FIAT, the Italian automotive industry, has installed to its cars -for the first time- printed electronics with a Greek signature. The printed flexible organic fourth-generation photovoltaic systems were created in the framework of a “Smartonics” European programe, creating a wide range of new commercial applications, offering high performance, low production cost and a variety of colours and transparency.
The “Smartonics” project is one of the largest European programes developed in the last few years in the EU, with the participation of 18 research and industrial agencies, coordinated by the Aristotelio University of Thessaloniki and in particular the LTFN nanotechnology laboratory, along with five other Greek agencies (the universities of Patra and Ioannina, the Organic Electronic Technologies OET and Advanced Energy Technologies Advent). At the same time, two globally-unique pilot production lines of organic electronic were created in Thessaloniki based on two new technologies.
This research effort, underway for the past four years, brought together foreign institutes such as the Oxford University, the universities of Surrey and Stuttgart, the CNRS (Ecole Polytechnique) in Paris, the Fraunhoher German institutes, the HZB Institute in Berlin and the European companies Horiba Jobin Yvon, AIXTRON, CESM, Oxford Lasers, Coatema and FIAT.
“In certain sectors of technology and innovation we are perfoming very well, not just competing but leading in research and technological development in Europe and globally. What it is needed now is to exploite the pilot lines of organic electronics and infrastructures installed at the LTFN laboratory and the know-how acquired, to create multiple application projects and to promote investment initiatives to have useful final products,” Stergios Logothetidis, professor at the Nanotechnology Laboratory of the Aristotelio University said.
