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Printable electronics may be defined as the use of printing technologies to create electronic circuits and devices. Both conductive organic polymer inks and nanometallic inks are being used and the printing processes being deployed are either traditional ones -- such as gravure and offset -- or industrial strength ink-jet printing.

It promises improved economics for certain kinds of circuitry. And it promises new business models which could reshape some areas of the semiconductor industry. Inevitably each of these areas also presents important challenges:

Printable electronics promise #1 -- Something new under the sun. Because -- at least in theory -- circuitry can be printed onto many kinds of substrates, printable electronics can be used to create entirely novel products. The paradigmatic example of this is a display that can be rolled up in much the same way as a newspaper can be rolled up.

There are two issues that must be dealt with to turn the promise of innovative new products into a reality. The easier to tackle is technical. Although prototypes exist, many of the most interesting printed electronics products lie a year or two away in terms of volume production, simply because of various problems with materials, equipment or product design. Nobody really disputes that these problems will be quickly solvable, however. Just a year or two back, there were significant problems with developing stable organic inks for printable electronics. Today, while there is always room for improvement, this issue is no longer a factor holding back the development of printable electronics.

We believe that a greater challenge for the evolution of radically new printable electronics is likely to emerge from the marketing perspective. If we use printable electronics build a better display, RFID or solar panel will the market salute? Portable book readers with flexible displays sound like a good idea. But will they be the next fad product for teenagers, selling in the millions, or a niche product for bibliophiles and academics? Or will they simply be an idea that whose time has not yet come, and may never come?. Similarly, several firms are betting that printable electronics can deliver RFID tags for 1 or 2 cents per unit. This could provide a serious competitive challenge to barcodes. But RFID tags have already proved harder to implement at the pallet level and it may be decided by some potential users that RFIDs on everything is simply something that is not worth having.

Printable electronics promise #2 --Better economics for electronics with printing. The pattern with conventional electronics has been for circuitry to be produced at very low costs only when very high volumes are produced. In addition, the upfront costs for a modern CMOS fab is in the several million dollars range at the 65 nm and 45 nm nodes, which represents the leading edge in the semiconductor industry. Because it does not use masks, and therefore does not have to account for the upfront costs of mask making-- ink-jet printing promises circuits created at an almost individual level and almost any kind of electronics printing factory will involve significantly less than a leading edge fab.

This is the rosy picture that is usually portrayed in some trade press articles and in PR handouts. It is largely true, but leaves things out:

• Any maskless approach to producing electronics would reduce the upfront costs of production of circuitry substantially compared to standard photolithography. But ink-jet printing is not the only such maskless process that shows potential. There are others -- such as dip-pen lithography -- that are not usually characterized as printing.

• It quite true that the cost of printing machinery used for circuitry is typically less expensive than leading edge semiconductor equipment. But at the same time, it is not possible to produce complex circuitry using printing techniques, because resolution issues make it impossible to produce densely packed circuits. A printable Pentium, as it were, is not in the cards and may never be. So while some semiconductor equipment is now priced in the tens of millions of dollars, this is for leading edge equipment that produces ICs that could probably never see competition from printable electronics. Standard semiconductor equipment capable of producing chips with a similar level of integration to those that printable electronics is interested in might cost millions of dollars. But this would be comparable to the high-end roll-to-roll printable electronics machines that are now beginning to move into certain pilot plants. While there are ink-jet printers capable of producing electronic circuitry and priced at a few hundred thousand dollars, these are mostly for R&D applications only.

Printable electronics promise #2 --New Business Models. New business models suggest themselves as the result of printable electronics. Ink-jet printing for example, may be the precursor of some of the digital manufacturing trends that some observers will enable "desktop manufacturing" of various kinds. It is possible to imagine that having designed circuitry, it will be possible for an engineer to feed information from a file to the printer and have it spit out a prototype. However, it is hard to believe that this kind of thing would generate huge revenues. One could imagine a Kinko's in San Jose offering this kind of service, but not one in Gary, Indiana.

1.1 Objectives of this Report

Printable electronics provides fascinating potentials that could transform significantly the way that many important electronics products are currently produced. At the same time, there are many problems -- some niggling some serious -- that stand in the way of the printable electronics vision being realized. With this in mind, this report sets out to answer several important questions:

What is the likely cost/performance capabilities of printable electronics and how will this evolve over time? This question is discussed throughout the report in terms of how cost/performance characteristics match market needs.

Where are the main opportunities in the printable electronics space? This report determines just where the new business revenues are going to come from in printed electronics and quantifies these opportunities in the form of market projections. A key part of our thinking in this regard is that it is of prime importance to be precise about the product that is being forecast. We have seem much discussion about the potential and timeframes for "printable displays," but little attempt to pin down whether one is talking about tiny displays for smart packaging or large television displays. Both may -- and probably will -- be printable products. But they have different timetables, price points and users . . . just to mention a few differences.

Will printable electronics provide opportunities for the traditional printing industry? The printing industry is quite mature and always on the lookout for growth businesses it can enter. In this report, we discuss whether printable electronics has this kind of potential or whether its connections to the printing industry are merely superficial in strategic terms.

How will printable electronics evolve? NanoMarkets believes that printable electronics is in need of a good roadmap that takes into consideration ongoing production problems and also the differences within product groups that are explained above. Such a roadmap is provided towards the end of this report. We believe that this will be helpful to all participants in the emerging printable electronics industry, but will be especially helpful to firms considering entering this sector. While researching this report, NanoMarkets analysts talked with an executive at a major VC firm who told us that "the big firms who can ultimately make or break this market are interested, but don't know yet. . . They are scratching their heads and [saying] do we care?" A roadmap of the kind presented in this report should go quite some way to answering this question.

