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Benefits Of Printed Electronics

Printed electronics are at the forefront of electronics manufacturing techniques. The word revolutionary gets thrown around a bit too much these days, but printed electronics truly fit the bill: They’ve impacted every industry from medical technology to consumer electronics.

Below, we’ll break down the core benefits of printed electronics that give them an edge over conventional electronic components. We’ll explore exactly what printed electronics are, then cover why they’re more cost-effective, scalable, flexible, and customizable than conventional electronics (among other things).

Over the course of the article, we’ll also explore a number of use cases for printed electronics, so you have concrete examples of where they shine over conventional electronics. 

What Are Printed Electronics?

Printed electronics are any electronics manufactured using printing techniques. Here at General Label, we use roll-to-roll screen printing to create our printed electronics.

Conductive inks and semiconductive inks are printed onto a substrate—usually a flexible polymer, though other substrates are available. Dielectric insulators are also used. When combined, these inks can be used to create: 

  • Circuits
  • Sensors
  • Antennas
  • Batteries
  • Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips 
  • And other electronic components

These different components can all be printed onto a single substrate—something we’ll explore in greater detail as we cover the benefits of printed electronics.

What Are the Benefits of Printed Electronics?

They’re Cost-Effective

The printing techniques used to create printed electronics are extremely cost-effective; fewer materials are used in printed electronics than in other manufacturing processes. Additionally, the technique allows us to create smaller circuits, antennas, sensors, and other electronic components. A consequence of this is that all of these components can be printed onto the same substrate instead of being manufactured separately then combined together later.

Lower costs mean that manufacturers can lower the costs for consumers, or add more features to their end product. The low cost to manufacturers is one of the reasons that electronics printing techniques have developed so rapidly over the years—as more manufacturers move to using printed technology, we’ll see even greater cost reductions as printing technologies are refined. 

They’re Scalable, and Easy To Mass-Produce

To produce our printed electronics, we use a roll-to-roll screen printing technique. This technique allows us to quickly and accurately mass produce complex printed electronic parts. By using conductive inks, encapsulants, and other materials printed onto a substrate, we can rapidly create intricate printed circuits, printed sensors, and other components.

Economies of scale mean that OEMs who print more parts will enjoy a lower cost-per-unit. 

They Can Be Printed Onto Flexible and Lightweight Substrates

Traditionally, conventional electronics have been manufactured using rigid substrates—useful for creating computer chips, but less helpful when you’re trying to create wearable electronics or flexible screens.

By printing onto a flexible substrate—usually thin plastic—you open up new possibilities in the electronics space. With printed electronics, you can create:

  • Wearable electronics
  • Stretchable electronics
  • Flexible screens (like flexible OLEDs)
  • And more

This has led to a boom in innovative wearable electronics in sports, healthcare, and consumer electronics. New technologies include:

As printing technology continues to advance, expect to see more wearable and flexible devices across all industries.

You Can Create Smaller Components

One of the main advantages of printed electronics is that you can create printed circuits, sensors, antennas, and even batteries with pinpoint accuracy—even on extremely small surfaces. This has been a boon in the wearable electronics industry (as we just saw)—it’s also been integral to the Internet of Things (IoT).

For IoT devices to be manufacturable at scale (and at a low cost), small electronic sensors and antennas are essential to maintain a Wi-Fi connection. These can be anything  from LoRaWAN devices used to monitor shipments to Smart TVs and refrigerators that use printed antennas and circuits to provide a better user experience.

The best example of how the small, flexible components created by the electronics printing process may be small smart home devices like smart bulbs. These bulbs are already small enough that a conventional antenna and chip setup would be difficult to integrate—with small, flexible printed circuits and antennas, these bulbs can connect to the internet and process a variety of requests.

They Can Be Integrated Into Other Electronic Components

The flexibility and small-size of printed electronics means they can be integrated into oddly-shaped and small electrical devices, like the aforementioned light bulbs. 

Additionally, various different types of terminals and connectors can easily be integrated into printed electronics of all kinds. This is possible even on flexible electronics, giving manufacturers several options to integrate printed and flexible electronics with their final product.

Optimally, the manufacturing process for printed electronics will be planned at the same time as the manufacturing for other components—this can help ensure that the two integrate seamlessly. The flexibility offered by printed electronics can, however, allow these parts to be introduced later on in the development process. 

New Materials Can Be Integrated Into Electronic Circuits

Organic LED (OLED) televisions are created using printed electronics. Organic substances (known as organic emitters) are printed in complex patterns to form pixels—when stimulated by an electric charge, these emitters produce colors. The end result is screens that can produce more vivid colors and deeper blacks.

These emitters are printed onto flexible substrates in much the same way that conductive inks are—it would have been impossible to create the intricate pixels used in OLEDs without printed electronics technology. As the technology continues to develop, expect new organic and inorganic compounds to be integrated into printed electronics. For innovators in almost any industry, printed electronics represent an exciting world of new opportunities.

 

Printed Electronics Are More Environmentally Friendly

The manufacturing process for creating printed electronics produces less waste than manufacturing conventional electronics. Additionally, printed electronics tend to be smaller than their conventional counterparts, meaning fewer materials end up in the landfill.

The use of organic materials in printed electronics is another boon to sustainable practices—these organic materials are biodegradable. While they may end up in a landfill, many of the underlying components will end up being used as a food source for microbes.

By creating electronic devices using printed electronics technologies, manufacturers can lower their carbon footprint. This can help manufacturers secure financial incentives—and it can help mitigate the risks of climate change. As more manufacturers start using printed technology, we’ll see the carbon footprint of whole industries start to drop.

Faster Prototyping Means Greater Customization

A small batch of prototypes can be assembled quickly using printed electronics techniques—it’s a simple matter of changing out the inks, screens, and substrates that are used. This means we can quickly iterate on a number of different prototypes until we find the perfect configuration for your component.

This allows for greater customizability—you can iterate on your printed component until it works exactly the way you need it to. You can add or remove functionality, change the orientation of the connectors, terminals, and circuits, and more—all with much more ease than you could in traditional electronics manufacturing.

When you’ve decided on a prototype, we can quickly manufacture to scale by simply feeding more rolls of polymer through the screens and printing circuits, sensors, and more. 

Printed Electronics Can Be Used Across All Industries

We’ve manufactured printed electronics for almost every industry, including:

One of the reasons that printed electronics are used across all industries is that they can meet even incredibly tight tolerances. The flexibility of printed circuits and other printed electronics mean they can be integrated into all kinds of vehicles, handheld devices, fabrics, and more. As this sector continues to mature, we expect to see them used more frequently across every industry.

The lightweight nature of printed electronics means they may have an almost negligible effect on the final weight of a product. This means they can be introduced into highly weight sensitive environments (like vehicles) with little impact, and that they don’t dramatically affect the cost of shipping a given product. 

Conclusion

Printed electronics are at the vanguard of electronic manufacturing. They’re:

  • Cost-effective
  • Scalable
  • Customizable—they can be flexible, small, and they can use organic and other unconventional inks
  • Used across all industries
  • Faster to prototype
  • More eco-friendly
  • And more

As the industry continues to mature, you can expect to see printed electronics used widely in almost every electronic device. Eventually, as conductive inks become more powerful and printed circuit design becomes more refined, we might see them replace conventional electronic manufacturing almost entirely.

General Label offers printed electronics, manufactured to scale using our roll-to-roll screen printing technique. Contact us today!