Strategic Elements (ASX:SOR) continues to progress its printable memory ink technology which is being developed in Finland.
During March 2017, a stage two development agreement was entered into with one of the world’s leading research and technology organisations.
Strategic formed the development agreement with the partner of choice for global companies seeking to commercialise printed electronics, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd.
VTT is one of the world’s leading research and technology companies and will help develop Strategic’s printable memory ink technology.
Strategic will be reviewing the outcomes of stage two in the next few weeks and will be discussing the future potential strategy to advance the technology further.
Printable memory ink
Strategic is developing a high performance printable nanocube memory ink with potential to disrupt the fast-growing printed electronics sector.
The goal is to bring memory to devices and surfaces with different shapes and new flexible forms.
The capability to inkjet print the nanocube ink was successfully transferred to VTT in Finland.
During stage one, VTT were able to advise on a number of critical adjustments to lab fabrication conditions that will significantly benefit future devices developed at UNSW.
VTT development work
In latest development work advanced polymer (plastic) material was sourced from a large Japanese producer of polymer films and related services and inkjet printed with nanocube ink and silver top electrodes.
Bending testing was performed using an MTS universal testing device where a sample is attached between two clamps which are moved towards each other at a controlled speed and distance.
The objective is to simulate the bending radius of roll to roll production scale printers.
Endurance tests are typically done to find out whether a device can withstand the repeated writing and reading of data over a period of time under real world simulated conditions.
Results successfully demonstrated that the nanocube ink is able to create memory cells with endurance testing of at least 1000 cycles even after bending the plastic to various radius.
Further development has commenced to identify and incorporate a barrier layer that will combine effectively with a layer of nanocube ink in order to further enhance memory performance.
Scale up activities
Strategic is also finalising an agreement with a renowned development organisation to provide technical expertise in the initial scale up of the nanocube ink to larger batch sizes.
The capability to fabricate increased quantities of ink will also enable the company to test additional potential manufacturing techniques with production scale potential in coating nanocube ink onto materials.
Third PrintoCent meeting
Strategic is also participating this week in its third meeting of PrintoCent, a select consortium of ~50 global companies operating out of a specialised facility in Finland that contains the world’s first pilot factory for printed electronics.
As part of this third meeting, customer needs are being presented by NOKIA (HEL:NOKIA) and needs for printed electronics integration by GE Healthcare.
PrintoCent runs a continuous process to establish value chains for joint projects and offers opportunities to the consortium.
PrintoCent members include large global companies such as BASF (ETR:BAS), Merck (NYSE:MRK) and Dai Nippon Printing (TYO:7912).
The facility PrintoCent operates out of contains the worlds most advanced industrialisation capabilities for printed electronics.
UNSW work update
Nanocube memory ink was originally invented by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and work at the UNSW has recently identified further improvements.
Improvements are in the fabrication of the ceramic nanocubes contained within the ink as well as advancing new intellectual property contained within the patent application filed in December 2016.
Strategic will update the market on these developments as soon as it able to do so.