Tracing evolving trends in printed electronics using patent information

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.