Printed electronics has injected new energy into the packaging industry

[China Packaging Network] "Electronic packaging," or "e-packaging," is an increasingly frequent topic in the packaging printing and paper processing industries. Although the development of electronic packaging is still in its infancy, it has to admit that it brings a whole new development opportunity for the packaging industry. Some experts even predict that the technology will usher in innovative progress in the next few years. So, what exactly is electronic packaging, and what kind of opportunities will this emerging technology bring to the packaging and printing industry?

Printed electronic technology

Printed electronics is the foundation of electronic packaging. Printed electronics refers to the use of fast, efficient, and flexible digital inkjet printing technology to form conductive lines and graphics on substrates (without copper foil), or to form the entire printed circuit board. More specifically, it is the science and technology of making electronic devices and systems using digital inkjet technology. Currently, devices that can be fabricated using printed electronics include transistors, RFID tags, antennas, sensors, mobile devices, e-books, and large variable-advertisement displays, as well as low-voltage, environmentally-friendly batteries.

For a long period of time, printed electronics are only active in scientific research laboratories and high-tech industries, and people in the printing and packaging industry rarely get information about printed electronics. In fact, many of the ongoing high-tech research and development use printing technology. Unfortunately, many printing and packaging manufacturers do not know that they could print out an electronic circuit through ordinary printers and printing processes in their workshops.

Impact on packaging printing

According to the analysis report of the printing industry, the world has a wide range of diverse needs for printed electronics and environmentally friendly printed batteries, including daily supplies, finance, health care, manufacturing, transportation, and logistics. The IDTechEx company in Cambridge, United Kingdom, predicts that the scale of the global printed electronics market will exceed 35 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, and the electronic packaging market scale will reach 7.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.

If leaders in the packaging, printing, and labeling industries can adopt advanced automatic identification and automatic identification data acquisition (AIDC) technology, they are likely to be the first to share the “market cake” for electronics. Especially in the mass consumer market, AIDC technology has been proven to have application value, and it has been applied in brand protection and product certification. For example, it can monitor the situation from production and processing, finished product inventory, distribution, retail to the seller. Establish a tracking and closed-loop system that can trace the source quickly and timely from the final product.

In the consumer market, the use of AIDC technology was mainly limited to bar codes in the past. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology that emerged more than 10 years ago was developed with reliable, unattended wireless data exchange capabilities, and the development of smart labels and electronic product codes (EPC). Technical innovations in the area have added to the deficiencies of the bar code system. The electronic packaging will be expected to become the next fast-growing market, because it will certainly bring AIDC technology to a new level of value creation and return on investment.