Functional material printing has actually been applied in every aspect of people's daily life. For example, some printed electronic products that belong to the category of functional material printing are already well-known to people. For example, by aligning your phone with a barcode of a product, you can obtain a lot of information about the product's production date, shelf life, manufacturer, and other related information. This is because smart tags play a retrospective role, and this technology has been widely used in people's daily lives.
For example, when your phone is aimed at a woman's image printed on paper, a clear 4D woman's image is presented on your phone, using AR augmented reality technology. This technology has also entered people's vision, and can be seen in many exhibitions, such as China Business United Printing Co., Ltd., which has applied this technology to cards, reading materials, and even T-shirts.
What is Functional Material Printing
The concept of functional printing was first introduced in China around 2010, and so far, there seems to be a lack of unified and authoritative expression on what functional printing is. A statement that can be seen now is that functional material printing does not involve performance generated by color, but rather involves performance generated by physical or chemical methods.
Currently, domestic and foreign printing companies have involved or intend to enter functional printing, including circuit boards printed with conductive paste, electronic label production (RFID) using radio frequency device technology, time and temperature control strips using nanotechnology, ink that can change colors to warn food of expiration, flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), solar photovoltaic panels, paper batteries, paper amplifiers, plastic solar cells ETC highway toll tags, etc.
Functional printing needs to be explored by printing enterprises
The key for printing companies to choose functional printing is to act within their capabilities. When discussing functional printing, they should be aware of the following:
1. Functional printing is a new field that will continue to expand with the development of technology;
2. Functional printing is a new field in the printing industry that targets market demand and aims to expand its business, with good development prospects;
3. Since the emerging functional printing is not about color restoration in its original sense, as printing moves into other fields, other industries are also brewing to try to enter the printing field with their technological advantages. The competition between them is equally fierce and cruel, and we must be fully prepared for this.
Since functional printing is a new category, its current market share is relatively small compared to the domestic packaging market, which has reached 1300-1400 billion RMB annually, and the printing market, which is already close to one trillion RMB. Therefore, facing market challenges, printers should naturally pay attention, value, and even actively participate in the research and development of functional printing markets. However, we must not compete with others, lose our expertise in printing, and hastily enter this new and potentially promising field without starting from reality.
The Future of Functional Material Printing
Transformation and upgrading are all traditional industries, including printing, after the arrival of the digital age