This 2021-born Kanpur based startup, called Likhotronics, is trying to make circuit wires redundant with their eco-friendly inks, and is working to revolutionise PCB fabrication with an ink that can be screen printed.
Did you ever get entangled in wires while demonstrating an electric circuit? What if you could just draw the circuit with a pen on paper and the lines you drew could act as wires? National Center for Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE) has developed such a formulation after five years of efforts and put it into an ink and pen format. The IIT Kanpur based startup, called Likhotronics, has commercialised it.
The startupís inks are proprietary formulations to be used by the manufacturers of PCBs, membrane switches, sensor electrodes, and remote controls, etc. The startup also offers educational kits based on these specialised inks, which can be used for training basic electronics to students of all age groups.
ìWhile imported specialised inks from Asia (China, Taiwan, etc) have several issues, including quality, imported inks from the West are expensive,î says the Founder and Managing Director of Likhotronics, Dr K. Sudheendra Rao, who first sensed the problem when he was associated with a company that was developing biosensors. He felt the need to develop an indigenous ink ecosystem in the country. Most of their inks are now screen printable; their formulation for inkjet printing is under development.
Though not erasable, Likhotronics inks remain stable at room temperature, have a longer shelf-life than the normal industry standard of six months, and are long-lasting on paper, if maintained properly, claims Dr Rao. They customise the inks based on the substrate it is to be used on.
ìThe industry can use these inks and develop various printable and flexible electronic products like RFID tags, solar panels, and PCBs for various applications,î claims Dr Rao. They claim use of mostly eco-friendly materials and assert, ìOur pens are as safe as your regular pens.î
Dr Rao points out that, currently, PCB production uses a chemical etching process, which is hazardous. Likhotronics claims to have developed an ink that can be screen printed, and hence is eco-friendly. Dr Rao says, ìWe are very close to it and our customers have validated the process. But still, it requires a lot more stability studies. Once out, it can completely change the prototyping and fabrication of regular PCBs around the globe.î
While noting that it takes some time for the market to accept a product and for the product to get stabilised, Dr Rao is content about his seven-people-strong teamís success in pioneering such a unique product that ìnobody else has at this point in time.
Funded initially through the Startup India Scheme, they got scale-up support of around INR 4 million from MeitY recently, with which they have opened a manufacturing facility in Noida to produce 100-200kg of product per month. Dr Rao says, ìWe are bootstrapped and have been generating a small amount of revenue with our products and services. We want to scale up organically as demand grows with the market, not using investor funds for now.
Dr Rao says the startup is open to freshers looking for internship roles in fields like electronics, electricals, biosensors, material science, physics, and chemistry.