How will the characteristics of underlying addressable markets that printable electronics attempting to reach impact printable electronics? Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a major issue for some of the manufacturers with whom we spoke as part of our research. For example, when we talked with firms in the RFID sector, they had differing views about the timeframes for printable RFIDs, but the differences were mostly on technical grounds. We found little concern with the many factors that could delay (or promote) RFID markets as whole and thus delay or speed up the markets they were attempting to serve.

What are the main strategies of the leading materials, equipment and device firms in this space? We believe that the printable electronics industry is now at a sufficiently evolved state to identify key players that are likely to dominate some of the sectors in the industry. With this in mind, we have discussed -- and assessed - the strategies of leading firms active in this sector.

Taken as a whole, this report provides a critical analysis of the printable electronics vision and of the value proposition that printable electronics brings to the table. It is intended to be a guide for business strategists, marketing and business development executives, product managers and technologists within electronics companies, specialty chemical and materials firms, printing and printing equipment companies, and electronic manufacturing equipment firms. It is also designed for investment banks, venture capitalists and internal investment teams that are looking at investments in printable electronics.

1.2 Scope of this Report

1.2.1 Products and Technologies Covered

It is more or less impossible to discuss to discuss the evolution of printable electronics without taking a look at developments at all segments of the value chain. We cannot predict what kinds of printable electronics will hit the market without understanding the capabilities of the relevant printing equipment and conductive inks and how that will change over time. Conversely, understanding the likely underlying demand for the various products that may have achieve printability in the timeframe considered in this report tells us much about the markets for equipment and materials. With this in mind, we have discussed opportunities for materials, equipment and electronics/semiconductor firms throughout this report.

That said the actual forecasts for the markets presented here are for the end products of plastic electronics. That is electronics products produced by using a conventional printing process -- such as offset -- or ink-jet printing, and using either conductive polymer inks or metallic nanoparticle inks (which are typically silver-based). Products covered in this report include:

• Displays
  
• RFIDs
  
• Photovoltaic panels
  
• Sensors
  
• Membrane keyboard
  
• Toys, greetings cards and other novelties
  
• Smart cards, ticketing and other kinds of disposable electronics
  
• Memory
  
• Logic and processors.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

E.1 Introduction
E.1.1 The Joys of Printability
E.1.2 Printable Electronics, Its Limits and Moore’s Law
E.2 Summary of Main Opportunities and Strategies
E.2.1 Short-Term Opportunities
E.2.1.1 Printable Display Products
E.2.1.2 Printable RFID Cards
E.2.1.3 Other Near-Term Products
E.2.2 Emerging Products
E.2.3 Impact on the Printing Industry
E.2.4 Impact on the Existing Semiconductor and Electronics Industry
E.2.5 Leading Firms Active in the Printable Electronics Sector
E.3 Summary of Forecasts
E.4 Coda: Hype and Glory

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Background
1.2 Objectives of this Report
1.3 Scope of this Report
1.3.1 Products and Technologies Covered
1.3.2 Printable, Flexible and Plastic Electronics—They are Not All The Same
1.4 Methodology of this Report
1.5 Plan of this Report

Chapter Two: The Technology of Printable Electronics

2.1 Introduction: Open Questions for Printable Electronics
2.1.1 The Limits of Printable Electronics
2.2 Conventional Printing Methods and Printable Electronics
2.2.1 New Opportunities for the Printing Industry
2.3 Ink-Jet Printing: Current Status and Future Directions
2.3.2 Other Firms
2.3.6 The Dearth and Price of Production Level Machines
2.4 Nano-Imprint Lithography
2.5 The Role of Laser Imaging
2.6 3-D Printing Technologies
2.7 Materials for Printable Electronics

Chapter Three: New Products Enabled by Printable Electronics

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Displays, Flexibility and Electronic Paper
3.3 RFIDs
3.4 Photovoltaic Arrays, Batteries and Fuel Cells
3.5 Sensors
3.6 Smart Cards, Tickets and Other Disposables
3.7 Membrane Keyboards
3.8 Toys, Novelties and Greetings Cards
3.9 Lighting Products
3.10 Memory, Logic and Processors
3.10.1 Can We Make Faster Plastic Transistors?
3.10.2 Are Memories an Opportunity?

Chapter Four: Market Forecasts for Printable Electronics

4.1 Forecasting Philosophy
4.2 A Roadmap for Printable Electronics
4.3 Eight-Year Forecasts

List of Exhibits

Exhibit E-1: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Printable Electronics
Exhibit E-2: Paths to Success in Printed Electronics
Exhibit E-3: Novel Products Enabled by Printable Electronics
Exhibit E-4: Selected Firms Active in the Printable Electronics Segment
Exhibit E-5: Summary of the Printable Electronics Market Forecasts
Exhibit 2-1: Printable Electronics: Opportunities and Challenges for the Printing Industry
Exhibit 3-1: Alternative Kinds of Printable Display Products
Exhibit 3-2: Impact of Printable Electronics on Display Products
Exhibit 3-3: CDT’s Licensee’s and Technology Partners
Exhibit 3-4: Alternatives for Mobile Power
Exhibit 3-5: Uses for Smartcards with Printable Displays
Exhibit 4-1: A Roadmap For Printable Electronics
Exhibit 4-2: The Market for Printable Displays: 2005-2012
Exhibit 4-3: The Market for Printable RFIDs: 2005-2012
Exhibit 4-4: The Market for Printable Photovoltaics
Exhibit 4-5: Other Markets for Printable Electronics