The Flexible Electronics Opportunity

Flexible electronics describes circuits that can bend and stretch, enabling significant versatility in applications and the prospect of low-cost manufacturing processes. They represent an important technological advance, in terms of their performance characteristics and potential range of applications, ranging from medical care, packaging, lighting and signage, consumer electronics and alternative energy (especially solar energy.) What these technologies have in common is a dependence on efficient manufacturing that currently requires improved technology, processes, tooling, and materials, as well as ongoing research. Seeking to capture the global market opportunity in flexible electronics, major U.S. competitors have initiated dedicated programs that are large in scope and supported with significant government funding to develop and acquire these new technologies, refine them, and ultimately manufacture them within their national borders. These national and regional investments are significantly larger than U.S. investment and more weighted toward later stage applied research and development. The Flexible Electronics Opportunity examines and compares selected innovation programs both foreign and domestic, and their potential to advance the production of flexible electronics technology in the United States. This report reviews the goals, concept, structure, operation, funding levels, and evaluation of foreign programs similar to major U.S. programs, e.g., innovation awards, S&T parks, and consortia. The report describes the transition of flexible electronics research into products and to makes recommendations to improve and to develop U.S. programs. Through an examination of the role of research consortia around the world to advance flexible electronics technology, the report makes recommendations for steps that the U.S. might consider to develop a robust industry in the United States. Significant U.S. expansion in the market for flexible electronics technologies is not likely to occur in the absence of mechanisms to address investment risks, the sharing of intellectual property, and the diverse technology requirements associated with developing and manufacturing flexible electronics technologies. The Flexible Electronics Opportunity makes recommendations for collaboration among industry, universities, and government to achieve the critical levels of investment and the acceleration of new technology development that are needed to catalyze a vibrant flexible electronics industry.

Flexible Electronics for Security, Manufacturing, and Growth in the United States is the summary of a workshop convened in September 2010 by Policy and Global Affairs' Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy to review challenges, plans, and opportunities for growing a robust flexible electronics industry in the United States. Business leaders, academic experts, and senior government officials met to review the role of research consortia around the world to advance flexible electronics technology. Presenters and participants sought to understand their structure, focus, funding, and likely impact, and to determine what appropriate steps the United States might consider to develop a robust flexible electronics industry. Flexible electronics refers to technologies that enable flexibility in the manufacturing process as well as flexibility as a characteristic of the final product. Features such as unconventional forms and ease of manufacturability provide important advantages for flexible electronics over conventional electronics built on rigid substrates. Today, examples of flexible electronics technologies are found in flexible flat-panel displays, medical image sensors, photovoltaic sheets, and electronic paper. Some industry experts predict that the market for global flexible electronics will experience a double digit growth rate, reaching $250 billion by 2025, but most experts believe that the United States is not currently poised to capitalize on this opportunity. Flexible Electronics for Security, Manufacturing, and Growth in the United States examines and compares selected innovation programs, both foreign and domestic, and their potential to advance the production of flexible electronics technology.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the recent development of flexible electronics. This is a fast evolving research field and tremendous progress has been made in the past decade. In this book, new material development and novel flexible device, circuit design, fabrication and characterizations will be introduced. Particularly, recent progress of nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, semiconductor nanowires, nanofibers, for flexible electronic applications, assembly of nanomaterials for large scale device and circuitry, flexible energy devices, such as solar cells and batteries, etc, will be introduced. And through reviewing these cutting edge research, the readers will be able to see the key advantages and challenges of flexible electronics both from material and device perspectives, as well as identify future directions of the field.

From materials to applications, this ready reference covers the entire value chain from fundamentals via processing right up to devices, presenting different approaches to large-area electronics, thus enabling readers to compare materials, properties and performance. Divided into two parts, the first focuses on the materials used for the electronic functionality, covering organic and inorganic semiconductors, including vacuum and solution-processed metal-oxide semiconductors, nanomembranes and nanocrystals, as well as conductors and insulators. The second part reviews the devices and applications of large-area electronics, including flexible and ultra-high-resolution displays, light-emitting transistors, organic and inorganic photovoltaics, large-area imagers and sensors, non-volatile memories and radio-frequency identification tags. With its academic and industrial viewpoints, this volume provides in-depth knowledge for experienced researchers while also serving as a first-stop resource for those entering the field.

What Is Flexible Electronics Mounting electronic components on flexible plastic substrates, such as polyimide, PEEK, or transparent conductive polyester film, is the method used in the technology known as flexible electronics, which is also known as flex circuits. This method is used to assemble electronic circuits. In addition to this method, silver circuits may be screen printed on polyester to create flex circuits. It is possible to build flexible electronic assemblies using the same components that are used to produce rigid printed circuit boards. This gives the board the ability to adapt to any desired shape and to bend while it is in use. How You Will Benefit (I) Insights, and validations about the following topics: Chapter 1: Flexible electronics Chapter 2: Organic electronics Chapter 3: Printed circuit board Chapter 4: BoPET Chapter 5: Roll-to-roll processing Chapter 6: Lamination Chapter 7: FR-4 Chapter 8: Polyimide Chapter 9: Thin film Chapter 10: Membrane switch Chapter 11: Diffusion barrier Chapter 12: Flexible flat cable Chapter 13: Power electronic substrate Chapter 14: Tape-automated bonding Chapter 15: Printed electronics Chapter 16: IPC (electronics) Chapter 17: Thermal copper pillar bump Chapter 18: Integrated passive devices Chapter 19: Film capacitor Chapter 20: Stéphanie P. Lacour Chapter 21: Glossary of microelectronics manufacturing terms (II) Answering the public top questions about flexible electronics. (III) Real world examples for the usage of flexible electronics in many fields. (IV) 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technologies in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of flexible electronics' technologies. Who This Book Is For Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of flexible electronics.

