To be held in Tokyo, Japan on 8-9 Oct 2008, Dr Mark Auch will present "Breakthrough in flexible, transparent encapsulation" in the Material Advances track. A line-up of the speakers can be found here.

A press release on IMRE's flexible barrier substrate was announced today where KISCO (Asia), a subsidiary of the Japanese parent company KISCO Ltd., will commercialise and market the barrier films in the Asia Pacific region. G24i was also present for their interest of the substrates for their Dye Sensitized Solar Cells.

The breakthrough in these plastic barrier substrates were tested and validate by the Centre for Process Innovation, UK. The moisture barrier performance of better than 10-6g/m²/day, or one millionth of a gram per square meter per day, which surpasses the requirements for flexible organic device substrates is proven. The barrier film also has a lag time of more than 2300 hours at 60°C and 90% RH (i.e. the time required for moisture to pass through the barrier film under those conditions).

[Press Release] [Photos]

Two new Flagship Projects were approved from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering on Printed Electronics and OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) with a total budget of S$3.3 million. Printed Electronics is an emerging technology which promises extremely low cost, potentially flexible and disposable electronics, the market for which is expected to grow to US$300 billion by Year 2027. Under the Flagship Projects, the team will develop new semiconducting materials for printable TFTs and Photovoltaics. The team will also demonstrate the full feature of its blue emitting material which has attracted interests from polymer-OLED industry as it has good color coordinate for polymer-OLED TV application. The market for OLED display is expected to grow to US$6.6 billion by 2012.

Dr Lee and Dr Kim (3rd and 4th from left) together with members from US Display Consortium

In Nov 2007, the flagship team together with members from ETPL, IMRE and SIMTech embarked on printed electronics fact-finding trip, visiting 13 companies in the US and Europe. On route, the team also attended the Printed Electronics USA Conference & Exhibition. In San Francisco. A number of companies specializing in Organic LED (OLED) are interested in the development of the blue phosphorescent material for OLED lighting application. Gathering much industry interest is IMRE’s Blue emitting materials and ITO technologies. In the photovoltaics industry, a significant number of players in the photovoltaics industry are searching for solutions in extending the panel lifespan. These companies are looking forward to testing out the “High performance, flexible barrier substrate” from IMRE.”

At the Printed Electronics USA 2007, the market impact of inorganic electronics was clearly felt, with the technology being commercialized in many different ways, from displays to photovoltaics, and often used in conjunction with organic electronic devices. IDTechEx forecasted the Printed Electronics market to grow to $300 billion by 2027.