Functional Printing at IPI 2026: Inkjets expanding reach
The technical programme of IPI 2026 reads as a snapshot of an industry in transition. Across the submitted abstracts, inkjet is extending its reach into ever more demanding functional applications – from micrometre-scale interconnects to structural electronics on 3D surfaces – while the wider printed electronics toolbox continues to diversify. Yet screen printing remains, by volume, the process of choice for the vast majority of printed electronics manufacturing, and the conference programme reflects that reality rather than ignoring it.
INKJET: FROM PATTERNING TOOL TO MANUFACTURING PLATFORM
If there is a common thread across the IPI 2026 contributions, it is that inkjet is increasingly treated as a genuine manufacturing platform rather than a laboratory patterning technique. This is visible on three fronts: the range of printable materials, the achievable feature sizes, and the maturity of industrialisation know-how.
Materials and process windows
Quantica’s work on ultra-high viscosity jetting pushes far beyond the traditional 10–50 mPa·s comfort zone of conventional printheads. The company’s central argument – that mastering high-viscosity fluids requires trilateral collaboration between printhead manufacturers, material developers and end users – acknowledges what many development teams have learned the hard way: rheology, curing behaviour and environmental stability cannot be optimised in isolation. Designing what Quantica calls “intentional system-level headroom”, so that batch variations and environmental fluctuations are absorbed rather than compensated for, is a distinctly industrial mindset.
A related theme comes from Fraunhofer IPA, whose non-Newtonian, water- and bio-based binder system for binder jetting demonstrates that challenging functional fluids can be developed from sustainability requirements rather than around them. The group’s application-driven approach – starting from the requirements of the final component and working back through binder-powder interaction, printability and green-part stability – is explicitly positioned as transferable to other inkjet processes using demanding materials.
Resolution at the extremes
At the other end of the viscosity spectrum, XTPL will present its Ultra-Precise Dispensing (UPD) technology, capable of forming conductive features down to 1 µm – a scale that sits between standard inkjet and photolithography. Two aspects are worth noting for a technical audience. First, the maskless deposition of highly concentrated conductive inks across complex 3D topographies addresses a real gap in advanced packaging, where redistribution layers and ultra-high-density interconnects increasingly strain conventional patterning routes. Second, the same capability is being applied to open defect repair, where micrometre-precision interconnection can salvage high-value substrates – a use case where the economics of additive repair, rather than patterning, drive adoption.
Industrialisation know-how
Several contributions address what is arguably the least glamorous but most decisive aspect of the technology: the transfer from laboratory to production. Inkatronic’s presentation on scaling inkjet from development to industrial production focuses on fluid behaviour, printhead integration, ink supply systems and long-term process stability – the factors that determine whether a process that works on a development platform can survive months of continuous operation.
SAT Electronic, meanwhile, reports on multi-stage printing strategies for PCB manufacturing, using selective inkjet for etch and plating resists, solder masks, legends and conductive inks, with a clear argument on the time, energy and floor-space advantages of digital deposition over dry film, curtain coating and screen printing for these specific steps.
EV Group’s market perspective on AR/VR and co-packaged optics pairs inkjet coating with UV nanoimprint lithography, positioning digital deposition as the material-efficient front end of a hybrid workflow for waveguides and microlens arrays – a reminder that in many high-value applications, inkjet is a component of a process chain, not a replacement for it.
SENSORS AND FUNCTIONAL SURFACES: WHERE DIGITAL DEPOSITION EARNS ITS KEEP
Print-Light-Synthesis, presented by ETH Zurich and Empa, is one of the more elegant process concepts in this year’s programme. By combining digital inkjet printing of dissolved metal precursors – rather than nanoparticle dispersions – with intense flashlight conversion, the approach sidesteps two chronic inkjet problems at once: nozzle clogging and the cost of pre-synthesised nanoparticles. Metal loadings are controlled through printing parameters, and simultaneous deposition of multiple precursors opens routes to tailored alloys and composites. Because the precursor-to-metal conversion happens within seconds under a flashlight, the process is compatible with roll-to-roll production – a combination of digital flexibility and throughput that is rare in sensor manufacturing.
