The field of thin, organic and large area electronics (TOLAE) is of much interest to flexible and printed electronics researchers and manufacturers. While there are plenty of potentially excellent ideas being developed, reaching the full potential of these systems by creating the production capabilities remains an obstacle.
 
This is where InSCOPE comes into play. InSCOPE is an H2020 financed project whose goal is advancing printed electronics demonstrators to production prototypes. To that end, InSCOPE has selected four showcases to show the possibilities of printed electronics: automotive, medical, smart packaging and smart buildings.
 
InSCOPE features five leading European R&D institutes: TNO (Netherlands), CEA (France), CPI (UK), imec (Belgium), VTT (Finland) and WPK (Spain), with management and dissemination support of AMI (Czech Republic). Corne Rentrop of TNO serves as the coordinator of the InSCOPE project.
 
“While there is no shortage of TOLAE (thin, organic and large area electronics) concept ideas and product prototypes related to automotive, healthcare, smart packaging and buildings, the available production capability and functionality maturity for realizing these products in the required numbers is lacking worldwide,” Rentrop added. “Consequently, qualifying materials and manufacturing processes or evaluating products in an operational environment are not accessible to end-users interested in this technology.”
 
And that is where the idea for InSCOPE project comes in. In order to facilitate the market introduction of printed electronics devices, production processes need to be ready for large scale pilot production and accessible to all interested parties. In parallel, performance and reliability of product prototypes need to be demonstrated in relevant conditions.
 
Rentrop said that InSCOPE will provide a comprehensive complementary toolbox for hybrid printed electronics manufacturing processes, set up service infrastructure to enable 15 development cases during the project, and demonstrate its commercial viability by presenting four showcases that will show hybrid printed electronics capabilities in large volume markets. To aid in these goals, InSCOPE has set up an open access pilot line infrastructure for hybrid TOLAE devices that has been operational since January 2018.
 
“The InSCOPE pilot line will provide prototyping for hybrid TOLAE products commercialized by wide range of SMEs addressing mainly healthcare, building, automotive and smart packaging sectors,” Rentrop observed, adding that the InSCOPE solution lowered costs by 80%.
 
“A generic feature of SME motivation to integrate hybrid TOLAE process is: a) fast access to prototypes, b) lower manufacturing costs, and c) increased functionality,” he added. “The preliminary selection includes products for developing market segments (e.g. personal food testing, continuous pregnancy monitoring, registered post envelope) and high value additions to product on established markets (e.g. tire/fleet monitoring, bike lighting). Overall these companies have potential to generate revenues over €60 million by hybrid TOLAE enabled products, which will significantly strengthen the European position in hybrid TOLAE production and market applications.”
 
The four showcases that InSCOPE has selected are promising. The partners are working with Philips Lighting on consumer interacting lighting foils for interior housing; haptic sensors for automotive dashboards with Bosch; interactive media surfaces in elevators with Kone; and smart pharmaceutical packaging with GSK.
 
“All showcases are built up in three generations that will improve on manufacturability (Philips Lighting, Kone, GSK) and functionality (Bosch, Philips Lighting, Kone),” Rentrop said, noting that these products can be commercialized.
 
Rentrop said that each of the R&D institutes brings its expertise as well as state-of-the-art equipment to the consortium. For example, VTT offers flexo printing, Holst Centre has roll-to-roll screen printing, CPI provides volume electrical component assembly with a TAL15,000 Muehlbauer and in-mold electronics at Walterpack.
 
“The first hybrid printed electronics prototypes have been provided,” Rentrop added. “These include new equipment base and process flow that enabled higher throughputs and substantial costs reductions compared to conventional fabrication means. Second, it has brought new functionalities, including large area electronic functionalities, interactive surfaces and actuators, resulting in improvements in thickness, flexibility, stretchability and shapeability of electronics.”
 
InSCOPE has already created some successful prototypes, such as the project with Kone Corporation. Through the use of roll-to-roll manufacturing, InSCOPE and Kone produced a smart LED media grid, with sensing, lighting and haptic feedback functionalities, creating an interactive media surface within an elevator. It offers decorative, advertising and guidance functionalities.
 
“We were looking for large scale production using printed electronics solutions, and the InSCOPE project has given us the opportunity to study, share visions and needs based on these technologies,” said Jukka Korpihete, senior lighting design specialist at Kone, which will further test the prototype.
 
To learn more about production guidelines for printed electronics, InSCOPE created the public design handbook of the pilot line available from the project website at http://inscope-project.eu/handbook/.

The flexible LED display, shown in PRINSE2018 and at LOPEC 2018. (Source: InSCOPE)