Flexible Electronics platforms are increasingly used in the fields of sensors, displays, and energy conversion with the ultimate goal of facilitating their ubiquitous integration in our daily lives. Some of the key advantages associated with flexible electronic platforms are: bendability, lightweight, elastic, conformally shaped, nonbreakable, roll-to-roll manufacturable, and large-area. To realize their full potential, however, it is necessary to develop new methods for the fabrication of multifunctional flexible electronics at a reduced cost and with an increased resistance to mechanical fatigue. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase short communications, research papers, and review articles that focus on novel methodological development for the fabrication, and integration of flexible electronics in healthcare, environmental monitoring, displays and human-machine interactivity, robotics, communication and wireless networks, and energy conversion, management, and storage.

Provides the state-of-the-art on wearable technology for smart clothing The book gives a coherent overview of recent development on flexible electronics for smart clothing with emphasis on wearability and durability of the materials and devices. It offers detailed information on the basic functional components of the flexible and wearable electronics including sensing, systems-on-a-chip, interacting, and energy, as well as the integrating and connecting of electronics into textile form. It also provides insights into the compatibility and integration of functional materials, electronics, and the clothing technology. Flexible and Wearable Electronics for Smart Clothing offers comprehensive coverage of the technology in four parts. The first part discusses wearable organic nano-sensors, stimuli-responsive electronic skins, and flexible thermoelectrics and thermoelectric textiles. The next part examines textile triboelectric nanogenerators for energy harvesting, flexible and wearable solar cells and supercapacitors, and flexible and wearable lithium-ion batteries. Thermal and humid management for next-generation textiles, functionalization of fiber materials for washable smart wearable textiles, and flexible microfluidics for wearable electronics are covered in the next section. The last part introduces readers to piezoelectric materials and devices based flexible bio-integrated electronics, printed electronics for smart clothes, and the materials and processes for stretchable and wearable e-textile devices. -Presents the most recent developments in wearable technology such as wearable nanosensors, logic circuit, artificial intelligence, energy harvesting, and wireless communication -Covers the flexible and wearable electronics as essential functional components for smart clothing from sensing, systems-on-a-chip, interacting, energy to the integrating and connecting of electronics -Of high interest to a large and interdisciplinary target group, including materials scientists, textile chemists, and electronic engineers in academia and industry Flexible and Wearable Electronics for Smart Clothing will appeal to materials scientists, textile industry professionals, textile engineers, electronics engineers, and sensor developers.

Remarkable progress has been achieved within recent years in developing flexible, wearable, and stretchable (FWS) electronics. These electronics will play an increasingly significant role in the future of electronics and will open new product paradigms that conventional semiconductors are not capable of. This is because flexible electronics will allow us to build flexible circuits and devices on a substrate that can be bent, stretched, or folded without losing functionality. This revolutionary change will impact how we interact with the world around us. Future electronic devices will use flexible electronics as part of ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing for many different applications such as consumer electronics, medical, healthcare, and security devices. Thus, these devices have the potential to create a huge market all over the world. Flexible, Wearable, and Stretchable Electronics, provide a comprehensive technological review of the state-of-the-art developments in FWS electronics. This book offers the reader a taste of what is possible with FWS electronics and describes how these electronics can provide unique solutions for a wide variety of applications. Furthermore, the book introduces and explains new applications of flexible technology that has opened up the future of FWS electronics.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to printed flexible electronics and their applications, including the basics of modern printing technologies, printable inks, performance characterization, device design, modeling, and fabrication processes. A wide range of materials used for printed flexible electronics are also covered in depth. Bridging the gap between the creation of structure and function, printed flexible electronics have been explored for manufacturing of flexible, stretchable, wearable, and conformal electronics device with conventional, 3D, and hybrid printing technologies. Advanced materials such as polymers, ceramics, nanoparticles, 2D materials, and nanocomposites have enabled a wide variety of applications, such as transparent conductive films, thin film transistors, printable solar cells, flexible energy harvesting and storage devices, electroluminescent devices, and wearable sensors. This book provides students, researchers and engineers with the information to understand the current status and future trends in printed flexible electronics, and acquire skills for selecting and using materials and additive manufacturing processes in the design of printed flexible electronics.

Flexible electronics are electronics that can be stretched, bent, twisted, and deformed into arbitrary shapes. They break through the bottleneck and monopoly of traditional, rigid IC technologies and represent the next-generation electronics. This book provides an overview of the underlying theory and method of structural design for flexible electronics. Compared to intrinsically flexible and stretchable materials, structural engineering has proven its unique advantages, e.g. stretchable inorganic electronics. Based on the mechanical mechanisms, this book discusses the main structural deformation behaviors of flexible electronics, including mechanics of film-on-substrate and fiber-on-substrate, self-similar design with/without substrate, conformal design on rigid/soft substrate, purely in-plane design of serpentine interconnect with/without substrate, buckling-driven self-assembly and kirigami assembly strategies, neutral layer design, and the new materials-based structure design like liquid metals, etc. Moreover, the related advanced fabrication technology, the devices designs and applications of flexible electronics are also presented. The comprehensive and in-depth content makes this book can be used as a reference book for experienced researchers, as well as a teaching material for graduate students.