BPN 1266 Finland in search of social media (2)

Finland is always a country of innovation to me. This time Cai had tipped me about printed electronics, which is under development in Tampere. Cai even thinks that it is another Nokia company in the method works as follows: Ink is fed from ink reservoir to printhead; a piezotransducer gives a pressure pulse; the pulse travels to nozzle orifice and ink droplet is ejected; the transducer is controlled with binary (on-off) signal according to printed image.



By using the method for printing electronics a range of applications is opened (see illustration). And having listened to the young and ambitious Matti Mäntysalo of the Department of Electronics of Tampere University of Technology, I tend to believe him. The focus of his group Vicinics is on the area of microelectronic solutions by printing.

Way out is the application of the mono-logger in the boots of a skier. The mono-logger receives measurement data from sensor attached to the bottom of ski-jump boot and stores the covered data to the memory card to which it is attached. The mono-logger is installed inside the boot as the picture on right shows. Measurement data can be retrieved from the memory card after the jump. The memory card is installed so that it is easy to release and replace. Thanks to flexibility provided by the polyimide film the mono-logger done with printable electronics is easier to install inside the boot than the old version. Flexible installation of the mono-logger also makes it possible to thinner the epoxymold (blue-coloured part on the picture) furthermore making the boot lighter.

Another demonstration of printable Electronics with a functional application is in the area of displays such as e-ink. Target is that the demo application serves as a technology platform for further development with a modular design and it is customizable. Manufacturing of this demo application provides design guidelines and experience for system design of printable electronics. Environmental issues between traditional electronics manufacturing and printable electronics are compared based on the demo application.

Blog Posting Number 1266

Tags: printing, electronics