TactoTek (Oulu, Finland), developer and licenser of in-mould structural electronics (IMSE) technology, recently published its achievements towards more sustainable electronics manufacturing. An independent lifecycle analysis (LCA) by the Finnish research institute VTT revealed that an electronics part manufactured using IMSE technology results in 35% lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than a comparable conventional electronics design. In addition, because IMSE combines both mechanical structure and electronic function in a single part, an IMSE part typically uses 50-75% less plastics than a conventional assembly.
If the Institute of Print and Media Technology at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany has its way, many speakers of the future will not only be as thin as paper, but will also have an impressive sound. This is a reality already in the laboratories of the Chemnitz researchers, who developed the multiple award-winning "T-Book" back in 2015 – a large-format illustrated book equipped with printed electronics. If you turn a page, it begins to sound through a speaker invisibly located inside the sheet of paper. "The T-Book was and is a milestone in the development of printed electronics, but the development continues," says Prof Dr Arved C. Hübler, under whose leadership this technology trend, which is becoming increasingly important worldwide, has been driven forward for more than 20 years.
Henkel Adhesive Technologies (Düsseldorf, Germany) and Quad Industries (Sint-Niklaas, Belgium) have announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to offer capacities and support for technological value creation and prototyping with printed electronics solutions across multiple industries. The companies started their collaboration in 2019 and since then successfully worked on different projects such as the development of the innovative COVID-19 smart health patch introduced by Byteflies that was launched in 2020. With the advancement of the partnership Quad Industries has become a strategic partner in Henkel´s ecosystem for design creation, prototyping and manufacturing of printed electronics via flatbed screen printing.
