The Next Generation of Printed Electronics

Printed, flexible and hybrid electronics (PFHE) enable emerging applications in IoT, medical sensing, smart packaging and labels, structural monitoring, human wellness and performance, monitors, extreme environment, and display applications. At the same time, PFHE approaches can also provide faster product development, prototyping, and manufacturing cycles for single, custom items to large areas, low-cost mass manufacturing scales in additive, more sustainable pathways for electronics as they become even more ubiquitous in our world.

This class covers the basics of PFHE processing technologies, from dispensing and inkjet printing to roll to roll printing and coating, along with the materials and supplementary thermal processes that enable these processes.

Next-generation technologies are also explored for high-resolution PFHE and additive manufacturing that could provide new form factors and manufacturing approaches and exceed the performance of conventionally-processed electronics.  These technologies also have impact on unmet heterogeneous integration possibilities in fields ranging from electronics to optics and quantum materials.

Example PFHE and printed energy materials topics:

• Dispensing and 3D printing of electronic and energy materials
• Aerosol printing
• High resolution inkjet printing and coating
• Screen Printing
• Flexographic Printing
• Gravure printing
• Slot die coating
• Convective, IR and photonic thermal processing
• Microcontact printing and embossing
• Submicron electrohydrodynamic printing

About the Instructor

J. Devin MacKenzie is the Washington Research Foundation Professor of Clean Energy and an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at UW.  Dr. MacKenzie is also the director of the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds, an open access laboratory with world-class printed electronics, flexible electronics and energy device fabrication and testing capabilities.  Dr. MacKenzie has 20 years of experience co-founding or leading startups in novel fabrication including as a co-founder and CEO of Imprint Energy commercializing printed  flexible batteries, as CTO of Add-Vision, a printed flexible OLED display company that was acquired in 2011, and as a VP at Kovio, an MIT spin out, leading printed Si RF device integration.  Devin also co-founded the world’s first printed electronics company, Plastic Logic Ltd. in the United Kingdom.  Previously Dr. MacKenzie was a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Prior to entering the start-up world, Devin was a postdoc in Physics at the University of Cambridge and earned PhD, MS, and BS degrees from the University of Florida and MIT. Dr. MacKenzie has over 220 patents and publications and has been cited over 10,000 times.

This is the 11th Flexible Electronics Master Class. This and previous classes are available On Demand.  See the full list.