Citing the FUJIFILM Dimatix DMP-2831 Dimatix Materials Printer's considerable contribution to the rapidly growing printable electronics field, judges at Printable Electronics 2012 awarded the show's coveted Grand Prize this year to FUJIFILM Corporation. The international convention held February 15-17 at the Tokyo International Convention Center attracted more than 45,000 visitors.

The FUJIFILM Dimatix inkjet printer won the Grand Prize based on its desktop design, its easily used cartridge-style inkjet printhead and its cost-efficiency in offering these design achievements at a competitive price.

"As an R&D tool, [the FUJIFILM Dimatix DMP-2831] is the most popular inkjet printer installed at various research laboratories, and it is becoming the industry-standard inkjet printer," the judges stated. As a result, they concluded, the Dimatix printer has contributed considerably to the printable electronics field.

Printable electronics describes electrical devices manufactured by thin-film deposition and finely tuned conductive patterning using any of several methods by which one or more inks are printed on various, often flexible substrates.  In 2011, the market for printed, thin-film and organic electronics was expected by market research firm IDTechEx to exceed $2 billion, with 38% of products printed. By 2021, they note, growth driven by photovoltaics, organic LED and e-paper displays, and thin-film transistor circuits, sensors and batteries is forecasted to propel the market to nearly $45 billion, with printed products comprising 56% of the total.

The FUJIFILM Dimatix DMP-2800 is a cartridge-based bench-top materials deposition system designed for micro-precision jetting of functional fluids such as organic polymers, nanoparticles, conductors, dielectrics, resists, nucleotides, enzymes, and proteins without heat or contact onto virtually any surface. It can build and define patterns over an area of 200 x 300 mm onto substrates up to 25 mm thick using user-fillable cartridges – qualities that make short, experimental production runs feasible for a multitude of applications ranging from RFID, flexible electronics and photovoltaics to biosensors and DNA synthesis reactions.

FUJIFILM Dimatix DMP-2800-series printers have won numerous awards, including the Printed Electronics USA Commercialization Award for outstanding achievement in demonstrating the greatest tangible commercial success in photovoltaics or printed electronics, the Design News magazine Golden Mousetrap Award; the Nano 50 Award from Nanotech Briefs® magazine; and the first Silicon Valley/San Jose Business JournalEmerging Technology Award (Biotechnology category), given to emerging companies and technologies that have the potential to profoundly impact people and businesses.