Plastic Electronics – driving disruptions to electronics applications

June 1st, 2010 | 1 Comment | Tags: , , , |

The next big smart systems’ revolution is from silicon to plastic and printed electronics. This next generation enabling technology is based on polymer and printable semiconductors, low-cost printing and roll-to-roll manufacturing methods. It offers huge business opportunities for completely new products: flexible displays, low-cost solar cells, disposable hygiene, diagnostic and environmental tests, interactive packaging, smart labels and tags, large area wallpaper-like lighting and many areas where electronics has never been before.

This is good news for Finland – a country with world-class industry in electronics and bio-based materials e.g. paper, and excellent research in printed electronics and intelligence.

From silicon electronics towards plastic, printed and flexible electronics

Electronic functionalities and displays in everyday electronic products like mobile phones, televisions and music players are produced using silicon or other inorganic semiconductors, with the covers usually made from crude oil based plastics. Professor Richard Friend’s scientific research and innovations have been challenging the replacement of silicon and inorganic semiconductors with plastic or polymer semiconductors when realising electronic and optoelectronic components. By the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s inventions in polymer materials and semiconductors enabled the realisation of a transistor and a light emitting element – OLED, and kicked-off  a new fascinating research field.

What makes polymer or organic semiconductor materials particularly interesting is that they can be dissolved in chemical solvents and formulated as inks. For device manufacturing, simple equipment like a home computer printer or industrial printing house production lines can be used to print these inks on flexible low-temperature substrates like plastics and paper. These printable functional inks can be used to manufacture functional devices like electronic and optoelectronic components and circuits. These printing-based manufacturing methods are environmentally benign, save materials and are cost-efficient.

Organic light emitting semiconductor materials have had growing commercial success as OLED-displays. Because of their excellent display performance and small power consumption OLED-displays are emerging into mobile phones, MP3- players and the first OLED televisions have been launched. The market growth expectations for OLED displays are from tens of millions units a year in 2010 to hundreds of millions units by 2015.

OLED, as a light source, is especially fascinating.  Instead of our existing point light sources – lamps, OLED luminaire can be fabricated as a large luminous surface area like wallpaper or a ceiling panel. In future these luminous areas may even be flexible or bendable.

Another very well introduced application, where plastic electronics has a big role, is electronic paper, e-paper. First generation equipment e-readers are opening markets and businesses, which are estimated to reach €10-billion in three years.  Next generation newspapers like flexible e-paper will utilize flexible printed plastic electronic backplanes.

What can plastic electronics offer Finland?

Globally the research and development focus has been on the applications for the electronics industry, for example, displays. In Finland, more remarkable research efforts and investments in this research field – printed intelligence – started 10 years ago. The Finnish technological backbone has been built by combining electronics and paper industry knowhow, and cost-efficient printing and roll-to-roll manufacturing methods familiar to the paper industry. This disruptive enabling technology basis is used to innovate and produce multidisciplinary products like disposable smart hygiene products, disposable point-of-care diagnostics for healthcare and wellness applications, interactive packaging, smart labels and tags, printed OLEDs and organic solar cells while not forgetting more demanding smart systems and electronics applications.

The technology basis in Finland is good and the top players are among those leading globally. A pioneering printed intelligence pilot factory in Oulu, PrintoCent, will be a platform for pilot manufacturing and product demonstration. Finland’s challenge is how to exploit these research and demonstration results for new products, businesses and jobs. Are existing industries and companies capable and willing to tackle the challenge and pursue new business opportunities – or are new companies required to create a completely new industrial sector?

The global markets for plastic electronics are forecast to be €300-billion in 10-20 years. In my mind, now is the right time for the players and partnerships, who are seriously aiming to win a share of these markets, to step up and take charge of developing plastic electronics solutions and products.

Professor Harri Kopola
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Millennium Plastic Electronics Expert 2010

The dye solar cell innovation – are we at the verge of an energy revolution?

May 24th, 2010 | 7 Comments | Tags: , , , , , , |

Based on the best knowledge and wisdom that we have in hand, the way we produce and consume energy may devastate our ecosystems which in turn would lead to gigantic damages to economy and life itself. To avoid such an eco-holocaust, the whole energy production, now heavily dominated by fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide harmful to our climate, needs to be turned into almost carbon and oil free by the mid of this century. At the same time, combating energy poverty in the less developed countries means providing new energy services to almost 2 billion people without electricity.

Without doubt, not incremental but radical innovations will lead the way to a sustainable world. A total energy revolution is necessary to achieve these goals.

