Saturday, September 07, 2013: IIT Kanpur will now house the National Centre of Excellence on large area flexible electronics. The setting up of this centre is a part of the National Policy on Electronics. The policy provides for setting up of such national centres of excellence in various verticals of electronics that are specifically relevant to India.
A number of such centres are expected to be set up, which aims to plan for creating critical research activity in the country in selected themes. This would eventually enable Indian industry and researchers to participate in global advancement of those specific areas at par with cutting edge work being done elsewhere in the world. These centres will function to bridge the gap between Indian and global electronics industry.
Taking a step ahead in this direction, one of the areas identified for setting up the above mentioned centre is ‘Large Area Flexible Electronics’. According to the DeitY newsletter, “Large area electronics represents a segment of electronics where monolithic integration of electronics typically results in products that are large in size applications. At the heart of this are flexible and form fitting property of products and their manufacturing by printing based methods. According to global sources, the flexible electronics market in 2011 was USD 1.8 billion and is expected to reach 19 billion in 2018.”
The information in the newsletter reads that the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) has already submitted a concept paper and a proposal to DeitY for setting up ‘National Centre of Excellence for Large Area Flexible Electronics’. The proposed centre shall create an ecosystem for research and development in large area flexible electronics in close coordination with industry.
When functional, the centre, is expected to conduct and coordinate research and development in this emerging area of electronics. It is proposed that industry would participate actively in the centre and the research undertaken would be based on industry needs and applications which have commercial use. The concept paper prepared by IIT Kanpur was discussed in a meeting held in DeitY on 12 Aug, 2013.
