Thinfilm Wins IDTechEx Product Development Award for World’s First Printed Addressable Memory

Citation

(2012), "Thinfilm Wins IDTechEx Product Development Award for World’s First Printed Addressable Memory", Microelectronics International, Vol. 29 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/mi.2012.21829cab.001

Thinfilm Wins IDTechEx Product Development Award for World’s First Printed Addressable Memory

Article Type: Industry news From: Microelectronics International, Volume 29, Issue 3

Thin film electronics ASA has won the IDTechEx Product Development Award for Thinfilm Addressable Memory (TM), the world’s first working prototype of a printed, non-volatile memory device addressed with complementary organic circuits, the equivalent of CMOS circuitry. The IDTechEx Product Development Award is given to companies who have launched new printed electronics products and are in the process of bringing them to market. A panel of independent judges assessed Thinfilm’s technology on the basis of technical development, potential market, and benefits over other company’s products.

TM, the result of an extensive collaboration involving PARC, a Xerox company, Solvay and Polyera, is a significant step toward the “internet of things” (IoT), a technology trend identified by Gartner as one of the top ten strategic trends of the decade. The vision of IoT is a world where virtually everything is connected via a smart tag. These smart tags require the commercial availability of devices that have rewritable memory, are low-cost, and can be combined with other printed electronic components such as temperature sensors, displays, power sources, and antennas.

“The demonstration of TM, in collaboration with PARC, was, we believe, a significant step in the delivery of smart tags for the internet of things and for new innovative solutions for everything from toys and games to health care”, said Davor Sutija, Thinfilm CEO. “We are honoured to see the work we did recognized by IDTechEx”.

Thinfilm recently announced a number of partners to create an ecosystem around the Addressable Memory product. The vendors include PST sensors to jointly develop printed temperature tags, Acreo, which develops printed displays for a variety of applications, and imprint energy, which is developing an innovative printed battery technology. These partnerships will enable a new class of temperature sensors – inexpensive, intelligent and able to offer quantitative information on a per item basis – something not currently possible due to manufacturing and material cost restrictions today.

Development of the TM was partially funded by an industrial development grant from innovation Norway. Participants in the development program include Thinfilm and the company’s partners-PARC, Inktec, Polyera and Solvay. Earlier this year, the FlexTech Consortium also recognized the commercial significance of the TM, presenting the Flextech innovation Award to both Thinfilm and PARC.

About Thinfilm

Thin Film Electronics ASA (“Thinfilm”) is a publicly-listed Norwegian technology company with its head office in Oslo and product development in Linköping, Sweden, and sales offices in San Francisco, USA, and Tokyo, Japan. Thinfilm is a pioneer in the field of printed electronics, and provides fully-printed non-volatile, rewritable memory for applications in toys and games, logistics, sensor, and ID systems. Web site: www.thinfilm.no