For the first time ever a public field test with more than 250 printed electronics Raffle Tickets was conducted. The field test was done by the demonstrator partners Leonhard Kurz, NTERA, Acreo, Felix Schoeller and PolyIC at Lope-C 2010.

The Raffle Tickets are a marketing application with an interactive smart object card. Technically, the Raffle Ticket consists of an antenna, a printed organic rectifier and a printed electrochromic display. An activator, which is similar to RFID readers, provides energy by transmitting radio-waves at a frequency of 13.56 MHz. The printed electronic rectifies these radio-waves and provides the printed display with energy and a predefined symbol will appear. After taking the Raffle Ticket out of the activation field, the symbol disappears in a short period of time and can be activated again. Advantages of this technology are that it is thin and flexible and can be easily integrated in cards or packaging (e.g. tickets, vouchers). For this reason it can be used for many applications such as marketing events, games or for brand protection and authenticity control.

This demonstrator joins together smart textiles and printed electronic to built an eye catching electroluminescent flag which moves in the wind.

It is build from an electroluminescent multilayer device printed on a commercial textile by Cetemmsa, and connected to a hybrid inverter composed of inkjet printed passive components and of SMD inverter chips hybridised on a circuit printed on polyimide. A fully printed RC circuit switches off the EL textile approx. 10s after the user has switched on the demonstrator.

The OE-A Flag demonstrates that EL textile can provide light for signage / marketing purposes while still keeping the fundamental property of textiles, which is its flexibility. EL is also a robust technology, virtually indifferent to environmental conditions, and thus not requiring a tough, only foldable and not yet good enough encapsulation material.

In this project, Varta Microbatteries provided the Li-ion batteries, UAB-Cephis designed and printed the inverter circuit, and carried out components connections, HC Starck provided high conductivity PEDOT:PSS for its use as transparent conductive electrode of the EL assembly; and Cetemmsa printed the EL textile and passive components, and carried out the inverter encapsulation and the prototype design and assembly.

At LOPE-C 2010 the OE-A presented the OE-A Toolbox containing more than 20 organic and printed electronic components. An international competition for the most innovative application based on these devices has been started. For more information please click here.