Imprinted logic technology from PragmatIC in Cambridge UK is being utilised by a major industrial player in the US.

ITW is a diversified manufacturer of advanced industrial technology; the licensing deal enables the Americans to develop and sell novel printed electronics solutions incorporating PragmatIC’s unique technology.

ITW will also join the collaborative PragmatIC Pilot Production Program (P4) as an integrator, working with PragmatIC’s other partners to ensure a complete and scalable supply chain for these solutions.

The ITW Foils and Thermal Films Group has a leading presence in the security, pharmaceutical, architectural, graphics, and coding markets. It produces a variety of secure, functional, and decorative films, coatings, and foils products for a wide array of consumer, industrial and major governments around the world including secure document programs, financial transaction cards, and major consumer goods brands.

These customer-focused solutions make ITW an ideal fit with many of the applications validated by PragmatIC’s recent prototyping activities, said the Cambridge company’s CEO, Scott White.

He said ITW would also combine PragmatIC’s printed electronics with other decorative and security features, such as holographic or metallic foils and laminates to enable a novel range of fully converted functional solutions across a diverse set of form factors including foils, labels, inlays and packaging.

Some of ITW’s decorative and security solutions are able to be further enhanced through the incorporation of intelligent and interactive printed electronics.

John Schneider, VP of Technology for the ITW Foils and Thermal Films Group, said: “We see a growing and very large opportunity for PragmatIC Printing’s unique technology, as it provides a strong platform for product innovation across a broad range of ITW businesses.

“The P4 initiative ensures that it is not just an isolated technology, but rather part of a complete ecosystem enabling commercially viable solutions to be rolled out in the near future.”

Scott White added: “We are extremely happy that our technical and commercial approach has been validated by a company with the market presence and diversity of ITW. This relationship strongly complements our other P4 partnerships, and we look forward to working closely with them to establish and scale the entire value chain for complete printed electronics solutions.”

PragmatIC Printing enables printed logic circuits that introduce intelligence and interactivity into a wide range of products and applications, in form factors that are not possible using silicon chips.

In 2010, PragmatIC acquired the printed electronics business of Nano ePrint Ltd, including its patented technology for planar nano-electronic devices that can uniquely be fabricated in a single layer of semiconductor via single-step imprint patterning.

PragmatIC has extended this proven imprinting process to allow a full range of device and circuit architectures to be printed in transparent, flexible semiconductors at micron and sub-micron scale.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Scott White