might not be as eco-friendly as it looks like.”
“The focus is on making PE or FHE devices compatible with existing recycling processes because the end-of-life scenario is mainly defined by the application context,” Le Blevennec said. “PE materials are being developed with a minimal ecologic footprint as a major development goal.”
Dr. Hernandez-Sosa said that for many of the plastic substrates in use, there are existing recycling procedures.
“For example, PET, which is used in plastic bottles, is a commonly used substrate whose post treatment is well established. In addition, there is a big industry around printing electronics on paper. Furthermore, there are research efforts to fabricate electronics on other biodegradable substrates,” added Dr. Hernandez-Sosa.
Challenges Ahead for Sustainability
There are numerous challenges ahead when it comes to sustainability. For example, Dr. Grupen-Shemansky said that SEMI believes the biggest challenges will be reducing the waste stream of critical solid-state components and creating a recyclable or biodegradable substrate material.
“We hope to create and build awareness of the possibilities and take a leadership position by potentially funding strong and viable projects on this topic,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky said. “In addition to projects, our public forums have focused more and more on sustainable electronics, efficient manufacturing and using the intelligence gained by smart manufacturing to adjust processes to use less water, less electricity and
reduce downtime.”
Le Blevennec said that the biggest challenge is to set the right scope of any life cycle analysis, as just looking at a section of the cycle results in a skewed picture.
“It is indeed important to determine to which extent the recyclability of products including/embedding printed electronics can be affected,” Le Blevennec added. “Sometimes it is not worth it for the environment to try to recycle 100% of materials at all costs (environmental and economic). Higher gains can be found by preventing food waste and improving supply chain logistics compared to the loss of recyclability of the packaging, for instance.
“All players along the value chain, or better the circular economy, need to work together in order to establish technologies that provide the best benefit while still being economically viable,” Le Blevennec noted.
Frueh sees several key challenges in the sustainability of flexible and printed electronics.
“One is the materials, mainly the heavy metals and fluorinated compounds found in many devices,” added Frueh. “Another is the infrastructure; this is a very cost-driven industry and there must be an incentive to recycle. Another challenge is the continued work and awareness around where and in what applications our products are used in.”
Kube sees end-of-life treatment as the biggest challenge ahead when it comes to sustainability in flexible and printed electronics.
“Probably the end-of-life treatment, to find an ecological and economic reasonable approach,” Kube added. “Organic electronics are still relatively young, but very different to standard electronics. They are mainly categorized like standard electronics in terms of regulations and requirements, but beside the functionality they are built very different inside. To reflect this in regulations and laws is a big challenge for the entire industry, we believe.”
Dr. Florian Ullrich, business developer with InnovationLab, said that the biggest challenge is to balance the overall lifecycle of the application, including knowing how many resources are in, how long it will be in operation and what will happen at the end-of-life stage.
“[You need a] comprehensive design of products that fit to the application, only producing an electronic product if there is a clear and balanced pathway for the end-of-life (e.g. recovery, recycling, biodegradation, etc.)” Dr. Ullrich added. “Doing this and making a profit is a challenging task.”
Imprint Energy’s batteries are made of zinc and manganese oxide, which is also a benefit in terms of environmental impact.
“More than 80% of a battery’s carbon footprint comes from how its key materials are mined or processed,” Ho concluded. “Zinc materials are at least three times lower in environmental impact to mine than lithium.
In theory, lithium could also be printed, but it is hypersensitive to the environment, so manufacturers need cleanrooms and dry rooms which require larger spaces and electricity overhead.”
How companies respond to these challenges is of great importance.
“The challenges around sustainability can best be approached from within, through joint commitments with our partners and customers,” said Frueh. “A great example has been some of our current work through grant-funded efforts, specific to the field of extended product life management.”
“We need to educate about the new technologies, their advantages and their differentiation to standard technologies. With more products from the organic electronics on the market, awareness will raise,” Kube added. “I think they can be a valuable element for a better and greener future. Our organic solar films will help to transform the energy generation towards cleaner solutions.”
