There are plenty of technologies in the printed electronics field that deserve notice for their commercial or research potential. Three recent conferences offered a look at some of these innovative approaches. All in all, congratulations to all of the honorees.

LOPEC 2016, held in Munich, Germany, presented four honors: Heliatek (Best Prototype & New Product: OPV Building Facade); Hochschule München (Best Freestyle Demonstrator: Beer Coaster, and Public Choice Award); Sunflower Project (Best Publicly Funded Project Demonstrator: OPV Living Room); and Papier-Machine (Best Printed Electronics Vision: Printed electronics paper games).

Printed Electronics Europe also presented four awards: BASF (Best Technical Development Materials Award); BotFactory, Inc. (Best Technical Development Manufacturing Award); NSF Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing, Northeastern University (Academic R&D Award); and Cartamundi, Holst Centre and imec (Best Product Development Award).

CPES2016, Canada’s Printable, Flexible and Wearable Electronics Symposium, gave out two honors: Myant & Co. (CPES2016 Product Innovation Award) and Memtronik Innovations. (CPES2016 Commercialization Award).

Top-flight judges selected these award winners, and all of these projects deserve recognition. Along the way, I’ve come across a few of these products, and I do think there is promise. Heliatek is one of the few of the early organic photovoltaic (OPV) manufacturers still around, and their HeliaFilm OPV films are receiving attention due to some high-visibility projects.

Myant & Co. has just launched Vagalume, a line of wearable apparel utilizing electroluminescent lighting for safety. I saw some samples during CPES2016 that look promising.

The Cartamundi-Holst Centre-imec collaboration is particularly interesting. I wrote this about 11 months ago here. Cartamundi, the world’s largest manufacturer of playing and gaming cards, sees the potential for bringing these games online. With the help of its collaborators, Cartamundi is developing a way of producing playing and trading cards that incorporate RFID using metal oxide technology on plastic, which will achieve an ultra-thin form factor and flexibility at a cost that allows commercialization. This is a product well worth watching.