Polymer electronics for ambient intelligence
ST has been chosen to co-ordinate all of the activities and will also lead the team working on the development of new materials, devices and circuits. Gianguido Rizzotto, vice-president and general manager of ST’s Soft-computing, Silicon optics and post-silicon Technologies (SST) group, will act as overall co-ordinator.
The PolyApply consortium consists of 20 partners, including leading European industrial enterprises as well as academic and research institutes.
‘Ambient intelligence’ involves integrating a variety of electronic functions, such as sensing, computing and communications into everyday objects interacting via a low-cost, RF-communication technology. Polymer-based electronics promises new products to be implemented on a wide range of substrates including flexible or paper materials such as consumer-packaging.
"Although silicon technology has underpinned most advances in electronic devices and applications for many decades - and will continue to have this fundamental role for at least the next ten years - there are many exciting potential applications that can only be enabled by the development of new technologies," says Rizzotto.
The aim of the PolyApply project is to provide a complete framework for such developments, from the communication protocols used by ‘intelligent objects’ to the actual polymer-based manufacturing technologies.