Sustainability and the Future
Ultimately, flexible and printed electronics can play a role in creating a sustainable future.
“The smart IoT devices made with our batteries are real multipliers for sustainability impact,” Ho concluded. “Not only do our batteries and devices have a better carbon footprint themselves, but the applications they’re used in – like better shipping and less food waste – drive CO2 mitigation well beyond the devices themselves.”
Dr. Ullrich observed that most of the benefits will probably not come in the short term.
“As the technology is relatively new and companies compete for market coverage, sustainability is going to be in second or third place,” he added. “The risk of the cost-efficiency of PE is that it can produce waste really fast. On the other hand, cost and energy reduction by making use of light-weight components and reducing the usage of rare and poisonous materials like in conventional batteries with carbon-based inks helps.
“Furthermore, novel applications can at least contribute to more sustainability, e.g. in the case of battery health monitoring, where the usage of printed sensors can prolong battery lifetime by 30%. Having completely biodegradable electronics will certainly take some more years, but organic electronics carries this opportunity for the future,” Dr. Ullrich concluded.
Dr. Grupen-Shemansky noted that more sensors create a better world, and by making sensors active and available on flexible and printed substrates, it reduces inefficiencies across a host of commercial, industrial and military activities.
“Some of those inefficiencies are identifying failures before they catastrophically fail,” added Dr. Grupen-Shemansky. “Another would be monitoring health to identify potential issues and take steps for prevention earlier in ones’ life. In the field of logistics, there are many inefficiencies which sensors and lightweight antennas can prevent.”
Le Blevennec noted that printed electronics and flexible hybrid electronics enable completely new applications that are not possible with conventional electronics.
“The European Commission, through the European Green Deal, has recently highlighted the need to address the twin challenges of the green and digital transitions,” Le Blevennec added. “If driven by those multi-stakeholder collaborations, printed electronics could be considered as an enabler and be used to generate data that the sustainability ‘world’ need (e.g. track and trace product, actual product conditions …)
“Flexible and printed electronics have a vast opportunity to achieve future sustainability with the continued expansion and integration of sensors and smart devices,” Frueh concluded. “These devices will continue to develop and evolve, having a greater impact on the reduction of waste, energy, labor and the costs associated.”
As a result, sustainability is a topic of increasing interest in the field of flexible and printed electronics, and industry leaders report they are hearing questions about sustainability from their customers.
Dr. Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, CTO of SEMI and executive director of SEMI FlexTech and SEMI NBMC, reported that various industry groups within SEMI are putting environmental sustainability of electronics high on the priority list.
“Moreover, the increase in the number of Millennials – a highly-aware generational grouping within the workforce – ensures most organizations consider sustainability throughout product development,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky added. “According to a recent Forbes survey, 50% of Millennials take sustainability into consideration when making product decisions, versus 34% of Generation X and 23% of Baby Boomers.
This number is expected to continue to grow.”
As a leader in organic photovoltaics, Heliatek GmbH is well positioned for any discussion on sustainability. Stephan Kube, Heliatek’s head of marketing, said that customers “very often” ask about sustainability.
“To secure the future of this planet and to curb climate change, a transition of energy generation towards renewables plays an important role,” Kube said. “That is why everyone is looking for green energy generation technologies. We provide a new innovative solar technology with unique features (light, thin, flexible and green) that will help this energy transition towards green energy generation.”
Rob Frueh, senior business development manager for Brewer Science, said that sustainability is an important topic for the industry.
“Brewer Science is always excited to engage with our customers in the topic of sustainability. Being a GreenCircle Certified company for over six years, Brewer Science recognizes the importance and focus required in this area,” said Frueh. “The current sustainability conversations have been focused on meeting or exceeding our customers’ current environmental requirements. We’ve also been engaging in more forward-looking conversations centered around the potential future water-soluble and compostable sensors and tags.”
VITO researcher Kévin Le Blevennec, a team member with the OE-A sustainability group, said that sustainability has become an important aspect in interactions with stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, investors, legislators and the public.