IEMN Lille takes inkjet into radio-frequency applications on paper substrates, reporting CPW transmission lines with 50 µm conductor widths, 9 µm uniform spacing and a 25 GHz passband filter, with printed CPW attenuation of 0.5 dB/mm at 10 GHz. Beyond the headline figures, the work is notable for systematically relating filter performance to printing and annealing conditions – exactly the kind of process-property mapping needed if paper-based RF structures are to move beyond demonstrators.
BEYOND FLAT SUBSTRATES: STRUCTURAL AND 3D FUNCTIONAL ELECTRONICS
Inkjet is not the only route to functional 3D surfaces, and IPI 2026 dedicates significant space to the alternatives.
CRM Group’s work on printed structural electronics targets large-area devices on metallic substrates and harsh-environment applications, directly comparing two strategies: adapting flexible-substrate electronics to shaped surfaces versus printing additively onto 3D geometries. The group’s methodology – developing a single functional cell, scaling it into a matrix, then adapting the matrix to 3D surfaces – is a sober acknowledgement that process adaptation and design, not material performance alone, determine whether structural electronics survive industrial and environmental realities.
The SelfiPBF project by the European Centre for Dispersion Technologies approaches 3D functionality from the additive manufacturing side, combining polymer powder bed fusion with selective inkjet deposition of water-based carbon nanotube inks. The key engineering challenge is inkjet compatibility itself: a stable, water-based CNT ink that survives high-precision jetting while embedding spatially controlled conductivity into a structural component. That such a demanding material system is being pushed through an inkjet process is further evidence of how far printable fluid formulations have come.
Hasselt University contributes on two further fronts. Spray-on-Screen, which hybridises spray coating with the process control of a screen mesh, achieves homogeneous coatings below 20 nm while remaining roll-to-roll and large-area compatible – targeting printed photovoltaics and LEDs, and providing a scalable route to ultra-thin functional layers that neither pure spray coating nor screen printing can reliably deliver. In a second presentation, Hasselt examines patterning strategies for gallium-based room-temperature liquid metals, comparing spray deposition and direct writing in terms of scalability, resolution, process stability and material efficiency. The comparison is instructive: spray deposition offers large-area simplicity but suffers overspray losses, while direct writing is waste-free but far more demanding to stabilise – a trade-off familiar to anyone who has moved a functional ink between deposition platforms.
SCREEN PRINTING’S ENDURING ROLE
None of this signals a decline of screen printing. For the vast majority of printed electronics applications – sensors, heaters, membrane switches, photovoltaic metallisation, conductive traces on flexible substrates – screen printing remains the default, thanks to its throughput, ink flexibility, thick-layer deposition and low cost of entry. Spray-on-Screen, with its hybrid mesh-control concept, is itself evidence that the industry continues to invest in refining screen-based deposition rather than abandoning it. The more realistic picture emerging from the IPI 2026 programme is one of a maturing process portfolio: screen printing holds the volume applications, while digital and hybrid techniques capture the segments where customisation, fine features, 3D geometry or material efficiency justify their adoption. Inkjet’s growth is real, but it is complementary and application-specific rather than substitutional.
ENGINEERING CHALLENGES REMAIN
As with every conference previous edition, the presentations make clear that progress is bought with engineering effort rather than slogans. Long-term jetting stability of particle-filled and high-viscosity fluids, robust electrical interfacing for deformable liquid-metal structures, dimensional accuracy in binder-powder systems, process adaptation to 3D geometries and the reproducibility of printed RF structures at high frequencies all remain open problems. What distinguishes this year’s programme is the extent to which these problems are being addressed alongside questions of industrial platforms, supply chains and production economics – not simply as isolated material or process demonstrations.
The next edition of the Industrial Print Integration Conference, taking place on 24-25 November 2026, will provide a full picture of these developments across printheads, materials, processes and integration strategies – and of where screen, inkjet, spray and hybrid deposition each fit in the printed electronics landscape of the coming years.