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Printed Electronics 2014: World Standardization Effort
September 4, 2014 |Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Abstract
Although technically not a new technology, printed electronics is a technology with a growing number of real commercial applications and very broad potential applications. It is the assessment of IPC that printed electronics is at the stage of development where widely accepted international standards, based on consensus by experts from many viewpoints and many countries, could aid global adoption of this technology as an additional tool widely available for the fabrication of electronic apparatus.
At the same time, there are factors that could drive the generation of multiple competing or conflicting printed electronics standards, with unnecessary duplication of effort. Some of the forces behind this possibility (geographical specialization, national interests, poorly developed cooperation between standards bodies, etc.) are discussed. Some means of avoiding this undesirable outcome are suggested.
Current and near-future efforts toward cooperative standardization, technology development, and communication are discussed, as well as a status report on the major efforts in progress. Partnerships that currently exist and partnerships under discussion are presented.
Over the next five years, we envision a number of potential obstacles to both effective and efficient collaborative printed electronics standards development, and to the broader availability of printed electronics as a viable option in electronic fabrication. In this article, we will communicate those areas of concern, and suggest some possible means to avoid them.
We predict the general success of printed electronics, if success is defined as the wide availability and acceptance of printed electronics technology as one of many possible tools which may be employed in electronic fabrication, when it is the most appropriate solution to a particular problem.
Historical Background: How We Got Here
As is typical with any major technological shift, when alternatives to wired circuits were needed, several possible paths were identified, but no one could predict with certainty which paths would succeed in the marketplace. The path (or paths) chosen depend on the technologies and support for each available at the time, the various market, environmental, and societal forces in play at the moment, and a bundle of additional imponderable factors usually lumped together under the heading of “luck.”Read the full article here.Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the August 2014 issue of The PCB Magazine.