“I do hear more and more questions – it’s an important topic,” said Wolfgang Mildner of msw tech. “And if I don’t hear it in discussions with new product designs, I bring it up.”
Printed batteries are one of the key needs for flexible electronics, and Imprint Energy has moved forward in the field with its zinc manganese oxide solid state batteries. These are ideal for smart labels and wearables, among other applications.
“We’re the power source in a smart tag or smart label, and our solution partner may be making it for a logistics company to track sensitive and valuable goods, or a wearable medical patch for managing one’s chronic illness,” Imprint Energy CEO Christine Ho said. “Distinctive and useful IoT products will be everywhere, and their makers will ship many millions of devices.
“Logistics firms like DHL, UPS and FedEx, and the pharma and food companies that rely on smart sensors to tell them that their vaccines or other valuable products didn’t get damaged, are pushing ahead with their broad sustainability mandates and vision,” added Ho. “It’s led us and our partners to be more quantitative and share independent evaluation data on the sustainability impact and life cycle analysis of technologies beyond deployed.”
Advantages of Flexible and Printed Electronics
Le Blevennec observed that printed electronics (PE) or flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) offer manifold sustainability benefits by enabling new applications that are not possible with conventional electronics alone.
“Among others, the benefits are in energy savings, increased efficiency of supply chains, improved health and nutrition etc. Sustainability advantages will be specific to each end-users industry sectors, and can occur at different steps of a product life cycle,” added Le Blevennec. “Manufacturing processes can be more materials and energy efficient, generating less waste. Lightweight opportunities can allow the mobility sector to reduce emissions during the use phase.”
“There are advantages and disadvantages,” said Mildner. “On the positive side are materials which are easier and sustainable from their origin. The production process are mostly from an additive approach and therefore also better in their carbon footprint and sustainability.
“But the targeted products are mostly systems which contain combinations of materials and processes, and this makes the overall concept more complicated,” Mildner added. “This means that even if the components are simple and sustainable, their combination is not. If separation is needed, a recycling concept is challenging. The consequence is that this needs to be thought through already at design and concept level.”
Frueh noted that Brewer Sciences’ current smart devices and printed electronics programs offer sustainability through several key approaches.
“For instance, the smart devices have the ability to offer savings through reductions in energy, labor and even maintenance in a variety of applications. A few examples might include smart HVAC systems, production or process monitoring, and even smart buildings and facilities,” Frueh observed.
Frueh added that additive manufacturing is a sustainable means of production.
“Flexible and printed electronics play another means of sustainability through additive manufacturing – meaning only what you need where you need it,” Frueh noted. “This optimized approach to waste means a smaller total amount of materials only being used in the end product.”
Dr. Gity Samadi, SEMI FlexTech program manager, also noted that printing electronics is an additive process, and additive manufacturing equals less waste and potentially less demand for natural resources (e.g. water, electricity) and lower capital expenditures than traditional electronics manufacturing.
“Flexibility also brings functionality and provides more practical footprints for electronic devices,” Dr. Samadi noted. “Comparing the manufacturing processes for glass versus plastic, plastic also wins in energy efficiency. Once we have biodegradable and recycled plastic, it will further lower the energy equation and consumption of valuable raw materials.”
Kube said that there are several sustainability advantages to Heliatek’s organic solar solution.
“First, we use very few material inputs for producing our films,” Kube reported. “Our solar active area in total is only a few hundred nanometers thick. We do not use toxic heavy metals such as lead or cadmium, do not use rare earths and in general we use naturally abundant raw materials (carbon-based molecules). So we do not use scarce raw materials, but can synthesize the material we need with desired characteristics. It’s like a toolbox.
“We also think, that recycling at the end will be more environmentally friendly as with conventional PV based on the advantages mentioned above,” Kube observed.
Dr. Gerardo Hernandez-Sosa, group leader Printed Electronics Group at InnovationLab, noted that printing technology is a processing approach that is material efficient.
“By depositing the ink only in the place we need, waste is reduced,” observed Dr. Hernandez-Sosa. “Furthermore, by being a solution-based technique and using plastic substrates, most of the pre and post processing needed happens at low temperatures, reducing energy costs.”
