Press Release

Breakthrough in Producing Printed Memory

Thin Film Electronics, an Oslo, Norway, based Company with R&D facilities in Linkoping, Sweden, known as Thinfilm, and InkTec Co. Ltd, known as InkTec, have together made a breakthrough in producing printed memory on flexible substrates. Here Dr Peter Harrop of analyst's IDTechEx, interviews Johan Carlsson, President and CEO of Thinfilm and Kwang-Choon Chung, President and CEO of InkTec, about the latest development.

PH: For a long time, IDTechEx has been advocating more effort on printed memory, one of the missing parts of the printed electronics toolkit that is vital for progress. Can you tell us about this latest breakthrough and the history of your company please?

Johan Carlsson: Our latest development concerns a joint Thinfilm and InkTec project with the aim of demonstrating R2R high volume manufacturing of printed memories. The project has been a huge success with the realization of a R2R production worthy printing process capable of realizing printed memory cells with a yield in the 96-97 % range for the best device structure. Up to now more than 100 meters of roll has been produced with a total of 5 printing steps. This is to our knowledge one of the world first established R2R processes capable of producing electronic components other than conductors and antennas with high yield. It is especially impressive given that the printed memory film thickness is only about 200 nm.
Thinfilm is a public research and development company founded in 1997 with aim to commercialize its polymer memory technology. The most promising aspect of Thinfilm's polymer technology lies in the fact that it is possibly the only nonvolatile memory technology that can be fabricated entirely by printing. Thinfilm´s technology is based on development that we initially performed together with Intel for the production of so called hybrid high density silicon-polymer memories. Together we produced working 512 MB chip modules in 0.25 µm technology and that was 5 years ago using Thinfilm´s unique polymer memory technology.
PH: That is extremely exciting and significant. How does the partnership with InkTec operate and what other partnerships are in place with Thinfilm?

Johan Carlsson: The partnership with InkTec is characterized by mutual trust, transparency, efficient and professional exchange of information. This has enabled us to quickly resolve technical issues. We are moreover very impressed by InkTec's facilities at the second factory in Pyoungtaek just outside of Seoul which are entirely dedicated to printed electronics with class 10 000 clean room in general areas and class 1000 around production equipment.
Other important partnerships that are in place are with the like of Xaar plc, OTB (print equipment vendors), Solvay (polymer vendor), Soligie Inc. (Printed Electronic Manufacturer and Integrator), AGFA (conductive polymer vendor), DuPont Teijin Films (substrate vendor) and Cartamundi (Card manufacturer) and Weyerhaeuser (printed RFID developer) for the commercial production and marketing of printed memories.

PH: What is your roadmap for commercialisation of printed memory? Can you give us any dates and product specifications that will be achieved?

Johan Carlsson: Given our business model i.e. licensing technology to partners for them to do the end user sales and manufacturing, makes it hard for us to give any dates as we don't control the entire value chain. But as we do work closely with all of our partners we know of some very exciting products that are in the final stage of design, and should if everything will be on plan, they will be introduced in the market sometime early next year. The results achieved with InkTec are a major milestone in meeting the schedule.

PH: One area of printed electronics starting to get great attention is transparent electronics with flexible transparent batteries, photovoltaics, lighting, transistors and so on being demonstrated. Clearly transparent electronic film will not detract from branding on packaging and it can go in many places where electronics cannot currently be applied. Will there be a transparent Thinfilm memory?

Johan Carlsson: Thinfilm's memory polymer is in itself transparent which means that a transparent memory cell can be made with any transparent electrode material. This means that transparent cells can easily be made as soon as integration with a suitable transparent electrode can be achieved. We have for example already in 2005 demonstrated printed memories using the conductive polymer PEDOT/PSS as electrode material which is nearly transparent.