How thin, flexible electronics will revolutionize everything from user interfaces to packaging
As our computing requirements change, the nature of the underlying electronics needs to change too. We're moving into an era of wearable gadgets that require flexibility and new user interfaces …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Gigaom argument sits at the end of a long runway: Wired flagged e-paper's fit for interactive packaging back in 2005, Fast Company saw flexible touchscreen e-paper pointing toward touchscreens everywhere in 2009, and in January 2014 researchers demonstrated a clear, flexible electronic circuit thin enough to sit on the surface of a contact lens. What changed by April 2014 is the demand side — wearable gadgets have made flexibility a requirement rather than a novelty, since rigid boards and flat glass do not conform to a wrist, an eye, or a carton.
First-order effects
- Wearable device makers face a component problem their desktop-era supply chains were never built for: displays, circuits, and batteries must now bend and stretch, pushing procurement toward flexible substrates and printed electronics.
- The contact-lens circuit demonstrated in January shows how extreme the miniaturization target has become — interface designers gain a new canvas (skin and eye) but inherit all the material constraints that come with it.
Second-order effects
- Packaging becomes a competitive surface again: if cheap flexible electronics revive the e-paper-in-packaging idea first pitched in 2005, consumer goods brands gain a channel to put live information directly on the box, and print/packaging suppliers become electronics customers.
- Display and semiconductor suppliers whose economics assume rigid glass and silicon wafers face pressure to retool or cede the wearable segment to specialists in thin-film and printed components.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, computing stops living in discrete devices and spreads across surfaces — clothing, lenses, packaging — turning the electronics industry's unit of design from 'the gadget' to 'the material', a shift consistent with the ambient-computing framing of where interfaces are headed.
- Manufacturing follows the materials: volume production of flexible circuits favors printing and roll-to-roll processes over wafer fabs, reshaping which firms and regions capture value as wearables scale.
The trend: Computing hardware is migrating from rigid slabs into thin, flexible, embedded surfaces, driven by wearables' demand for electronics that conform to bodies and packaging.