Therefore, providing mankind with clean, abundant and affordable energy is perhaps the most urgent quest of our society in the coming decades. Professor Michael Grätzel, who is one of the three 2010 Millennium Technology Prize Laureates, is the father of a new type of solar cell, that may offer the ultimate answer to this challenge. His innovation, the nanostructured dye-sensitized solar cell, or some call it simply the dye solar cell or Grätzel cell, mimics the energy processes of green plants or photosynthesis.

Nano, dye, mimicking, photo, solar etc. may sound for a layman more as scientific jargon than groundbreaking product.  But the technology that comes out from Grätzel’s idea is so genius and simple that even you yourself could make the cell in your own home. The cell is an easily layered sandwich-like structure, required materials are cheap and readily available. No sophisticated manufacturing equipment is necessary – the basic industrial steps to make the sell are pressing, layering, spraying, heating, coating. This is the technology that lends itself to roll-to-roll production which is required for mass production of solar cells. From an industrial point of view, this is simple-stupid technology that could offer huge opportunities to the business outside the normal solar industries.

Our perception of the importance of solar energy and solar cells in particular is often misled by thoughts that new energy is and remains marginal in world scale.  It’s good for gadgets and fun, skeptics say, but not for real energy production. Solar panels would never produce the energy invested in these, they say, not to speak that solar could ever be cheaper than traditional energy.  And even if you got the solar cells for free, it would simply take too long to produce the amount of panels needed to meet the energy demand.

Grätzel’s solar cell innovation questions all these claims. Although yet produced just in pre-commercial scale, its potential can easily be assessed. Outgoing from the materials and manufacturing steps involved, the cost of Grätzel cells could come under the 1$/W perceived as the magic limit for a total cost breakthrough of solar electricity on global markets. What would you say if you got your own power plant in the future with some thousand euros?

When speaking about mass production, the substrate (e.g. steel, plastics, paper) on which the cell is built and the associated layering processes will become highly relevant. Doesn’t this sound quite familiar to us Finns in some other industrial context (hint: think on base industries)?

Assuming that if 20% of world’s steel production were devoted to Grätzel solar cell manufacturing would mean that the whole world’s energy production could be turned into solar in less than 10 years. With this technology in large scale you could easily meet the targets of many energy scenarios where solar represents 15-25% of world electricity by 2050. This if anything would be a true energy revolution, and not just a dream!

Solar cells, mainly based on traditional silicon technology, are already a $50 billion-a-year business with two-digit growth rates. The Grätzel’s innovation could be one of the next technologies needed to continue this success story. But more importantly than that, it could be the clean, affordable and local energy technology option that we so urgently seek for.

Professor Peter Lund
Aalto University, Finland
Millennium Dye Solar Cells Expert 2010

The ARM innovation – half business, half technology

May 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Tags: , , , |

ARM is a European success story in the semiconductor world otherwise dominated mostly by American and Asian companies.  In 20 years it rose from a dozen of good engineers with no patents or revenue to 1800 people, €500m sales and 90% market share for high performance embedded products. In its own words, ARM is “European Electronic Technology at the Heart of Billions of the World’s Coolest digital products”.

In addition to the innovation related to RISC architecture and low-power techniques needed for mobile and embedded use, the innovation in ARM was about the business model. ARM is a company with more than 18 billion shipped processors, but it does not manufacture anything. It does not have a semiconductor fabrication plant of its own, but others make the actual chips.

The business innovation of ARM has been the commercialisation of its innovation via IP-block business. IP-blocks enable reuse of existing chip designs ideally in a “lego-brick” manner and is the basis for modern System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions. SoC enables assembling complex functions like CPU, DSP or analog processing on a single chip, which makes complex embedded systems possible.

Part of ARM’s success has been that it has clearly understood its position in the value chain of the semiconductor business. It focused on mobile and embedded systems where the power consumption was essential. It was also careful not to misuse its control position of owning the CPU design. It did not expand its business to compete against its customers or apply unfair licensing terms for its IP-blocks and support. ARM-like initiatives by some other companies with own production capabilities have failed, because of the compromised impartiality and conflicts of interest between the vendor and the customers. Currently ARM has 400 partner companies and more than 40 000 developers for its platform.

RISC vs. CISC

Conventional Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) mimicked programming languages in having similar commands. The set of commands hence became large and difficult to optimize. The innovation in Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) was to limit the number of commands to the essential minimum and to optimize execution of those in architectures, buses, memories, etc. This resulted in high improvement obviously in the performance of the individual commands but also in total performance of the processor.

Nowadays various improvements in both CISC and RISC make the performance difference negligible and CISC based solutions, like ATOM processor from Intel, are making inroads to mobile and embedded application.

What’s the next disruption in computing?

ARM-like disruptions to the current paradigm come from different sources.  Multicore processors are one of the obvious candidates for a new paradigm. Currently we lack much of the software needed to make full use of multicore capabilities.

