Proceedings Article | 30 September 2005
KEYWORDS: Sol-gels, Printing, Waveguides, Polymers, Polymer thin films, Organic light emitting diodes, Coating, Luminescence, Sensors, Optoelectronics
Embedding of optoelectrical, optical, and electrical functionalities into low-cost products like product packages and printed matter can be used to increase their information content. For these purposes, components like displays, photodetectors, light sources, solar cells, battery elements, diffractive optical elements, lightguides, electrical conductors, resistors, transistors, switching elements etc. and their integration to functional modules are required. Also the need of rapid and reliable di-agnostic systems for wellness and healthcare applications is apparent. Today the time from sampling to result can take hours or even several days. In future the target is to analyze the sample within a few minutes for further action. Additionally, the price of the components for low-end products and disposable sensors has to be in cent scale or preferably below that. Therefore, new, cost-effective, and volume scale capable manufacturing techniques are required. Recent developments of liquid-phase processable electrical and optical polymeric, inorganic, and hybrid material inks together with biocompatible materials have made it possible to fabricate functional components by conventional roll-to-roll techniques such as gravure printing on flexible paper and plastic like substrates. In this paper, we show our current achievements in the field of roll-to-roll fabricated electronics, optoelec-tronics and biosensors. With examples of light guiding structures, organic light emitting diodes, biocompatible materials etc., we demonstrate the huge potential of roll to roll fabrication as a low cost mass production technology for future low end electronic products.
