Printed Electronics and Flexible Hybrid Electronics Innovation on Display at LOPEC
The annual LOPEC conference and trade show has become a mainstay in the Printed Electronics and Flexible Hybrid Electronics industry calendar. Held in Munich in late February, it attracts global stakeholders over three days of workshops, conferences, and trade shows. This year, it ran February 25-27th and attracted around 170 exhibitors from 29 countries, with about 2,400 visitors. “More and more industries recognize the potential of this technology to make existing products more sustainable and to create entirely new ones,” observes Exhibition Director Armin Wittmann, with exhibits and prototypes on display ranging from a special vest with printed coils to facilitate MRI scans for children, to smart OLED rear lights from Audi with integrated warning options, his enthusiasm is warranted.
The role of textiles has been increasing steadily in markets such as wearables, where they offer an alternative and, most recently, an addition to more established E-textiles processes such as knit and embroidery that rely on yarns and threads. Key market sectors for printed E-textiles have expanded to include transport and displays.
This review focuses on two topics. The first is design, which looks at wearables and the importance of comfort, performance, aesthetics, and novelty. For the first time, this year marked the launch of the Design@LOPEC workshop, where participants from design, academia, and industry brought a rich mix of creativity and technical know-how on how designers might work with printed electronics and, conversely, the role of design in the industry.
The second topic is advances in manufacturing to scale, a persistent question across all E-textiles and one on which important progress is being made, with the potential for new and expanded markets to open.
Design
The global Printed Electronics (PE) wearables market is one that Wolfgang Mildner, General Chair, LOPEC expects to reach a global value of $5 billion by 2032. In the short term, Mildner anticipates that we will see more flexible displays and hybrid integration of electronics and sensors in textiles. Medium-term (2026-2028), we should look out for more smart personal protective equipment, energy harvesting, and flexible Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) or Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes (QD-LEDs) integrated into textile clothing. That is a lot of technology, and it needs to be invisible to the wearer or, at the very least, be comfortable.
Printed electronics offer several advantages over rigid materials for wearable devices, such as electrocardiogram (ECG) patches, which are flexible and skin-friendly properties needed for user comfort. Covestro has partnered with Really Flex Electronics and Beneware Medical Equipment to develop advanced thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) films with good printing properties to ensure signal accuracy on soft, biocompatible materials. Platilon TPU films with polypropylene (PP) provide temporary rigidity to the film during the printing process. The finished ECG patch is durable and stretchable, allowing the wearer to move about without compromising the accuracy of a wearable device. This is particularly important as wearables are increasingly being used for longer periods, which can leave the skin vulnerable to chafing and other discomforts. The TPU films are flexible, skin-friendly, and breathable, making the ECG patch and sensors comfortable to wear.
Ethan Yin, Director of Hangzhou Beneware Medical Equipment Co Ltd is enthusiastic about the benefits of the partnership. “Our partnership with Covestro was key to the global success of Medical Printed Electronics, not only to film solutions but also by expanding business potential to other countries.” Flexibility and stretch make the films ideal for printed circuits and senses, with excellent printability in high resolution with conductive inks. The biocompatible materials are breathable and ideal for skin contact medical applications, with good durability and resistance to oils, grease, and chemicals, ensuring longevity.
LOPEC gave a strong platform to design this year, with a panel discussion moderated by Giovanni Nisato on Design and Printed Electronics and a Design@LOPEC workshop organized by Marina Toeters and myself. Design@LOPEC was held for the first time this year and brought together designers, engineers, and industry experts to explore the intersection of printed electronics, flexible hybrid systems, and material innovation.
The event sponsors, Covestro and SPGPrints, shared their insights into screen printing innovations, conductive textiles, and scaleable electronic materials with a multidisciplinary group of eleven participants from industry, academia, and design studios. Group exercises in trend analysis and technology mapping were combined with hands-on experimentation making and testing samples with printed electronics and additional graphene coated conductive fabric from Grafren. The participants went on to develop their individual or team concepts into real-world applications, presenting prototypes such as self-heating gloves, sensory-driven communication textiles, energy-harvesting wearables, and menstrual pain relief garments.
The workshop concluded with interviews, networking, a trade show tour, and an exhibit opportunity, setting the stage for further research and industry adoption. Sponsor feedback was very positive with Daan de Kubber. SPGPrints was impressed at how many ideas and prototypes could be developed over a short space of time, while Klas-Moritz Kossel from Covestro was interested to see how the company’s materials could be used to enable a more seamless integration of electronics while maintaining the fabric’s flexibility and durability.
