LOPEC, Messe München, congress and trade fair
LOPEC (Large-area, Organic & Printed Electronics Convention) is the leading international event for printed electronics. From February 28 to March 2, the corresponding congress will be held in Munich with around 180 presentations, and on March 1 and 2, around 170 exhibitors will present their products and innovations in the trade fair city.
Conductive plastics and inks, which are printed on film, paper, glass or textiles over large areas and at low cost, offer considerable advantages over conventional electronics: they enable thin, flexible and transparent electronic components for areas such as consumer electronics, packaging, automotive, pharmaceuticals, energy or white goods. They can be used to make cars that change color at the touch of a button, organic solar cells for indoor and outdoor use or sensor tapes for detecting moisture in buildings. The topic of printed 'green electronics' is also moving into the focus of LOPEC, which the co-organizer oe-a (Organic and Printed Electronics Association) and Dr. Cloé Bois from ici (Printability and Graphic Communications Institute, Canada) are particularly committed to.
The lavish congress program features around 180 presentations, many of them in parallel time slots. This will undoubtedly leave visitors spoiled for choice. The PLUS editorial team is particularly interested in the following contributions:
Tuesday, February 28
- 9:30 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.: Dr. Erika Rebrosova (Sun Chemical Corp.) talks about inks for printed electronics applications and presents the latest ink technologies to advance HMI applications.
- 11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.: Prof. Eugenio Cantatore (Eindhoven University of Technology) will give a course on the design and simulation of circuits and systems based on organic materials. Participants should be able to describe the design flow of a complex system based on organic materials, list the main simulations required for the design and explain details of the design flow of OTFT-based circuits using examples of a complex sensor system with organic proximity sensors, integrated electronics based on OTFTs and silicon ICs.
- 14:45 - 15:30: Dr. Peter Zalara (Holst Centre Eindhoven) will give a short lecture on 'Making Sensors Stretchable' and discuss the challenges and future prospects of this technology.
- 16:00 - 16:45: Dr. Chloé Bois (ici, Printability and Graphic Communicatons Institute, Collège Ahuntsic, Montreal) raises questions about whether printed electronics are more sustainable, whether bio-based materials can be used to make compostable products, and whether silver and plastic can be replaced.
- 16:45 - 17:30: Daniel Strohmayr (tacterion) deals with the trend topic 'Augmented Reality' and points out the importance of the sense of touch. He is concerned with the role of haptics in augmenting data visualization and processing, as - according to Strohmayer - sensor-controlled tactile 'wearables' can close the gap between the human sense of touch and next-generation AR user interfaces in manufacturing.
Wednesday, March 1
- 14:00 -15:00: In the session on Smart Textiles, led by innovative designer Marina Toeters (by-wire.net), Dr. Torsten Lund-Olesen (Danish Technological Institute, Taastrup) will talk about printed electromyography (EMG) sensors for smart textiles, which are said to have excellent durability, would have a sensor performance comparable to silver electrodes and whose production would have less impact on the environment.
- 16:00 - 17:40: In the session on printing materials, led by Dr. Henning Richter (Nano-C Inc.), Ezgi Inci Yesilyurt, PhD student at Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, will describe the criteria for the production of inks based on optimal polyaniline/carbon material compositions for printable electrodes of supercapacitors.
- 16:00 - 17:40: In a parallel session on 3D structural electronics, led by Prof. Dr. Jörg Franke (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg), Dr. Phillipe Lombard will present a new method for producing a conductive network based on electroless copper, which has better resistance than conventional silver inks. It should make it possible to replace conductive adhesives by soldering electronic components directly onto the host pads.
Thursday, March 2
- 14:00-15:20: Session I on printed electronics will be chaired by Dr. Ronald Österbacka (Abo Akademi University of Turku). Among others, Dr. Filip Granek (XTPL) will give a presentation on Ultra-Precise Deposition, an additive manufacturing process for printing micrometric conductive and non-conductive structures on various rigid and flexible substrates down to 1 µm in size.
- 16:00 - 17:00: In Session II on printed electronics, chaired by Dr. Barbara Stadlober (Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft Graz), Dr. Sherjeel Khan (Silicon Austria Labs, Graz) will talk about continuous polymer vias for electrical connections between multiple layers in printed electronics (TPVs) and will present a method for fabricating such TPVs in which the TPV aperture is created by LASER ablation and the TPV is filled by stencil printing of a conductive paste.
The entire conference program can be found at www.lopec.com/en/conference/program/.
Meanwhile, around 170 exhibitors will be presenting their products and new developments, materials and services in the LOPEC exhibition halls. The PLUS editorial team is particularly interested in the presentations by Panaocol and Heraeus (see p. 169), Loctite/Henkel, Notion Systems and SUSS MicroTec Solutions. We will report on what we see there - and at other exhibitors.
www.lopec.com
www.oe-a.org
www.i-ci.ca
