By Margie Dana

My Google News section for all-things-print collects content of a certain nature: articles about laser printing, commercial printing companies, or, most intriguing of all, something called printed electronics.

I admit it: until recently I was pretty clueless about this last category.

About six weeks ago, I got my February 2011 issue of Canvas in the mail (www.thecanvasmag.com). Canvas is an excellent magazine for printing salespeople. This issue was special. It had an electronic cover. Mark Potter is the magazine’s publisher; his email is .

Production notes about the cover directed readers to www.printedelectroniccover.com, where I read that Professor Malcolm Keif of Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, CA, was strategically involved. (Do check out this web site. It describes a fascinating process, and many people and companies were instrumental in the cover.)

I learned that Cal Poly has plans to offer a brand new master’s degree program in printed electronics in September 2012, so I decided to interview Dr. Keif for a Print Tip.

“Printed electronics” sounds like a mash-up of print materials with something electronic. And it is. When I called Dr. Keif, I asked him right off the bat to define the term. He didn’t hesitate. “It’s printing with solution-based conductive inks. Most electronics use a silicon process. Conventional silicon fabrication is a subtractive process. Printing is an additive process. We need a conductive solution like silver ink for manufacturing printed electronics.”

What about that printed electronic cover? “The cover of Canvas had no semi-conductive material, like silicon. We have silver in there, carbon and some organic materials that can be conductive. It is chemically complex. From the concept stage till it was delivered, it took six months and involved a number of partners.

“The technology we used is electrochromic technology.* It doesn’t glow in the dark or anything. It changes colors, which is useful for revealing information or drawing attention to an area. Alternative technologies like electroluminescence are preferred for signage and POP displays that wow people. But electrochromic displays use very low voltage batteries. That cover was sort of a low-power application, which was required for riding on a magazine.”

I wondered what some of the typical applications for printed electronics might be. One application is static displays like signage and POP, where larger power sources are available.

A packaging expert told me about another cool application: cereal boxes that light up. He saw them at CES 2011 in Vegas earlier this year (the Computer Electronics Show). Have a look at this  and read about Fulton Innovation, the company behind the boxes.

Back to Cal Poly’s plans for that graduate program. “Among our goals is that we hope to make some of the coursework available online,” said Dr. Keif. “Someone could presumably take a class or two without registering for the entire degree program. There’s been quite a bit of interest among our current students.”

The university has had an undergraduate program in printing for 60 years, and it’s widely considered to be among the top undergraduate programs in the U.S. So far they’ve never offered graduate degree programs in printing.

In recent years, they’ve put an emphasis on emerging areas, like printed electronics and functional packaging technologies like sensors and scavengers, which react and detect the presence of different gases. These are considered “functional” printing applications, where the materials used help with performance, more than marketing or graphic appeal. “We think our geography is right for an MS in Printed Electronics, since we’re so close to Silicon Valley. Our university seems like a good fit – we’re an engineering university, so there are already a lot of resources on campus.”

Programs in printed electronics are offered in only a few U.S. colleges and universities, such as Western Michigan University in its Center for Applied Printed Electronics (CAPE). Visit www.wmich.edu/engineer/cape/ for details.

Clemson University in Clemson, SC, is doing work in printed electronics as well. Visit www.clemson.edu/ According to their web site, “Clemson’s Sonoco Institute, Department of Graphic Communications, and Advanced Materials Center have been actively engaged with Printed Electronics technology, practices, and markets over the last 5 years, and have prepared a new seminar to offer our industry and academic network.” There’s an upcoming Printed Electronics 101 seminar at Clemson in June.

Early this year, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) announced it is building a state-of-the art advanced printed electronics research facility, to be called the Structural and Printed Emerging Technologies Center in the UTEP College of Engineering. Here’s that news release: http://engineering.utep.edu/news010611.htm.

I have been told that RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) in NY does not yet offer a printed electronics degree program.

If I have left out an American college or university that offers printed electronics, I apologize. Please email me if you know of others, or add them in the Comments section of this Print Tip.

Cal Poly’s focus is definitely on the application, commercialization and scaling side of things, not the materials or engineering side. “I think of it as taking things “from lab to fab,” said Dr. Keif. “We’ll certainly work with the engineering and materials teams here on campus but our focus will be on application.”

The proposed program is for a master’s degree in Printed Electronics and Functional Imaging. It would serve three areas: printed electronics, security printing, and active packaging (using sensors, scavengers or barriers). These three fields, noted Dr. Keif, have some commonalities in that they’re functional and not necessarily graphic in their applications.

Once I began to research printed electronics, I found a few resources you might like:

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1. www.IDTechEx.com – IDTechEx is a knowledge-based company specializing in printed electronics, RFID and smart packaging.
2. www.printedelectronicsworld.com – Hosted and written by IDTechEx, this is a free portal that offers daily updates of the latest industry developments.
3. www.printedelectronicsnow.com – This is an online publication devoted to this emerging field.

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I would like to thank Professor Keif for his time and information on the topic of printed electronics. You may reach him directly at  or at .

*Per Wikipedia: “Electrochromism is the phenomenon displayed by some materials of reversibly changing color when a burst of charge is applied. Various types of materials and structures can be used to construct electrochromic devices, depending on the specific applications.”

© 2011 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. Your comments are encouraged. You're free to forward this email to friends and colleagues. However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.