AUTOFLEX - Automated Integration of Flexible Electronics

建立在塑料和其他廉价基板(纸/卡)上的印刷电子产品可以使新产品进入大批量市场，如消费包装和防伪标签。印刷电子市场目前估计为GB 15B，到2021年增长到GB 30B，到2027年增长到GB 200B(IDTechEx)。传统的印刷电路板上的电子产品是刚性的，难以在产品中分配，而且设计过度，导致这些应用的成本很高。柔性(印刷)电子产品可以克服这些限制，使许多新的超薄外形因素产品成为可能。需要高度自动化的制造工艺，以满足这些应用的极大容量，并集成将提供所需功率、显示/照明、逻辑和其他印刷电路的薄膜组件。现有的集成解决方案，如Pick-and-Place(已经在电子产品中广泛使用)不能经济高效地扩展到消费包装和安全产品(最终&gt；1trn单位PA)所需的非常高的容量。该项目将开发基于激光加工和低温导电附着物的自动化制造工艺和系统设计。该项目将开放这些高价值的应用，除了为已经可以寻址的应用提供更低的成本和更好的外形因素。

Printed electronics built on plastic and other cheap substrates (paper/card) can enable new products in high volume markets such as consumer packaging and anti-counterfeit labels. The printed electronics market is estimated to be £1.5B today, growing to £30B by 2021 and £200B by 2027 (IDTechEx). Conventional electronics on PCBs is rigid, difficult to distribute within products and over-engineered, resulting in high cost for these applications. Flexible (printed) electronics can overcome these constraints and enable many new ultrathin form-factor products. Highly-automated manufacturing processes are required to meet the extremely high-volumes of these applications and integrate the thin-film components which will provide the required power, display/lighting, logic and other printed circuitry. Existing integration solutions such as pick-and-place (already widely used in electronics) do not cost-effectively scale to the very-high volumes required by consumer packaging and security products (ultimately >1trn units pa). This project will develop the automated manufacturing processes and system design based on laser-processing and low-temperature conductive attach. The project will open-up these high-value applications, in addition to providing lower-cost and improved form-factor for already addressable applications.