Merck KGaA is to head Germany’s newly launched ‘Printed Organic Switches and Chips’ or Polytos, project. This will use engineering, chemistry, materials science, physics and IT skills to develop printed organic circuits with integrated sensors capable of recording data such as temperature, humidity or light exposure, for applications in packaging.

Other consortium partners in Polytos include BASF, Pepperl + Fuchs, PolyIC, Robert Bosch, SAP, the Universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim and the Technical University of Darmstadt. Copaco, Innovation Lab and Varta Microbattery are associate partners. The aim is to complete the first basic demonstrators within three years.

Polytos is funded to the tune of €7.2 million by the German Federal Ministry of Education & Research (BMBF) and €6.6 million from members of the ‘Forum Organic Electronics’ cluster. This is a cooperation network of companies and universities seeking to create a major R&D and production site for organic electronics, focusing to date mainly on organic photovoltaics, OLEDs and eco-friendly production of electronic components, such as circuits, chips and sensors.

A notable target application for printed organic circuits is printed smart labels, flexible transponders that are applied to a film together with their antenna and can transmit information. These are already widely used in packaging for drugs, other critical care products and luxury goods but their use is limited by cost and practicality.

With the use of organic electronics, Merck said, cost-effective mass production via printing processes could be made possible. “The partners cover the complete value chain from components, circuit design, printing processes, packaging design as well as software and application development. This will help to further expand Germany’s international leadership role in the development of organic electronics,” it added.