After nearly one year preparation, the 5th Symposium on Flexible and Printed Electronics (FPE China) was successfully held in Suzhou on 28-30 October at the Suzhou International Expo Center. There have been 4 consecutive symposiums since 2010. In 2014, China hosted the 5th International Conference on Flexible and Printed Electronics (ICFPE) in Beijing. For this reason, the Chinese symposium was merged with ICFPE. This year, the Chinese symposium was resumed and returned to Suzhou again. Since flexible electronics and wearable electronics are the hot topics, and they are inseparably linked to printed electronics, this year’s Chinese symposium changed its title to “FPE China” instead of “PE China”.
Different from the previous symposiums, FPE China 2015 was truly a platform for the Chinese researchers to introduce and to exchange their own research activities and achievements, while the past symposiums were primarily composed of invited speakers from overseas. For example, the 4th Symposium in 2013 had invited 13 overseas speakers and symposium was only for one and half days. This year, FPE China only invited 6 overseas speakers. There were 26 invited talks, 16 oral presentations and 40 poster presentations. All of them were from China. The symposium extended to two and half days. This change reflected the fact that the flexible and printed electronics have developed rapidly in the past few years in China. The Chinese researchers have plenty of their own work to report at the symposium. There were nearly 200 participants attended the symposium, which is record high since the symposium started.
The two and half day’s symposium had a very comprehensive program and rich contents. There were 9 sessions, with topics ranging from overview of general development trends, thin film transistors, display technology, inkjet printing, photovoltaic, flexible electronics and ink technology. 8 keynote speeches were delivered by prominent speakers from China and overseas. Professor BAO Zhenan of Stanford University gave a plenary talk on “Skin-inspired flexible and stretchable electronic materials and devices”, which was truly inspiring for all the attendees. Mr ZHU Changchang of TCL, the largest display panel manufacturing company in China, told the audience that the Chinese government is planning to support printed display research in the next 5 years with funding from both government and private sectors. Other invited and oral talks from Chinese researchers were all of high quality and praised by the audience. Due the time limit, not all submitted abstracts could get a chance to speak. The symposium made a 2 hours poster session to give the authors opportunity to present and to answer questions. 40 posters were put up at the poster session for viewing and people were crowded in front of the posters. Experts were invited to make judgment on posters and three best posters were selected and awarded with certificates and prizes.
At the end of the symposium, Professor CUI Zheng, the Chair of symposium, made a concluding remark. He thanked all the speakers and attendees of the symposium for their supports and invited them to attend the next year’s event which will be hosted by Changzhou Institute of Printed Electronics Industry.
The Symposium chair Prof. Zheng Cui, Director of Printable Electronics Research Center at Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-Bionics, announced the opening of symposium.(Image by SINANO)
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