Graphene partnership to advance flexible plastic electronics in UK
27 June 2013
Cambridge University’s Graphene Centre and Plastic Logic are collaborating to exploit the use of graphene in flexible plastic electronics.
Plastic Logic has donated large scale deposition equipment to the Centre to support the acceleration of manufacturing scale-up of developments on graphene. The research programme will initially have three main project activities:
- To develop graphene as a transparent, highly conductive layer for plastic backplanes, used to drive unbreakable Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) and flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays - a market forecast to be worth $40bn by 2020.
- To develop novel transistor structures with graphene-like materials as the active layer, delivering a step change over the device performance currently possible on plastic, while retaining the ultimate flexibility of the devices.
- To take advantage of Plastic Logic’s expertise in the industrialisation and volume manufacture of electronics on plastic, exploiting the commercialisation of graphene for flexible electronics. This will include key high value segments in the developing new market for flexible plastic sensors, forecast to be worth $2.2bn overall in 2020.
Cambridge Graphene Centre’s Director, Professor Andrea C. Ferrari, said the mission of the Centre will be to investigate the science and technology of graphene, carbon allotropes, layered crystals and hybrid nanomaterials.
"This engineering innovation centre allows our partners to meet, and effectively establish joint industrial-academic activities to promote innovative and adventurous research with an emphasis on applications," she says.
"We welcome Plastic Logic as one of our strategic partners. Graphene and related materials are ideally suited for applications in flexible electronics, and this strong synergy with a world-leading Cambridge-based company can accelerate exploitation."
Indro Mukerjee, CEO Plastic Logic expressed delight that Plastic Logic is working with the world class team at the Cambridge Graphene Centre on this transformational research programme for the application of graphene in his company's flexible plastic electronics process.
"This will enable higher levels of customisation and drive a step change in technology performance, opening up new commercial applications, such as the huge potential market for large area distributed sensors,” he added.