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Tracing evolving trends in printed electronics using patent information

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Abstract

Printed electronics, as an extension to conventional electronics, has grown considerably for decades. At this moment, therefore, tracing the development of this technology up to the present will provide researchers and R&D planners with better understanding of the technology’s evolving characteristics and insights for further R&D directions. This paper carries out two bibliographic analyses to study the technology development life cycle and the technological knowledge within the area of printed electronics. First, we fit a growth curve to yearly patent registration data, thereby calculating several indicators, including the current technological maturity ratio, the number of potential future patents and the expected remaining life. Second, we identify the core and brokering technology classes within the overall technology network of printed electronics by combining patent co-classification analysis and social network analysis. As a result, we could obtain some findings from the inventional point of view; the technological development of printed electronics has entered the maturity stage, and the expected remaining life was 8.5 years as of the beginning of 2013. In addition, we identified several technology areas that have the high importance to act as both core and brokering technologies, apparatus for metal working, anti-inductive structures, and electronic circuit control systems.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (No.2012R1A1A1039303).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, Konkuk University, 120 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, 143-701, Korea

    Janghyeok Yoon, Youngjin Park & Mujin Kim

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Konkuk University, 120 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, 143-701, Korea

    Jongsu Lee & Dongjin Lee

Authors
  1. Janghyeok Yoon
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  2. Youngjin Park
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  3. Mujin Kim
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  4. Jongsu Lee
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  5. Dongjin Lee
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Correspondence to Dongjin Lee.

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Yoon, J., Park, Y., Kim, M. et al. Tracing evolving trends in printed electronics using patent information. J Nanopart Res 16, 2471 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-014-2471-6

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