Printed electronics (PE) is set to revolutionise the electronics industry over the next decade and can offer Europe the opportunity to regain lost market share. Printed electronics allows for the direct printing of a range of functional (conductive, resistive, capacitive and semi-conducting) nanomaterials formulations to enable a simpler, more cost-effective, high performance and high volume processing in comparison to traditional printed circuit board and semiconductor manufacturing techniques. It has been reported by Frost and Sullivan that the market for printed electronics will increase in revenues from $0.53Bn in 2010 to $5.04 Bn in 2016 at a compound annual growth rate of 32.5%. However, the migration towards low-cost, liquid-based, high resolution deposition and patterning using high throughput techniques, such as inkjet printing, requires that suitable functional nanomaterials formulations (e.g. inks) are available for end users in industrially relevant quantities. Presently, there are issues with industrial supply of nanomaterials which are low cost, high performance, environmentally friendly and tailored for high throughput systems. Therefore better collaboration is warranted between supply chain partners to ensure nanomaterial production and nanomaterial formulations are tailored for end use applications to meet this need. The INSPIRED project will address these fundamental issues within the printed electronics industry: Ensuring that suitable functional nanomaterials formulations (inks) are available for end users in industrial scale quantities. Production of these nanomaterial formulations on an industrial scale and then depositing them using cost-effective, high throughput printing technologies enables rapid production of printed electronic components, on a wide variety of substrates. Therefore, enabling new electronics applications, whilst overcoming the problems associated with traditional manufacturing.

The EU is well placed to exploit printed electronic technologies to create greater economic and social benefits for the EU, but only if we are able to commercialise innovative technologies created within the EU. Ink jet printing technologies are at the forefront of printed electronic developments. However, Ink jet printing has only been able to achieve a resolution of >=10um and the viscosity of printable inks is limited to <40 centipoise, this further limits the solids content of inks to <30-Vol% and the size of the nano-fillers to <50nm typically. These factors limit the range of functional inks that can be printed as well as the resolution and final properties of the resultant printed/sintered structures and components. The HI-RESPONSE project is based on highly innovative, patented Electro-static printing technology (ESJET) that has already been proven on TRL 4 to print to a resolution of 1um and be able to print inks with a viscosity of up to 40.000 cP. The resultant printed/sintered structures will therefore be able to achieve a high resolution and increase final component properties through enabling the printing of highly filled nano-inks and functional organic materials. This technology will be further developed to TRL 6 within the project to allow for the design and assembly of a multi-head system that can achieve resolution, speeds and cost that far surpassed that of current ink-jet systems. The resultant system will be demonstrated at TRL 6 for a wide range of materials, including: nano-Cu and nano-ceramic filled inks and organic polymers. Each of these materials will be printed to create components specifically defined and specified by the industrial organisations within the consortium: Infineon, Ficosa, Piher (Meggitt) and Zytronic. The specific end-user defined applications are: Automotive aerials and sensors, metal meshed for OLED and touch screens, conductive through silicon vias and mechanical strengthening ribs for thin Si-wafers.