New printed chip could spark cheaper sensor networks
Thin Film Electronics ASA, a maker of disposable memory used in toys, has developed a way to add computing to its circuits through a partnership with Xerox PARC. This means it can offer thin, disposable tracking tags for a few cents apiece …
Context & Ripple Effects
Printed electronics has been circling the packaging aisle for years: Wired flagged e-paper's killer app as packaging back in December 2005, and nanotech memory research promised dense storage on unconventional substrates by late 2007. What was missing was logic — memory alone makes a tag storable, not smart.
Thin Film Electronics ASA, whose disposable printed memory already ships in toys, closes that gap through a confirmed partnership with Xerox PARC to add computing capability to its circuits. If the resulting tags really land at a few cents apiece, intelligence stops being a component you add to packaging and becomes part of the packaging itself.
First-order effects
- Thin Film's existing toy and disposables customers gain an upgrade path from passive printed memory to tags that can compute, with Xerox PARC gaining a commercialization channel for its printed-transistor work.
- Brand owners and logistics operators get a candidate replacement for barcode-and-RFID tracking at a price point where tagging every unit — not every pallet — becomes economical.
Second-order effects
- Label and RFID tag suppliers face pressure to match cent-level pricing with added compute, pushing the industry toward hybrid printed-silicon designs rather than pure-play approaches.
- Packaging converters and printers become potential electronics manufacturers, since the fabrication step moves onto equipment closer to their existing print lines than to a semiconductor fab.
Third-order effects
- If printed logic-plus-memory holds at cents-per-tag economics, sensor networks decouple from wafer-fab cost curves, making per-object identity and state a function of print volume rather than silicon allocation.
- The pattern points toward a two-tier compute world: expensive general-purpose chips for devices, and throwaway workload-specific silicon embedded in objects that are currently dumb — a split whose pace depends on printed-logic reliability, which remains unproven at scale.
The trend: Computing is beginning to migrate from wafer fabs onto printed substrates, turning per-item intelligence into a packaging-cost question rather than a semiconductor one.