The research logic behind plastic electronics

New Year's Day may have been a holiday in much of the UK, but at Cambridge University at least it marked the first day of a major new research grant, number EP/E023614/1, from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Worth £2,336,206, it is for an "IKC in Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Photonics and Electronics - Exploiting Molecular and Macromolecular Materials".

 

The justification for the grant is that "There is an urgent need for the development of advanced manufacturing technologies using new macromolecular material systems and valid exploitation models. What the UK lacks is a dedicated centre of excellence that can act as a repository of expertise, developing both clear and differentiated core competencies, together with providing a knowledge development and transfer role." 

 

The grant is for something called an IKC. This does not show up in the EPSRC's search engine, but a bit of digging shows that it stands for Integrated Knowledge Centre. This is how it comes to bring together researchers from so many departments at Cambridge "namely in the Electrical Engineering Division (in particular within the Centre for Advanced Electronics and Photonics, CAPE) and in the Cavendish".

 

This one also has a big industrial involvement. "A key to this proposed IKC ... is that it will also allow much greater interaction and collaboration with those in business than has previously been possible for EPSRC funded research activities." Other names that appear on the grant are DuPont Teijin Films, Merck Speciality Chemicals, Plastic Logic,  Alps Electric, and Advance Nano Tech.

 

Plastic Logic is, of course, the company that announced, three days afer the grant started, that it had raised $100 million to "build the first factory to manufacture plastic electronics on a commercial scale".

 

The grant goes beyond the laboratory and delves into commercialisation with support for "tightly focused commercialisation activities jointly with the Judge Business School, the Institute of Manufacturing (including the EPSRC Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre) and the Centre for Business Research. These will allow the creation of a range of innovative knowledge transfer activities spanning business research, training and specific product exploitation."

 

The project also has plans to ensure that knowledge does not finds itself stuck within the academic world. The IKC "will also allow the secondment of researchers from industry and other universities to the IKC, specifically for knowledge transfer (as opposed to research), and in its later stages make use of the provision of pilot manufacturing lines for prototyping."