The Centre held it’s third outreach meeting Reel to Reel Production Technology at Baglan Bay Innovation Centre, Port Talbot on Wednesday 25 June 2014 hosted by the Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings Innovation Knowledge Centre (Specific IKC).
Future technologies for large area electronic and optical functional surface are going to have to use reel-to-reel (roll-to-roll) production methods to achieve economies of scale and provide the cost benefits that such technologies have promised. A lot of this technology can be taken from the existing print industries, however, working with multiple base and interstitial materials, multi-function coatings and alignment of fine functional features during lamination are all new areas that the traditional print industry has not necessarily had to face.
The event allowed researchers and industrialists already involved in such production technology to explain what the issues are likely to be, what exists today that could enable early adoption and what obstacles there may be in establishing production facilities in the UK. Some of the application areas for such products will also be considered, such as building scale organic photovoltaic (OPV) energy capture and metre wide luminaires.
Speakers included:
- Dr Eifion Jewell, Specific IKC
- Dr Hsin-Ling Liang, CAPE, University of Cambridge
- Dr Raymond Knaapen, VDL Enabling Technologies Group B.V.
- Dr Martyn Cherrington, Knowledge Transfer Network UK
- Manuel Gallardo, Bosch Rexroth
- Dr Phil Rumsby, M-Solv Limited
- Rob Hendriks, NovaCentrix
- Dr Paul Reip, Intrinsiq Materials Limited
The day also include a corridor tour of Specific’s facilities.
