Inkjet Printing as a Key Enabling Technology for Printed Electronics

In the past decade, the family of digital printing technologies has evolved from being just a tool to visualize information into a generator of functionalities. The phrase ′printing beyond color′ aptly sums up this transformation. While this family of printing technologies is still widely used to fulfill visual requirements, its development in the generation of functionality, especially in the field of printed electronics, has resulted in an explosion of new ideas and fabrication approaches leading to lean manufacturing. The basic premise of digital printing, namely the positioning of a liquid (ink) droplet or solid (toner) particle of microscopic volume directly correlated with the presence of information at each pixel of the image or text to be produced, enables the economic deposition of expensive materials, functional or otherwise, only on desired locations on a substrate, that is, a selective deposition.