The E-ink Corporation has pioneered the development of electronic ink, from e-readers to signage and dynamic surfaces for BMW cars. It has finally branched into the luxury fashion market in collaboration with the Belgian luxury leather goods brand Delvaux. The company’s core invention is several types of electrophoretic ink, or e-ink, with around 6,100 global patents filed around this. The ink can be laminated to a plastic film that is then adhered to electronics to create an electronic paper display or ePaper Display. The reflective display does not need blue or backlighting, it works by the movement of electrophoretic particles under an electric field with no power required to sustain the image giving it a vital energy benefit over traditional display systems.
Until now, the company has focused on flat screen or surface displays. The collaboration with Delvaux has moved the display to the haptic arena with a product that combines traditional luxury leatherworking with advanced electronics and dynamic color changes. For both companies, it has pushed the boundaries of innovation.
“Commitment and collaboration pushed our two companies well beyond their comfort zones,” Comments Jean-Marc Loubier, CEO, Delvaux. “E-ink has explored how to integrate our films into textiles for several years,” adds Tim O’Malley, Associate Vice President of E-ink’s US Business Unit, who is delighted with the collaboration: “The resulting designs highlight how innovative materials like E-ink Prism can be seamlessly woven into a traditional material, honoring both history and the future.”
Manufacturing to Scale
Fraunhofer IZM showcased a number of their innovations in printed and flexible electronics, many directed towards medical applications. In one development for a flexible pressure sensor for soft robotics, a stretchable thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) has been used as the substrate. Photolithographically structured copper is used to create meander-shaped stretchable conductor tracks. Manufacturing to scale is a challenge the whole E-textile industry faces, with printed electronics no exception.
SPGPrints has launched Basalt, a high-quality entry-level rotary screen printing line designed to offer a cost-effective solution for testing through to mid-length continuous production runs. It can manufacture RFID tags, sensors, antennas, and other electronic components. The intention is to bridge the gap between smaller-scale flatbed printing and high-volume rotary production and be affordable to SMEs and startups – essentially providing an entry-level point for rotary screen printing. It offers advantages over flatbed printing for different markets. For example, continuous production allows for seamless designs with uninterrupted circuits that allow solar panels to create longer and more complex antenna without the need for breaks. There are new possibilities for customization and improved performance for printed batteries, LED strips and antenna. “Rotary screen printing with Basalt can be responsive, with users able to log, track, and control every stage of the process,” says Jurgen Westerhoff, Manager Strategic Marketing, SPGPrints, “This provides potential customers with confidence in quality at production volumes.”
The Holst Centre is also addressing manufacturing bottlenecks, specifically in microLED-based display technologies That global market was valued at USD 623.6 million in 2023 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 77.4% from 2024 to 2030, according to Grand View research. Current state-of-the-art pick and place technology has the ability to process over 60,000 units per hour, however the process struggles to assemble micro components with dimensions smaller than 100µm with Holst predicting that speed of assembly is likely to become an issue in the near future as the number of components per circuit board increases.
For example, a current high-end smartphone display that would need around 10 million microLEDs would take a week for a traditional pick and place machine to assemble. Holst are developing an innovative release stack that uses a low cost laser source to enable the fast release of micro-LED components with an adaptive pitch and high selectivity scalable and flexible, it allows the transfer of both mini and micro-LEDs. RGB or monochrome LEDs are assembled using a special bonding machine, with printing playing a key role used in creating a conductive path, interconnectors and dielectric insulators.
Tracxon is a spin-off from Holst, specializing in the manufacture of HPE using sheet-to-sheet (S2S) and roll-to-roll (R2R) printing and component assembly. The company is developing processes for integrating LED’s in large “endless” R2R printed foils with an ultra-thin form factor and flexibility. Tracxon is part of the open-access Patch Factory for mass-printed electronics in Brabant and funded by Stimulus OPZuid and Co-funded by the European Union.
The project TNO (represented by the Holst Centre in Eindhoven) finds collaboration with three innovative SMEs – TracXon BV, Salvia BioElectronics BV, and Elitac Wearables BV, and, additionally, the Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM). The project aims to help accelerate the manufacture of printed health-related electronic devices. Directed at wearables and other devices needed by the healthcare industry, it helps to address the lack of production capacity for high-volume manufacturing in Europe at a quality level that meets the European Medical Device Regulations and CE certification standards.
