Agfa to work on plastic memory with Thinfilm

LONDON — Printed electronics technology developer Thin Film Electronics ASA has signed up film and camera company Agfa-Gevaert NV to a joint development agreement for the production of printed organic memories.

Agfa (Mortsel, Belgium and Thinfilm (Oslo, Norway) have announced that they intend to enhance materials for the volume production of printed memory devices based on Orgacon, the Agfa materials business group's conductive polymer product line.

The active component in Orgacon is the water-based electronic conductive polymer dispersion PEDOT/PSS. This transparent conductive polymer was developed and implemented more than 15 years ago and first applied as an antistatic protection coating on photographic materials. The joint development agreement will build on Thinfilm's intellectual property for soluble memory materials, as well as extend Agfas' intellectual property for conducting polymer materials, Thinfilm said.

"Agfa Materials is supplying printing inks which are specifically designed to print transparent electrodes on almost all types of substrates, making them highly suitable for the implementation of our polymer memory technology in a wide range of applications," said Johan Carlsson, CEO of Thin Film Electronics.

"The collaboration with Agfa will result in materials tailored for different printing technologies used in high-volume applications of our memory technology. In addition, with this agreement we have secured a long term supply of conductive polymer materials for large volumes, as and when our customers are ramping up volume production."

"The agreement with Thin Film Electronics will be an excellent opportunity for us to achieve our objectives, given Thinfilm's innovative technology and strong presence in the rapidly growing printed electronics market," said Frank Louwet, materials business, R&D manager for Orgacon electronic materials at Agfa.

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