The Avery Dennison Corporation (Glendale, California) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Smartrac’s Transponder (RFID Inlay) Division, for the purchase price of €225M, subject to certain closing and post-closing adjustments. The division is a leader in the development and manufacture of RFID products, with 2019 estimated global revenue of approximately €125M, or approximately $140M, and approximately 900 employees.
Despite the current slowing down of the overall economy, the organic and printed electronics industry continues to grow. This is the clear message to result from the latest business climate survey conducted by OE-A (Organic and Printed Electronics Association), a Working Group within VDMA (Mechanical Engineering Industry Association). 80 percent of survey participants expect the industry to continue its positive development in the coming year.
Researchers from Holst Centre (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) have become the first to use spatial atomic layer deposition (sALD) to create both the semiconductor and dielectric layer in a thin-film transistor (TFT) backplane. Using a low-temperature, large-area process for the backplane, the team created a 200 ppi QVGA display demonstrator. The process allows TFTs to be produced on cheaper, transparent plastic foils, significantly reducing the cost of flexible electronics applications such as displays and image sensors. To showcase the technology, Holst Centre has produced a display demonstrator using a backplane of top-gated self-aligned TFTs on a PEN foil.
