A flexible demonstrator composed of a printed integrated circuit based on OFETs, a flexible battery, and an electrochromic display, as a precursor of a fully-printed smart label for metered-dose inhalers

Printed electronics is a promising candidate to seamlessly integrate electronics in everyday devices, with low-cost achievement. Despite the current limitations of printed logic circuits, they are now ready for low-end applications such as smart labels. This is particularly interesting in the metered-dose inhalers market, in order to compete with all-plastic mechanical dose counting mechanisms. In this context, a demonstrator composed of (1) a fully-printed organic four-bit complementary-logic counter manufactured at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, (2) an electrochromic display provided by RISE Acreo, and (3) a printed battery from Imprint Energy was developed. Additionally, a rigid non-form-factor board was designed in order to test the printed circuits, which allows to make them work down to 3V. It also incorporates an NFC, to show how these technologies can be merged with off-the-shelf connectivity devices. Both the non-form-factor and the flexible boards worked as expected, and some printed counters showed correct operation at 3V supply voltage.