Darmstadt University, Heidelberg Extend 'Functional Printing' Research Program

"The applications we're developing on this modular platform are then transferred to the Heidelberg sheetfed press sector to ensure our Speedmaster customers can also benefit from them," explains Dr. Martin Schmitt-Lewen, project manager at Heidelberg for the cooperation project with the IDD.

Applications outside the print media environment
Further applications are possible outside the print media sector. This applies in particular to the up-and-coming area of organic electronics. The fields for applications here are even wider and more varied. Examples include organic photovoltaics, OLED (organic light emitting diode) systems for displays and illumination, sensor technology, and applications relating to electrical/electronic circuits with transistors, for instance.

These topics are being covered by Heidelberg in a further research project that is also being conducted in partnership with the IDD and is backed by a large research association publicly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Heidelberg's role, in collaboration with the IDD, is cross-functional, spanning various applications and including the development of (print) processes for thin layers. This is putting the development of "functional printing" on an even broader footing and may subsequently also open up new areas of application outside the print media world.

This activity, which aims at developing new processes for manufacturing organic electronics, is a key project in the "Organic Electronics Forum" cluster of excellence. This is a cooperation network of three DAX companies, eight large international enterprises, five SMEs, and eleven research institutes and institutions of higher education, including two elite universities.

The objectives of the cluster of excellence are to create a world-beating research, development, and production site for organic electronics, one of the most attractive locations for current and future specialists, and the world's leading center of innovation for knowledge transfer and company startups. The 27 enterprises, institutions of higher education, and research institutes are working together on the research projects, which are receiving funding from the BMBF to the tune of EUR 40 million, in the future technology of organic electronics.