Recycling and Reusing Flexible and Printed Electronics
There is work being done on creating flexible electronics products that can be recycled or reused, but Mildner noted that more needs to occur.
“My impression is that we need to do more,” said Mildner. “A clear concept which separates disposable and reusable parts, for instance for patches, is needed because of hygienic reasons but also due to sustainability.”
Imprint Energy’s flexible batteries can be recharged, which makes this a more sustainable solution.
“Our solution partners want a sustainable power source,” Ho said. “Our solid state battery, with a polymer-based electrolyte, gives them a greener solution with an extended life. You can make the battery smaller knowing you can cycle it multiple times.”
“Within SEMI FlexTech, sustainability was one of four topics for project funding, and we expect that emphasis to remain through future Requests for Proposals (RFPs),” said Dr. Samadi. “One proposed approach was to consider multi-use products rather than single-use disposables, for example, developing an electronic label which can be used multiple times rather than just once.”
“The Brewer Science smart devices and printed electronics program currently has several key focuses on recycling and reusability,” Frueh reported. “One of those is the goal that our products not become consumables. This brings the attention in certain applications on making our sensors not only recyclable or reusable, but also plug and play. Having the ability to rapidly exchange a component or sensor means a reduction not only in the total amount of waste, but in potential down-time, service contracts and overall ownership costs.”
“As we are just starting our series production, we are still in the evaluation process of the end-of-life treatment,” Kube noted. “With only using very small material amounts, there are no scarce or highly valuable materials in it, a recycling process that is economically and ecologically reasonable is the challenge. So, at the end it might be that incineration could be the most eco-friendly way at the end of life, because you even generate electricity by burning. Some recycling processes are quite resource and energy consuming, so it might not be as eco-friendly as it looks like.”
“The focus is on making PE or FHE devices compatible with existing recycling processes because the end-of-life scenario is mainly defined by the application context,” Le Blevennec said. “PE materials are being developed with a minimal ecologic footprint as a major development goal.”
Dr. Hernandez-Sosa said that for many of the plastic substrates in use, there are existing recycling procedures.
“For example, PET, which is used in plastic bottles, is a commonly used substrate whose post treatment is well established. In addition, there is a big industry around printing electronics on paper. Furthermore, there are research efforts to fabricate electronics on other biodegradable substrates,” added Dr. Hernandez-Sosa.
Challenges Ahead for Sustainability
There are numerous challenges ahead when it comes to sustainability. For example, Dr. Grupen-Shemansky said that SEMI believes the biggest challenges will be reducing the waste stream of critical solid-state components and creating a recyclable or biodegradable substrate material.
“We hope to create and build awareness of the possibilities and take a leadership position by potentially funding strong and viable projects on this topic,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky said. “In addition to projects, our public forums have focused more and more on sustainable electronics, efficient manufacturing and using the intelligence gained by smart manufacturing to adjust processes to use less water, less electricity and
reduce downtime.”
Le Blevennec said that the biggest challenge is to set the right scope of any life cycle analysis, as just looking at a section of the cycle results in a skewed picture.
“It is indeed important to determine to which extent the recyclability of products including/embedding printed electronics can be affected,” Le Blevennec added. “Sometimes it is not worth it for the environment to try to recycle 100% of materials at all costs (environmental and economic). Higher gains can be found by preventing food waste and improving supply chain logistics compared to the loss of recyclability of the packaging, for instance.
“All players along the value chain, or better the circular economy, need to work together in order to establish technologies that provide the best benefit while still being economically viable,” Le Blevennec noted.
Frueh sees several key challenges in the sustainability of flexible and printed electronics.
“One is the materials, mainly the heavy metals and fluorinated compounds found in many devices,” added Frueh. “Another is the infrastructure; this is a very cost-driven industry and there must be an incentive to recycle. Another challenge is the continued work and awareness around where and in what applications our products are used in.”