In the future the practical but artificial division between hardware and software will vanish or blur, which presents an opportunity to think differently. Microelectronics is not the only way to build computers, but the CMOS-technology has been hanging on surprisingly long. Eventually there will be new ways of computing based on bio, nano, quantum, analogue techniques, printed electronics or something else.

The whole concept of a computer might disappear, as embedded systems become the ubiquitous systems of tomorrow. In this vision, highly heterogeneous systems of different legacies, lifecycles, and capabilities understand each other and provide us with contextual and personal services we want, without a box called computer.

Professor Tatu Koljonen
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Millennium ARM Expert 2010

The 2010 Millennium Technology Prize Laureate Stephen Furber is the principal designer of the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor, an innovation that revolutionised mobile electronics.

Innovation: from scientific discovery to technological breakthrough

April 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Tags: , , , , , , , , |

The awarding of the Millennium Technology Prize 2010 has now entered its final stretch. The International Selection Committee has proposed three innovations and awardees as this year’s Laureates, and the Board of Technology Academy Finland decided on 14 April to accept this proposal. The 2010 Laureates (and their innovations) are

The winner of the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize, selected amongst the Laureates, will be announced in the Prize Ceremony of 9 June 2010.

The criteria used to select the Laureates follow from the basic values and objectives of the Millennium Technology Prize. Its purpose is to pay tribute to life-enhancing technological innovations which contribute to the well-being of the humankind and environment and foster responsible, sustainable use of natural resources. We want to promote humane applications of technology and pay recognition to the individuals whose work enables widespread and beneficial adoption of these applications. The concept of “innovation” includes not only the scientific discovery but also the steps necessary for its technological breakthrough.

The innovations recognised this year have reached somewhat different stages in their “development curves” towards widespread application and maturity. The ARM microprocessor is already deeply embedded in the ubiquitous computing and communication technology. With its power-saving capabilities, it has been a major enabler of mobile device technology which serves hundreds of millions of people, not least in the developing world where landline infrastructure is often lacking.

The technology of plastic electronics combines the processability, printability and mechanical properties of plastics with the electronic and optical properties of inorganic semiconductors. Its introduction is revolutionising the electronics industry, as it is based on high-throughput, low-environmental-impact manufacturing and uses recyclable resources. The technology has already led to industrial-scale applications in display devices, and other applications are foreseen in lighting as well as in solar-energy collectors.

The dye-sensitized solar cell, known also as “Grätzel cell” after its inventor, is a radically new concept and design for solar-energy harvesting. Inspired by the photosynthetic processes in the living world, it uses nanoscale particles, sensitizer molecules, electrolytes and photochemical processes for photovoltaic energy conversion. It is a very promising technology, based on low-cost materials and simple manufacture, with the potential to be scaled up to massive exploitation of solar energy, embedded in the built environment, vehicles and the general infrastructure. It has just started climbing along its adoption curve.

The three innovations and the Laureates behind them are shining examples of such technologies and innovators that the Millennium Prize wants to recognise. Please join us in celebrating the Laureates and the final winner among them.

Professor Risto Nieminen
Aalto University School of Science and Technology
Chairman of the Millennium Technology Prize International Selection Committee

Discussing the social significance of technology

March 26th, 2010 | No Comments | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

You are reading the first ever Millennium Technology Prize Blog entry.

The launch of this blog coincides with the publication of the new Millennium website. We hope you enjoy its fresh new look and simplified structure. New features include a search function, a calendar and a more user-friendly media bank.

The objective of the Millennium Blog is to offer information about the Prize and other Technology Academy Finland’s activities in a more accessible way. We want to demystify technology and focus on its significance in our everyday lives.

We invite you to comment on the entries and help create discussion about the social significance of technology. We want to explore

  • how scientific research and innovation based on humane values can benefit  the lives of many;
  • how strengthening Finland’s status as a high-tech country may improve its competitiveness; and
  • the importance of encouraging children and teenagers to study technology, mathematics and natural sciences to ensure know-how in these fields in the future.

Our expert bloggers will participate in the conversation and comment on topical issues concerning technology and related matters. A new entry will be published at least once a month.

The next post will follow the announcement of the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize Laureates on 14 April. It will be written by Professor Risto Nieminen, Chairman of the International Selection Committee, who will outline the criteria used to select the Laureates.

Between 14 April and the announcement of the winner of the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize on 9 June, the Millennium Blog will offer insight into the 2010 Laureates’ innovations and showcase their significance from a social and humanitarian perspective.  Our bloggers are Finnish experts in the Laureates’ fields.

Save the announcement dates in your calendar and stay tuned for more information.

After 14 April, we want to know who you think should win the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize.

Dr. Ainomaija Haarla
President & CEO
Technology Academy Finland