Printed electronics pioneer funded to commercialise “FlexLogIC”
(Images are from PragmatIC’s website)
The company has attracted funding of £18million (UK Pounds) to take the technology to production readiness; investors include packaging and labelling giant Avery Dennison, and follow-on investment from ARM and Cambridge Innovation Capital.
The company regards its technology as an enabler for the Internet of Things and will according to Mike Muller, CTO of ARM ‘open up a whole new world of computing’. It is built around a “planar nano-transistor” in which the conducting channel and gate structure are co-planar. Circuitry is laid down in layers that are of the order of 100 nm thick, and have feature sizes of the same order. A type of self-alignment is inferred, and the company says this maintains critical spatial relationships even on substrates that bend and stretch. The process is capable of complexity of [at least] enough construct an RF or NFC tag. Among the company’s claims for its process are that it can be 1/10th the cost of silicon, and in “many applications” can product a circuit for under 1¢.
PragmatIC says, “FlexICs are difficult to make because they require a very tightly specified series of material deposition and patterning steps, with thickness and features sizes controlled to sub-micron accuracy. However PragmatIC’s pilot scale process overcomes these challenges. It has developed a ‘fab-in-a-box’ concept that allows PragmatIC to scale up production capacity dramatically, and specifically to do so with a very low capital cost and per-unit production cost, as well as automating the complete process to allow it to sell this equipment to supply chain partners.”
PragmatIC looks to accelerate the mass deployment of intelligent packaging following the funding round, with Avery Dennison exploiting the potential of PragmatIC’s flexible integrated circuits (flexICs) in its inlays portfolio – Avery Dennison is already a very high volume producer of RFID tags for inventory control and related uses.
“Avery Dennison works with more than 10,000 converters, brand owners and retailers worldwide, making them an ideal supply chain partner to deliver solutions based on our unique technology,” said Scott White, Chief Executive Officer, PragmatIC.
“We’re excited about this collaboration with PragmatIC, which presents a promising opportunity to build on our high volume RFID inlay manufacturing capabilities,” added Francisco Melo, Vice President and General Manager, Global RFID, Avery Dennison. “With PragmatIC’s technology, there is the potential to extend the use of unique item-level digital identities to improve consumer experiences in a number of new segments, such as fast-moving consumer goods.”
“This funding allows PragmatIC to deliver into the market a tool for producing flexible integrated circuits at an unprecedentedly low unit price point,” said Victor Christou, CEO of Cambridge Innovation Capital. “We believe this is an important step forward to commercially affordable smart packaging.”
“We appreciate the confidence in our business reflected by this investment from Avery Dennison, as well as continued strong backing from CIC and ARM,” concluded Scott White. “The funding provides full support for our next stage of evolution, moving from pilot scale production to enable volume manufacturing with the FlexLogIC equipment.”
Links; www.pragmaticprinting.com / www.averydennison.com / www.cicplc.co.uk / www.arm.com
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