The Gutenberg Transistor

Nov. 16, 2007

Kovio Inc., a privately held Silicon Valley company, this week introduced the world’s first all-printed high-performance silicon thin-film transistor (TFT), a key building block for the integration of electronics into everyday things. Kovio has demonstrated low-cost all-printed silicon TFTs with mobility of 80 cm2/Vs, which significantly exceeds the performance of previously reported all-printed TFTs using either organic or inorganic semiconductors.

The announcement came at this week’s IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2007 in San Francisco. Based on breakthroughs in nanotechnology and materials science, Kovio has developed the electronic equivalents of color inks for graphics printing. These functional electronic inks include silicon, doped silicon, metals, and insulators. Combining functional electronic inks with high-resolution graphics printing technologies, Kovio has printed high-performance silicon TFTs at a fraction of the cost of conventional lithography-based silicon technology. This is the result of additive digital printing processes, lower capital expenditures and faster cycle time. The technology is also attractive from an energy consumption standpoint.

The transistor won’t find its way into mobile computing devices right away, however. The initial target application is low-cost radio frequency identification (RFID) for item-level tagging. The innovation is intended to lower the cost of item-level tagging required for meaningful adoption in various markets, including retail, consumer products, healthcare, manufacturing and transportation.

To accelerate the commercialization of its technology, Kovio will sign two separate joint development and supply agreements with Toppan Forms Co. Ltd., which is involved in printing businesses, printable electronics and digital information technologies, and Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of Cubic Corp., a provider of automated fare collection systems for public transport.

“By combining our capabilities with Kovio, intelligence can be built into everyday items, enabling the integration of pervasive networked devices for information collection and distribution, a key requirement for the advent of the ubiquitous society,” says Masanori Akiyama, president and CEO of Toppan Forms “By combining the enabling performance of silicon with the cost structure of printing, Kovio offers a true extension to item-level tagging that the current silicon industry can’t achieve,” says Amir Mashkoori, CEO and chairman of Kovio.

Kovio expects to start shipment of products by the end of 2008.

SOURCE: Kovio Inc.