Even as flexible and printed electronics products begin to reach commercialization, other projects remain on the drawing board. Manufacturers and suppliers offer their thoughts on what challenges that remain ahead for the technology.

“The most challenging hurdles always seem to be identifying the optimum materials set (carrier + inks) that will then perform per the customer requirements, and at a customer’s ‘target’ price,” said Jaye Tyler, president/CEO, Si-Cal Technologies Inc. A Nissha Company.

“We generally face different challenges at different stages of client involvement,” said Stan Farnsworth, VP of marketing at NovaCentrix. “In the early stages of engagement, we often play the role of technology educators, helping to inspire our clients to reach beyond their normal application constraints. Then, as we work more specifically at the project level, we help our clients innovate in applying our photonic curing or conductive ink products to their efforts. We get into the details of operating our PulseForge tools, or in using our Metalon or PChem inks, to deliver the full potential those capabilities. Our applications engineers prioritize transferring their expert knowledge to our clients. As projects evolve, the client interests evolve as well. Scale-up and production teams for example begin to place extra value on the exposure uniformity from our PulseForge tools, as well as the ability for the R&D tools and the production tools to share the same exposure conditions.”

“We are paying special attention to the interactions and support required both at the convertor and brand level,” said Roy Bjorlin, commercial director, Electronic Materials, Sun Chemical. “The most challenging hurdle for T+Sun to overcome is through application support and support of the functional aspects of supply and technical service. Each is critically important.”

PragmatIC Printing CEO Scott White said that the most challenging aspects are typically getting a clear definition of exactly what customers want to achieve using the technology.
    
“In many cases, these applications have not been seriously considered before,” White noted. “This tends to be an iterative process of prototyping concepts which then stimulate discussions regarding more precise product definition.
    
Another challenge has been constructing the correct ecosystem for each application. “Once the target product is defined, it then usually requires other technology components and supply chain partners,” White added.

Mark Litecky of  Soligie Printed Electronics, Molex, said that one of the biggest challenges has been obtaining a comprehensive set of functional requirements and use case scenarios from customers.

“These requirements and scenarios are essential, because our solutions are developed using novel technologies that may require a different approach or a new way of specifying technical requirements,” Litecky noted. “In other words, to realize the full value that flexible and printed electronics can provide, we work with our customers to break the paradigm of old design habits and practices.”
    
“Many of the most challenging hurdles today are related to educating partners and customers about printed electronics,” said Jennifer Ernst, Thin Film Electronics’ chief strategy officer. “And that process also involves helping them determine if printed electronics is for them and, if so, how related technologies and products can assist them in addressing key business needs and challenges.”

“The most important challenge has been the lack of suitable manufacturing capacity,” said. Anja Talo, sales director, Enfucell Oy.

“One thing that drives us to print better sensors is environmental stability,” said Kirk Hutton, sales and marketing manager for Tangio Printed Electronics. “This is something that we see as we move into more automotive applications. The challenging hurdle is then to design repeatable testing scenarios, and make sure you are on the same page as your customer.”

TempTraq, a spin out of Blue Spark Technologies, is a wearable wireless thermometer in the form of a soft patch. It continuously monitors body temperature for 24 hours, sending alerts via a unique code to Apple or Android compatible mobile devices. TempTraq is available at Amazon.com, Diapers.com and Costco.com, among others.

“Oddly enough, the biggest challenges had nothing to do with printed or flexible electronics,” Matt Ream, VP marketing, Blue Spark Technologies. “The driving force behind us developing an end use product is the fact that there just were not many qualified printed electronic designers or systems integrators. We had been evangelizing the use of our printed battery technology in a variety of vertically integrated applications for years. At the end of the day, we are taking on the systems integration role for the majority of our customers. When we came up with the idea for TempTraq, it was an idea that was just too good to give to someone else. For us, the integration of the electronics was fairly straightforward.

“The real challenge for us was developing and qualifying an FDA Class II medical device,” Ream continued. “Most of us had come from the B2B space, working mostly in printed electronics and RFID. Developing a medical device was a new challenge for us. Digital thermometers are classified by the FDA as a Class II medical device, which requires an FDA 510(k) clearance before you can market the product. We brought in some consultants to help us with the early work and our 510(k) submission and then hired our own in-house FDA resource who had extensive medical device regulatory, manufacturing and quality system experience. It was quite a journey.

“From a technical perspective, you would have thought that engineering something like the Blue Tooth low energy radio or antenna would have been the biggest hurdle,” Ream added. “From a consumer’s perspective, these are things they don’t see, but just expect to work. The tricky one was the skin-facing adhesive. We often describe TempTraq as a thermometer in the form of a Band-Aid. As you can imagine, the first though when you think of a Band-Aid is ‘is this thing going to hurt?’ TempTraq was designed for people of all ages. This means anywhere from newborns to elderly people, both of which can have very sensitive and sometimes brittle skin. We absolutely did not want to hurt anyone, and ultimately found a very safe, gentle adhesive that’s really comfortable to wear.”

“Pretty much everything is challenging until you come up with an optimal solution and then the challenge seems simple in hindsight,” Keith McMillen, founder and CEO of BeBop Sensors, said. “Some of the techniques we have mastered include electronics packages embedded directly in the fabric, performance consistency at high volumes, extreme low pressure sensitivity, more. Fabric is the new silicon, so everything has to be invented.”