At a two-day conference in Frankfurt last week Thomas Reibe, from the European Commission’s unit for micro- and nanosystems, stated the Commission’s commitment to developing an industry around plastic electronics, with funding to be specified in the upcoming €73bn Seventh Framework programme (FP7).
Europe already has a number of research programmes around plastic electronics. An R&D centre is being established in Eindhoven under the name Orgatronics to provide facilities geared towards OELD development, and in the UK Cambridge start-up Plastic Logic is putting together a technology centre in County Durham.
“This is difficult long-term stuff, so the support we get from Brussels in FP6 already - and will get in FP7 - and the support we get from the UK Government under the [DTI] Technology Programme, and the support we get for the Centre, those are all things that are going to make a fantastic difference to the growth of the industry,” said Plastic Logic CEO Stuart Evans.
“Although this Orgatron thing is quite similar to the technology centre in the northeast, it’s in a slightly different field – it’s more focused on OLED and we’re focused on the Plastic Logic [driver electronics] stuff.”
Evans said the conference, which attracted 400 delegates and 100 speakers, offered confirmation that flexible displays will be the first application of plastic electronics, arriving before 2010. RFID tags – initially touted as a way to prove the technology – will follow them into production.
www.plastictronics.org
www.orgatronics.com