Work is about to start on the €30m Plastic Electronics Technology Centre (PETeC) at NETPark in County Durham.
The aim of the project is to build factories that produce square kilometre quantities of organic lighting and solar cells.
“What is going to happen is development and demonstration of roll-to-roll manufacture of large area low resolution plastic electronics,” Dr Raymond Oliver, director of science and technology at development agency Cenamps, told EW. “We will not be doing production, but we will be understanding the cost basis and designing for production.”
The plan is to print thin-film transistor matrices, organic photovoltaics, and organic solid-state lighting.
“We already have substrate coating and patterning technology for the manufacture of organic TFTs from The Centre for Process Innovation at the Wilton Centre [in Redcar] which is working with DuPont Teijin Films,” said Oliver.
“By 2012 we will have the design bases for production units, and be in a position to ask for the capital to build a plant to produce square kilometres,” said Oliver. “This will be the unit plant that can be reproduced.”
Funding for PETeC has come from One NorthEast, The Northern Way, County Durham Development Company, County Durham Economic Partnership, the DTI and the European Commission.
According to Oliver, the organisation is one of three bidders for an additional E16m from Carbon Trust, that will be matched by One NorthEast if PETeC wins.
PETeC is to have 1,000m sq. of cleanroom and 1,000m sq. of office space. The cleanroom will be split into three, said Oliver. 400m sq. will be a ‘discovery lab’, 200m sq. for prototyping and proof-of-concept work, and reel-to-reel manufacturing equipment will be housed in the remaining 400m sq.