Dr Manfred Scriba, as part of the NMMF establishment, attended the IDTechEx2019 conference and fair which started on 9 April 2019 and ended on 12 April 2019. As this is the primary event in printed electronics in Europe it can be considered a good gateway into European research and development in the field. IDTechEx focuses on the commercialisation of the technology, covering broadly organic, inorganic, thin film and flexible nanotechnologies. It has some of the world’s largest end user companies presenting on their needs and experience with printed electronics, and many are in attendance to learn how they can use these new technologies in their products. (www.idtechex.com/europe2019).

The report of this trip is available in the downloads section.

On 17 July 2019 Dr Manfred Scriba and Ms Margaret Ward visited DSI to discuss the contractual landscape of the NMMF implementation.

The meeting was very positive with the following highlights:

• DST is committed to 15 years for support for the SARIR facilities such as NMMF
• The support will be renewable in 3 year cycles
• The NMMF can take a “soft landing approach” meaning that not everything has to be in place immediately upon establishment.
• It is still expected that the DSI will contract with one hub which sub-contracts with a number of nodes.
• Minutes of the meeting can be found in the downloads section.