On May 11, Professor Harri Kopola and Professor Raimo Korhonen from Finland’s National Technology Institute VTT visited the Printable Electronics Research Center (PERC) at Suzhou Institute of Nanotech and Nanobioncs. VTT is the largest technology research institute in Finland. It has over 2000 researchers covering a wide range of technology fields. In the electronics research area, VTT was one of earliest national research organizations in the world to start the R&D on printed electronics. Prof. Harri Kopola used to be the Vice-president of VTT. Since 2016, he moved to lead the industrialization and commercialization of printed intelligence at VTT. One of the important milestone in the VTT’s printed electronics development was the setup of PrintoCenter in 2015, which was intended to be an open platform to provide a technology facility in roll-to-roll printing of solar cells, organic light emitting devices, smart tags and microfluidic chips. Since its establishment, PrintoCenter has attracted more than 20 startups and industrial partners to develop their own printed electronics products.

During the visit, Prof. Harri Kopola gave a seminar talk titled “Flexible roll-to-roll printed hybrid electronics technology and applications” and introduced the wide range of work carried out at VTT. After the seminar talk, Prof. CUI Zheng of PERC showed them around the PERC’s laboratory and some of the technologies developed at PERC. Prof. Zheng Cui told Prof. Harri Kopola that PERC’s work and development strategy has been similar to that of VTT, focusing on the technologies which have potential to be industrialized and commercialized. PERC is also working closely with industries. Because of the similarity, there are a lot of rooms for future collaborations between PERC and VTT’s Printo Center. Both sides are going to explore such opportunities.