Since it was founded in 1970 by Xerox Corporation, the Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, has played a key role in changing the way people live. Considering the everyday items that PARC had a hand in inventing – laser printing, liquid crystal displays (LCD), graphical user interface and the Ethernet to name but a few – PARC is in a unique position to develop new innovations.

The fact that PARC is heavily interested in the field of printed electronics (PE) is of note, as the independent institute – it spun out of Xerox in 2002 – has a history of success. The company has been interested in the potential of thin film electronics, developing printed thin-film transistors utilizing amorphous silicon on flexible substrates as early as 1983, and created some of the first plastic semiconductors in 2003.

Leon Wong, PARC director, market strategy, noted that PARC has formed partnerships in a number of markets where PE can play a role.

“Right now, we are working on a number of applications with a number of partners, including smart labels (e.g. Thin Film Electronics ASA), wearables (e.g. DARPA blast sensor, Air Force’s NBMC), on demand printed circuits (e.g. JPL Printed Spacecraft) and mass printed packaging (e.g. Sonoco Institute, packaging),” Wong said.

PARC has developed strong experience in materials science and in printing, which are both suited to the PE space. The results have been successful: in conjunction with Thin Film Electronics, PARC received the 2013 FlexTech Alliance Innovation Award for the world’s first working prototype of a printed, non-volatile memory device addressed with complementary organic circuits, the equivalent of CMOS circuitry.

“We continue to expand our materials library, adding more circuits and sensors,” Wong said. “A world-class library enables customers to realize their creativity. We are maturing our gravure printing capability to further enable customers to take prototypes to roll-to-roll based mass production, and we are working on integrated object printing (structure + electronics). Gravure printing helps bridge the gap between prototype and mass manufacturing. Integrated object printing could disrupt supply chains.”

As a result of PARC’s background in commercializing technologies, the institute’ team of experts know an opportunity when they see it.

“PARC has broad and deep expertise across many technologies, industries and fields,” Wong said. “Having 40+ years experience, with 10+ of them dedicated in open innovation, we understand how to create technologies that will be commercialized and will work in today’s landscape. We practice open innovation, which means we work deeply with government and commercial organizations to help them take their products/services to the next level and thus successfully commercialize them.

“PARC’s years of print innovations has furnished us with the ability to explore and deliver an array of game-changing opportunities,” Wong noted. “We can now print batteries from multiple materials at once through our CoEx technology. We have partnered with Thinfilm for smart labels that contain one or two sensors or perhaps a dozen transistors to track, for example, the temperature of a product in the supply chain.

“We are also working on mass manufacturing of roll-to-roll printed circuits, using presses similar to those used for printing packaging,” Wong added. “In fact, adding electronics features directly to packaging is of high interest and, of course, wearables are another huge opportunity we are exploring. And one of our most ambitious projects is with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working toward a vision that will enable on-demand printing of electronic devices on a space station.

Understandably, Wong is optimistic on the opportunities ahead for printed electronics..

“We are bullish, of course,” he said. “The applications are/can be endless. We think about PE in terms of adding intelligence to everything, e.g., the internet of things. These sensors will be cheap and disposable, so they can be on/in anything to help us in many ways (e.g., wearables will be helpful, bandages to detect temperature, to see quickly the temperature as our kids sleep, as one example).

“Just like the historical progression of printing, we will get there step by step, starting with simple applications,” Wong concluded. “Today we are at a similar stage as silicon transistors were in the 1960s, where their first major use was in the transistor radio, not the computer as many of us assume. We are encouraged that these first ‘good enough’ applications of printing electronics are taking off. We ultimately believe the future of printed electronics will be both on your desktop and on a space station, too.”