Challenges and Opportunities in Flexible Electronics

Flexible electronics has an exciting potential for enabling roll-able, foldable displays, smart patches and smart packaging on paper and plastic substrates. Many of these applications are relatively large area and match well with thin film deposition and patterning processes. The idea of printing sensors and transistors has attracted many companies because large area electronics can be fabricated roll-to-roll at low temperatures on plastic substrates. It has become apparent that fully printed electronic systems have limitations in performance today. More recently, there has been a focus on the integration of large area, flexible electronics with chips. The resulting technologies now enable specialized smart labels, chemical sensors in cold chain logistics and wearables.