Mixing Memory and Desire

We already have commercialized printed logic and processors in the form of OTFTs. We have commercialized interconnects in the form of printed silver. By contrast the story of printed memory, if told, would largely be one of university research and IP filings.

Memory, it seems to me, is a missing link in the evolution of printed electronics. Even if printed electronics never matches CMOS in terms of performance, it will need to emulate conventional electronics in terms of the "parts" it offers. Printed electronics will need logic, processors, interconnects and memory. Which is why I think that the recent announcements around the Thin Film Electronics'; printable memory technology are so interesting and (potentially at least) exciting. TFE announced a week or so back that it was working with Xaar (the ink jet print head guys) to produce memory chips in the thousands; that is in sampling quantities. This work is being done at Xaar's facility in Sweden.

The Xaar/TFE relationship goes back about a year, when the two firms were out and about talking up the R&D work they were doing with ferroelectric polymer memory in arrays of up to 100 bits constructed using a line width of 220-microns. (TFE and Xaar achieved a read/write endurance of 100,000 cycles on the demonstrator, by the way.)

However, about a week ago, came the announcement that the two firms were forming a long-term alliance "to jointly develop industrial inkjet methods and processes that can be used for producing printed memory in high volumes suitable for commercial applications."

And as I write these words, Soligie has just been added to create a memory trinity. Soligie and TFE have agreed to work together "to jointly develop processes for producing printed memory in commercial volumes" (As part of the deal Soligie has been granted an option to acquire production and commercialization rights to TFE's memory technology.) No word yet on when we will actually be able to buy printed memories, but this is still a great leap forward.

Some of the PE applications most likely to generate revenues are unlikely to flower without some kind of printed memory technology. So there is certainly a desire out there for a practical printable memory. (Hence the title of this piece; it's from T.S. Elliot's "Wasteland" where he writes about the coming of new things in April.)

It is difficult to see how printed RFIDs will really take a byte out of the market for silicon RFIDs unless they can embody a decent sized memory. RFIDs are the obvious example, the one everybody mentions. But printed memory seems to me to be a necessary condition for a bunch of other PE apps. Smart labels and packaging, smart cards, security printing, toys and games are just some applications where printing memory would seem to be critical to reaching the required cost points.

Memory; no problem for silicon, big challenge for PE. And TFE/Xaar/Soligie seem to me to be the first to really roll up to meet that challenge at the commercial level. And (as an aside) a hearty congrats to TFE, which has sort of come back from the dead after a dalliance with Intel and an unsuccessful attempt to produce the next-big-thing after Flash memory.