Kube sees end-of-life treatment as the biggest challenge ahead when it comes to sustainability in flexible and printed electronics.
“Probably the end-of-life treatment, to find an ecological and economic reasonable approach,” Kube added. “Organic electronics are still relatively young, but very different to standard electronics. They are mainly categorized like standard electronics in terms of regulations and requirements, but beside the functionality they are built very different inside. To reflect this in regulations and laws is a big challenge for the entire industry, we believe.”
Dr. Florian Ullrich, business developer with InnovationLab, said that the biggest challenge is to balance the overall lifecycle of the application, including knowing how many resources are in, how long it will be in operation and what will happen at the end-of-life stage.
“[You need a] comprehensive design of products that fit to the application, only producing an electronic product if there is a clear and balanced pathway for the end-of-life (e.g. recovery, recycling, biodegradation, etc.)” Dr. Ullrich added. “Doing this and making a profit is a challenging task.”
Imprint Energy’s batteries are made of zinc and manganese oxide, which is also a benefit in terms of environmental impact.
“More than 80% of a battery’s carbon footprint comes from how its key materials are mined or processed,” Ho concluded. “Zinc materials are at least three times lower in environmental impact to mine than lithium.
In theory, lithium could also be printed, but it is hypersensitive to the environment, so manufacturers need cleanrooms and dry rooms which require larger spaces and electricity overhead.”
How companies respond to these challenges is of great importance.
“The challenges around sustainability can best be approached from within, through joint commitments with our partners and customers,” said Frueh. “A great example has been some of our current work through grant-funded efforts, specific to the field of extended product life management.”
“We need to educate about the new technologies, their advantages and their differentiation to standard technologies. With more products from the organic electronics on the market, awareness will raise,” Kube added. “I think they can be a valuable element for a better and greener future. Our organic solar films will help to transform the energy generation towards cleaner solutions.”
Sustainability and the Future
Ultimately, flexible and printed electronics can play a role in creating a sustainable future.
“The smart IoT devices made with our batteries are real multipliers for sustainability impact,” Ho concluded. “Not only do our batteries and devices have a better carbon footprint themselves, but the applications they’re used in – like better shipping and less food waste – drive CO2 mitigation well beyond the devices themselves.”
Dr. Ullrich observed that most of the benefits will probably not come in the short term.
“As the technology is relatively new and companies compete for market coverage, sustainability is going to be in second or third place,” he added. “The risk of the cost-efficiency of PE is that it can produce waste really fast. On the other hand, cost and energy reduction by making use of light-weight components and reducing the usage of rare and poisonous materials like in conventional batteries with carbon-based inks helps.
“Furthermore, novel applications can at least contribute to more sustainability, e.g. in the case of battery health monitoring, where the usage of printed sensors can prolong battery lifetime by 30%. Having completely biodegradable electronics will certainly take some more years, but organic electronics carries this opportunity for the future,” Dr. Ullrich concluded.
Dr. Grupen-Shemansky noted that more sensors create a better world, and by making sensors active and available on flexible and printed substrates, it reduces inefficiencies across a host of commercial, industrial and military activities.
“Some of those inefficiencies are identifying failures before they catastrophically fail,” added Dr. Grupen-Shemansky. “Another would be monitoring health to identify potential issues and take steps for prevention earlier in ones’ life. In the field of logistics, there are many inefficiencies which sensors and lightweight antennas can prevent.”
Le Blevennec noted that printed electronics and flexible hybrid electronics enable completely new applications that are not possible with conventional electronics.
“The European Commission, through the European Green Deal, has recently highlighted the need to address the twin challenges of the green and digital transitions,” Le Blevennec added. “If driven by those multi-stakeholder collaborations, printed electronics could be considered as an enabler and be used to generate data that the sustainability ‘world’ need (e.g. track and trace product, actual product conditions …)
“Flexible and printed electronics have a vast opportunity to achieve future sustainability with the continued expansion and integration of sensors and smart devices,” Frueh concluded. “These devices will continue to develop and evolve, having a greater impact on the reduction of waste, energy, labor and the costs associated.”