I love the idea of FPCs, but I have a hard time understanding the practical applications.
Even the Wikipedia entry[1] seems to list examples, most of which don't entirely rely on the flexibility of the device. I can understand the need for space savings, but that seems to be achievable for most of these applications without the flexible component.
For most wearables I've seen (clothing or devices worn directly on the body), FPCs don't seem to solve anything - you still have some bulky components, and the truly flexible parts need to be handled with extra care so as not to damage connections. I mean, clothing with built-in fitness monitoring (or GPS or whatever) sounds cool, but current implementations really seem to miss the practicality ("how am I supposed to wash this again?") of truly "invisible" technology.
Can someone point me to some better practical applications?
Printed electronics companies are currently working in fields ranging from: smart credit cards (with auth codes for instance), medical patches, interactive packaging (in the Harry Pottery sense but also for sensing), interactive playing cards, children's books and board games (also Harry Pottery), smart labels for logistics purposes, stickers, control panels in automobiles and other circumstances where you may have a non-flat surface.
There's a lot of interesting work being done on the flexible board technologies themselves. AgIc and others are supplying the tools for personal fabrications of flex circuits. It's way cheaper today to prototype using inkjet printed copper on PET than normal PCBs.
Finally, there is a little distinction between traditional FPC technology, where discrete components are placed on a kapton-based film, and printed electronics technologies, the idea of producing electronics components ranging from transistors, batteries, displays, memory, antennas or sensors. Printoo uses a hybrid approach since Printed Electronics are not yet mature enough to provide the full solution.
Even the Wikipedia entry[1] seems to list examples, most of which don't entirely rely on the flexibility of the device. I can understand the need for space savings, but that seems to be achievable for most of these applications without the flexible component.
For most wearables I've seen (clothing or devices worn directly on the body), FPCs don't seem to solve anything - you still have some bulky components, and the truly flexible parts need to be handled with extra care so as not to damage connections. I mean, clothing with built-in fitness monitoring (or GPS or whatever) sounds cool, but current implementations really seem to miss the practicality ("how am I supposed to wash this again?") of truly "invisible" technology.
Can someone point me to some better practical applications?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_electronics#Applicati...