Flexibility is a very individualized trait. Some people can easily touch their toes, while others strain to reach down and tie their shoes.
But when it comes to creating thinner, lighter, and more connected products, flexibility is a critical attribute. Thankfully, advancements in printed electronics have opened the doors to new form factors and design opportunities.
Flexible printed electronics can often replace rigid integrated circuits in low-powered electronic devices. This innovative approach creates circuitry by printing conductive inks on a flexible substrate. While the most common substrates are plastic films – such as polyester or urethane – flexible printed electronics can be made with metal foil, paper, textile, elastic, or flexible glass. Depending on the application, there’s also a variety of conductive inks for printed electronics, including silver, copper, zinc, nickel, and more.
Compared to rigid circuit boards, flexible printed electronics offer a host of unique benefits:
These advantages make flexible printed electronics ideal for several industries, including medical devices, consumer electronics, and industrial equipment. In fact, printed electronics are shaping the future through a wide range of high-tech applications. Here is just a handful of examples:
At Tapecon, customers often ask about the difference between flexible printed electronics and flexible hybrid electronics. The choice generally comes down to your end product and functionality requirements.
Flexible hybrid electronics feature a mix of printed circuitry (using the conductive inks and flexible substrates mentioned earlier) with non-printed components such as batteries, processors, or memory chips. In short, hybrid electronics allow your design to be thinner and flexible while adding more power or transmission capacity than with fully printed components. Learn more about how flexible hybrid electronics offer the best of both worlds.
Tapecon provides a multi-prong approach to manufacturing flexible printed electronics. First, we can help optimize your design with our in-house engineering team and materials expertise. From there, we have advanced printing capacities and extensive experience applying conductive ink to flexible substrates. Last but not least, we have various custom converting processes to produce the component to your exact specifications.
For a deeper dive into flexible printed electronics, watch or listen to our podcast with Len Allison from Engineered Material Systems.
With over 100 years of manufacturing experience, Tapecon works with product teams to solve challenges, create products, and enhance lives. Learn more about our flexible printed electronics applications.