IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe 2008 Awards Announced

Over 600 delegates from 28 countries were present at the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe event last week in Dresden - the industries largest event on the topic. The event featured the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Awards in recognition of outstanding achievement. The awards were given at the gala dinner on April 7th. The categories and winners are:

1) Technical Development Device Award Winner: LG Displays
2) Technical Development Manufacturing Award Winner: Hewlett Packard and PowerFilm Solar
3) Technical Development Materials Award Winner: Ciba
4) Best New Product Development Award Winner: PolyIC
5) Best Commercialization Award Winner: GSI Technologies
6) Printed Electronics Europe champion: Wolfgang Mildner, CEO, PolyIC

The independent panel of judges comprised of Prof. Bill Milner, Director, Centre for Advanced Photonics & Electronics - University of Cambridge; Prof. Karl Leo, Institut fuer Angewandte Photophysik; Prof. Edgar Dorsam - Technische Universitat Darmstadt; and Dr Peter Harrop, IDTechEx.

LG Displays won the IDTechEx Technical Development Device Award for the World’s highest resolution 14.3-inch flexible color e-paper display. It has a resolution of 2560 by 1600 sub-pixels and the ability to display nearly 16.7 million colors. This display uses electronic ink between Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on a thin stainless-steel-foil substrate and Color Filter Array coated onto the plastic substrate, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent as well as to produce color images. To make this new display possible proprietary processing technologies that minimize panel deformation and prevent circuit structure change during high-temperature processes were developed.

Hewlett Packard and PowerFilm Solar won the award for best Technical Development in Manufacturing, after taking Self Aligned Imprint Lithography all the way into a fully roll-to-roll process. Bottom gate TFTs with both amorphous silicon and zinc tin oxide have been created. Winner Carl Taussig, from HP Labs, reports, “Not only does our solution eliminate the need for any alignments, but it eliminates the costly photolithography process which dominates the cost of conventional active matrix backplane manufacturing.”