Dr Munira Raja BEng., Ph.D., (Liverpool), CENG, SIEEE

An interdisciplinary collaboration under 'SIMS' EU Fp7 project, which had interests in the development of a smart integrated miniaturised sensor system, for detection of cholestrol levels in human blood. The consortium was awarded the best publicly demonstrator at the OE-A competition in Munich 2013.

This collaboration is focused in the development of organic circuits (at Liverpool) for use as the active matrix backplane in flexible displays, with novel formulations of the organic materials developed at Merck.

Funded by the NorthWest Development Agency (NWDA), the collaborative project had interests in the development of novel designs and processes for organic circuits for integration with other components such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) for added functionalities. The size of the world market depends, on the one hand, on the range of functions the technology can produce, but also on the ability to scale-down device sizes and thereby enhance the yield of working devices: reducing cost whilst increasing circuit speed and system performance.

The NoE PolyNet (Network of Excellence for the Exploitation of Organic and Large Area Electronics) - aimed to establish Europe in the area of organic and large area electronics as the world leader in science, technology development and subsequent commercial exploitation of printing and large area technologies for heterointegration of flexible electronics. The project consisted of 17 partners, from industry and academia, across Europe.

The SleeperTag project aimed to combine leading edge research from the science base with industrial expertise from the industrial partners to develop an RFID tag that can be turned ‘off’ and ‘on’ repeatedly without replacing the tag. This breakthrough in tag design using organic non-volatile memory will be applied to the packaging of anti-viral drugs. This will enable suppliers of the drugs (and governments) to identify black market antiretroviral drugs re-entering the UK and Western Europe.

Security tags, such as those attached to expensive wines & spirits, cost the retailer 20p per bottle, plus the labour cost of fitting & removing the tags, there is a need for a low-cost tag.TrackTronic project aimed at creating a low cost security tag consisting of an On-Off-On RFID tag, that has an antenna, inkjet printed directly onto the label with conductive ink. The project also aimed at reducing the printed track width, enabling closer packing of tracks & more powerful antenna. This flexible, printed low cost antenna aims to form a platform technology, enabling the huge potential of RFID devices to be exploited in key markets such as packaging & security.

The project aimed at enabling new generation of smart, ambient intelligent devices that integrate a range of electronic capabilities, including computation, sensing, and information storage, into a wide range of materials, including flexible or paper products, including consumer-goods packaging. The focus of the project was to develop low-cost applications for ambient intelligence that provide multiple ways of communication with the environment and can be integrated into an overall network in everyday life.

Detailed studies of a range of carbon-based materials such as conjugated polymer, nanotubes and C60, using different techniques available at the different academic institutes.