At Printed Electronics Innovation Day on December 11^th – a free-to-attend online event organised by TechBlick – Steve Paschky, managing director of sales and marketing for Saralon, based in Chemnitz, Germany, will explain how the company’s inks are disrupting the electronics landscape.

“As a materials supplier to the printed electronics industry, Saralon is now engaging with emerging markets that simply didn’t exist not so long ago,” he explains. “Some of our best-selling inks include SaralBattery and stretchable variants, but as disruptive innovations evolve and mature, the key challenge becomes aligning them with mainstream markets. This is where product-market fit becomes critical.”

Saral Copper 200 is the company’s latest generation of copper conductive ink designed with this in mind. While it has the potential to be used in conventional PCB manufacturing thanks to its ability to be soldered, the primary markets the company is focusing on are smart labelling, smart packaging and antenna technology – specifically RFID and NFC tags and inlays.

Market potential

The smart labelling market is growing rapidly. In 2023, the global market for NFC and UHF tags was valued at €7 billion, with compound annual growth of 15%. Despite this growth, most RFID antennas are still made through the unsustainable, subtractive etching process.

Industry analyst IDTechEx reports that only around 1.5% of antennas are currently produced by additive manufacturing processes, highlighting a significant opportunity.

“Etching, as the dominant antenna production method is unsustainable,” says Paschky. “It wastes materials and relies on corrosive chemicals and in addition, can only produce high-volume standardised antennas. Printed electronics offer a sustainable, additive manufacturing alternative that allows for the production of customised antenna tags and inlays. However, current printed electronics solutions rely on silver conductive inks, which brings up the challenge of cost.”

While antennas including RFID inlays and NFC tags play a central role in smart labelling and retailing applications, cost has remained the key challenge for the vast commercialisation of printed electronic antennas. Printed antennas have primarily used costly silver-based materials making them less viable for large-scale adoption.

“Due to rising and volatile silver prices, the printed electronics community now recognises the pressing need to develop conductive inks made of lower cost underlying materials,” Paschky explains. “In addition to being more affordable, such an alternative must provide comparable conductivity while ensuring ambient stability over time, and easy processability using conventional printing technologies such as screen printing.”

Saral Copper 200 is a copper microparticle-based electrically conducting ink, suitable for paper and different plastic substrates. The ink can be easily screen printed and is thermally curable.

When correctly processed, a sheet resistance of 17 mΩ /sq/25 μm is easily achievable for printed and dried Saral Copper 200, with excellent ambient stability over time.

Other advantages of Saral Copper 200 include low sheet resistance and excellent ambient stability, as well as dramatically lower cost and a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to silver.

“Saral Copper 200 enables the printed electronics industry to overcome cost challenges, particularly in the high-volume markets of smart labelling and RFID antennas which are currently dominated by conventional electronics that depend on unsustainable etching methods,”  says Paschky. “It allows for the additive manufacturing of smart labels near to end-use markets which will significantly reduce both costs and emissions associated with long-distance transportation.”

Further details and registration for Printed Electronics Innovation Day can be viewed here.

 www.saralon.com