A Cambridge University-trained electronics engineer has formed a new company to focus on developing and perfecting ways of printing onto packaging, point-of-sale material and even games cards using electronic inks via established print processes like offset, flexo, screen and gravure.
Dr Nick Stone left the university six years ago, having specialised, during his study for a physics PhD, in the development and production of electronic devices. After working for a printed electronics company he subsequently established his own company, Novalia, at a facility on Cambridge Science Park. He has since divided his time between further r&d into how packaging and printing companies can incorporate printed electronics inexpensively using existing processes, for instance for promotional use on FMCG goods, and developing organic transistors, primarily for RFID applications.
He explains: “Packaging and printing companies and specialist ink producers have talked for some years about printed electronics, but my experience is that few packaging firms, or indeed brand owners, truly understand the often dramatic effects achievable with conductive inks and could thus be missing out on significant market opportunities. Existing methods of printing with conductive inks have also often focused on more expensive processes like inkjet, whereas I am keen companies should be able to use more traditional processes instead of having to invest in new equipment.”
Stone, who has employed patent attorneys Venner Shipley to protect his ideas, explains that organic semi-conductors are a material that can be coated and patterned on flexible substrates to create transistors and other electronic devices. He says: “They have properties that enable simple circuits to be printed over large areas on conventional low-cost thin and flexible substrates like cardboard and plastics”.
On the packaging front, he is already talking to “several large packaging companies”, both in the UK and America, as well as a number of brand owners, interested in exploiting the technology, which he plans licensing in future. He adds: “Novalia will discuss a concept with a client - a promotion, brand-linking, an ongoing game, product verification or whatever may be required - and, considering the types of materials and processes available, put forward a concept to add value and functionality.”
The electronics specialist has also developed an electronic-based trading card game. This uses silver “tracks” on cards, which are inserted into a special battery reader that determines which of the two participants' cards are the winner.
He says: “This is attracting considerable interest, but I also have high hopes for a new coding system I have developed that, again, uses conductive ink tracks. This could potentially be applied to numerous different packaging substrates; the system will currently hold up to 32bits of data, but this should be extendable in future.”
Funding is naturally critical to Stone's work; he is currently talking to a venture capitalist in an attempt to secure a further £500,000 to help him staff a new lab, augment existing equipment and undertake further research. He has recently added a Gallus five-colour flexo press to his existing offset and screen printing facilities, and hopes soon to able to undertake small-scale demonstrations of conductive inks' capabilities to potential customers in-situ.
He adds: “Much has been made also of the opportunities for printed RFID and, in the other half of my work currently, I am working as part of a £1.6m, 50% DTI-funded project looking at the potential for developing organic transistors specifically for RFID. Currently many antennae formed from conductive inks do not offer the performance to compete with etched copper-based alternatives, but this will change over time, and we will eventually see even the chips made not just of silicon but also being printed.”
