NRC poised to build industry capacity in rapidly growing field of printable electronics

Despite never being officially announced, the National Research Council's Printable Electronics (PE) flagship platform is up and running, signing on new industrial partners and executing research programs to accelerate the adoption of new functional materials and print-based production processes.

Now referred to as NRC's PE Consortium (PEC), the initiative was launched in May/12 and has attracted the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC) as a foundational member. XRCC is the most prolific of Xerox's global research centres in terms of patents. It achieved a breakthrough in the PE field in 2009 with the development of its Silver Bullet which uses tiny silver particles in the ink jet printing process and opens the way to the use of PE materials that can print on plastics, film and textiles.

A key subset of advanced manufacturing (AM), PE is on the radar of many countries and the NRC is aiming to capture a significant piece of the market —currently estimated at $16 billion but rising rapidly to $73 billion in 10 years and $300 billion in 20 years.

PEC is one of four flagship platforms and one of two that remain to be announced, the other being the Industrial Biomaterials program. They join programs in Algal Carbon Conversion and the Canadian Wheat Improvement Flagship Program (renamed the Canadian Wheat Alliance) (R$, May 23/13). The flagships were chosen through a competitive internal process as holding the most potential for stimulating industrial R&D activity and providing Canada with global leadership in key technology areas.

Heading up PEC is Thomas Ducellier, a scientist and technology entrepreneur who joined the NRC in 2010 and joined PEC as VP sales last year. Ducellier was promoted to acting executive director following the departure of Dr Sylvain Charbonneau earlier this year (R$, April 3/13), at which time PEC was transferred from the engineering division to the ICT division.

"I want to make sure PE is successful in Canada but it's a chicken and egg situation with demand on one hand and technology solutions on the other," says Ducellier. "We will work with technology providers and end users and will be looking at packaging, security, printing and heath care."

According to information on Ducellier's LinkedIn profile, the PEC has lined up 15 partners and has a budget of $57 million over five years. The aim is to coordinate and assist R&D activity in the industrial areas of materials, ink, printing, information and communications technology and digital manufacturing "to develop them into a springboard for a profitable, large-scale PE sector", according to an NRC web site posting.

Ducellier won't comment on other companies and entities that have joined the consortium or the information on his LinkedIn profile, saying that all will be announced with the official launch sometime this fall.

With a staff complement of about 60, PEC builds on NRC's strengths in organic light emitting diodes and organic photovoltaics with concentrations of research in Ottawa and Boucherville QC. The consortium will also draw on expertise located in NRC facilities in Winnipeg, Edmonton and London. A key objective of PEC is to dramatically drive down the cost of PE by shifting production from sheet-to-sheet to roll-to-roll presses.

Specific printing expertise includes nano-imprinting and nano-embossing, and inkjet printing. Work currently focuses on the prototype stage but a medium-scale screen printer is being commissioned. On the materials side, NRC researchers will work towards refining existing materials and introducing components into devices and processes such as electrodes, conductive circuits, thin film transistors and antennae.

"PE has the ability to add intelligence to everyday objects," says Ducellier. "It's an additive manufacturing technique that connects the virtual world with the real world."

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