Crista Souza EETimes Supply Network (05/15/2007 1:44 PM EST)

As momentum builds within the printed electronics space, chemicals giant, BASF, today said it will open an organic electronics R&D laboratory in Singapore devoted to nanotechnology and energy management, including the development of technologies for organic LED (OLED) displays and biosensors, and other printable electronics.

The $2.6 million investment, part of BASF's research expansion in Asia Pacific, will include a new project on organic photovoltaics in collaboration with the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE).

Printed electronics is being eyed as a lower cost and more efficient method for manufacturing certain types of integrated circuits, particularly radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and backplanes for displays. IDTechEx (Cambridge, U.K.) projects the market for printed electronics will grow to $30 billion by 2015, up from $600 million in 2006.

One potential roadblock is that printed transistor performance is well below that of state-of-the-art silicon. Thus, improved materials performance is seen as a key to enable organic electronics applications.

"We are convinced that the huge future market size predicted for [organic electronics] technology will translate into high growth potential for BASF," said Dr. Florian Doetz, head of the new lab.

The opening of BASF's research center for organic electronics comes on the heels of an investment to establish the BASF Competence Center for Nanostructured Surfaces, announced in April.

Between the two research centers, BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany) plans to hire a total of 40 employees by the end of 2007, primarily research scientists and research officers with backgrounds in chemistry and physics. BASF currently has about 20 R&D sites in the Asia Pacific region.