Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1475604
82 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2022 Shaughnessy: In printed electron- ics, wearable applications are limited by the number of uses, washes, and types of fabrics. What say you all? Miller: at was a concern when wearables first came out, but I think there have been differ- ent revs and modifications to both the ink sets and the fabric sets to provide more washes to them. In the beginning, that was one of the things suppliers and manufacturers struggled with, but there have been advances over the last couple years. At this point, to me, it's not true. Wagner: It just depends on what you're com- paring it to. I mean, something's always better than the next thing, but it's improving every time, like Kevin said. It just depends on how quickly the mate- rial sets develop. More and more people are looking at the stretchable inks for wearables and the TPU are stretchable materi- als, as well as the hot-melt adhesive on the backside of those that actually attach to the fabric. I've seen a lot of improve- ments. I've printed on material that wasn't meant to do what it was doing because inks wouldn't stretch. But we were practicing that more than 10–12 years ago. We could print stretchable, wearable circuits, but the ink wasn't ready yet; it would just fracture. en along comes, for example, DuPont and its Intexar™ series, and that was able to meet some of the demands of those applications pretty easily. It keeps them improving from there. We had a visit with them last week and they're still working on modifications of their materials to improve it. Again, like anybody else, they're trying to make it better as they learn more in research. Bianchi: It's definitely not limiting the people who are designing it and putting it into pro- duction. It's good enough right now. It's just going to get better. Shaughnessy: Printed electronics are mostly limited to polyester film substrates, PET. Bianchi: I don't know if it's limited to that. at's probably the most common sub- strate that thick film polymer is printed on, but one of the reasons people are going to pr inted electronics is cost effectiveness. We've printed on polyimide films, but it some- what defeats the purpose of getting a lower cost. Voultos: Speaking of films, there are also TPUs. ere is a wide variety of polycar- bonates. As the industry is evolving, we're seeing its evolution. As it branches out and utilizes other sub- strates than polyester, I think the industry will grow. Wagner: Yes. ere are even things like synthetic papers that are used in printed elec- tronics, RFID tags, things like that. You can get really low-cost substrates to print these things on. Miller: We sell to customers who are print- ing on glass, TPUs, and polycarbonates. We also have customers that are printing on polyimide films and other types of substrates and utilizing conductive ink. We do cross over to the printed circuit board side of the business, and we have different types of polyimide-based materials that can be uti- lized on top of circuitry to reduce processing costs. John Voultos