Army Apps for Printed Electronics
December 1,2011, Printed Electronics USA 2011, Santa Clara, CA—James Zunino from the U.S. Army RDECOM provided an overview of printed materials capabilities and current prototypes for Army applications. This R&D group partners with many other government, academic, and industry research organizations to expand the military capabilities for printed electronics.
This group is in charge if armaments developments and is various types of weapons, ammunition, and field computer systems. Their mission is to research, develop, and demonstrate the use of cost effective prototyping and fabrication techniques for the manufacture of sensors, MEMS, Energetics, and electronic components to increase force
effectiveness and reduce operations and support costs.
Among their goals are reduction of weight and increased lethality and survivability. One of the extreme requirements is to have printed electronics and components, function and survive in active or passive stand-by modes for 20 years, in extreme transportation and environmental conditions. Printed electronics offers the opportunity to reduce size and weight while simultaneously reducing volume and increasing capabilities. Adding in prognostics, diagnostics, and structural health monitoring are all highly desired capabilities.
Materials printing is interesting because it encompasses many material types and can be applied to a wide range of substrates. The technology offers the potential for rapid prototyping and greatly reduced manufacturing costs. Printing components on the surface of munitions allows for more volume for the energetic components and can add sensors and intelligence to standard munitions.
One area of research is in integrated energetics with printed electronics. These munitions can include electronics, MEMS, optoelectronics, and many other functions within the device. The interesting aspects are that the munitions factory can now be located in the theater on a truck, enabling just-in-time delivery. This capability reduces stockpiling and the associated obsolescence as well as the reliance on off-shore suppliers.
Some of the applications for printed systems include sensors, displays, antenna, distributed power and batteries for systems, fuzing, and logic and memory. The new capabilities will enable higher miniaturization, higher sensitivities, and position and orientation information for high control authority and dynamic response. Printed electronics can replace microcontrollers and flex circuits which also improves reliability.
Combining the printed electronics with energetics materials provides some interesting security capabilities. You could build in a self-destruct function into critical and secure hardware and completely eliminate reverse engineering of important circuitry and wiring. This circuit erasure has always been a concern for military devices, since their packaging makes them relatively indestructible.
