Stretchable electronics

This year's Printed Electronics USA will take place in Santa Clara on November 30 and December 1. Analysts IDTechEx who organise the largest event on the subject, have paid a lot of attention once more to the end user streams. Their presence and contributions to the latest instalment of the successful series of events will be appropriate to the new direction of this burgeoning industry.

Energy harvesters enabling micro-power generation provide new levels of efficiency and automation in the built environment, process control, vehicles and healthcare.

There are now other forms of energy harvesters developed initially at the micro level which are now being scaled to produce enough energy to replace or supplement grid power.

IDTechEx projects that the market for passive RFID tags will grow to over $10 billion in sales by 2019. Much of it will continue to use silicon chips. Dr Peter Harrop forecasts the Printed RFID market for 2010.

While some involved in OLEDs and OTFTs are moving out of the business of printed and potentially printed electronics, work on inorganic materials and compounds is increasing. The IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event in Tokyo will give a balanced view with many presentations being World firsts.

This year has already seen a huge increase in the choice of electronic components that can be printed or are compatible with printing in that they are thin, flexible and can support further printed circuitry on top.

The IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe 2009 event opened this morning in Dresden, Germany. Over 760 attendees had pre-registered with many more registering on the morning of the event.

IDTechEx's Printed Electronics Europe event in Dresden, on April 7-8, attendance has achieved record levels, and is on track to bring together over 800 attendees, by far the World's largest and most comprehensive event on the topic

At the annual IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe 2009 conference and exhibition, IDTechEx will uniquely feature a range of end user companies discussing their needs from printed electronics.

This article shares some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report "Energy Harvesting and Storage for Electronic Devices 2009-2019".