PapierLogik is a R&D Leader institution in Materials Science and Electronics.
We aim for materializing new resources, production process and know-how to favor recentralized and more efficient products and products life-cycles.
This involves to survey leading innovation and discoveries in a variety of multi-disciplinary fields and thematic such as the ones below.
We are open to collaboration with any entity aiming for common goals and we are keen on collaborating in multi-disciplinary environments and through versatile applicative and product development projects.
We also especially welcome any researcher with interests to bring their contribution and of course any students from respective fields willing to explore those themes for their training periods or their students projects.
Funding Research Opportunities
We preciously welcome any interest in developing or exploiting our technology and we devote every year part of our production to a selection of projects. Eligible projects and their project leader will receive the materials for free to do their work. A final price is also given the best project of the year.
Moreover, if you have already realized a project with ou materials and you are able to report on it (website, video...) then you are also eligible to receive a new free Development Kit.
Synthetic vs Organic Materials
Using local and sustainable resources such as wood and plants along with local recycling or reuse of our wastes such as cellulose or carbon-based electro-functionnal materials enable the production of more virtuous products life-cycles, as well as offering open-source hardware resources, knowledge and technologies for applied developments in electronics & IT.
Production Process: from man-made POC to lean engineering and Mass Production
Our research in Materials Sciences for paper, printing and converting engineering processes has now been widely exploited and applied to the study, prototyping and developments towards industrial production for a variety of Human Computer Interfaces and other connected objects with embedded custom electronics.
Electro-functional papers, inks, coatings and glues
Adding functional micro or nanoparticles or polymers in a cellulose-based composite, and ink medium or a glue can enable to modify the electrical properties of the resulting material.
For example, adding a few percent of carbon pigments in mass of the paper lets the paper become electrically low conductive, while adding an appropriate mix of carbon and graphite in a ink medium at higher rates lets the ink become respectively high volume conductive.
Depending on the selected pigments nd process it is theoretically possible to produce any type of functional layer for any type of electronic component.
Resources and Raw Materials
Industrial resources that are used in most consumer are mainly highly durable synthetic polymers, but also non recyclable rubbers and composites because these are more durable or more specific to an application again.
Due to recycling and end of life issues but also in addition to the fact that most of these plastics are made from oil, most countries and industries are looking for new alternatives to oil and silicon such as materials from the biomass.
Lignin and cellulose are the essential molecules that are present and exploitable from woods and most plants. However, these are not as simple and perfect polymers than would synthetic polymers be and they are much harder and also cost-effective to process. They are much less durable naturally and they must also be chemically or physically transformed to lead to very interesting alternatives such as cellophane of PLA, to obtain a better compromise between durability and biodegradability.
Recycling and End of Life impact
A very small amount of plastic is being recycled world-wide (30% global plastic recycling vs 70% for paper est. from UN 2018). Only a few pure thermoplastics can be theoretically recycled at will. The 70% remaining plastics can only be burred, burnt or hopefully reused to build other non recyclable but useful products like bitumen roads or polar jackets.
The remaining accumulates in the nature or in the oceans, knowing that these plastics can take 500 years to degrade with UV essentially.
Moreover it turns out that their polymer chain end up breaking during the process and the number of recycling is considerably limited.
Papers made of cellulose fibers are much more sensitive to humidity and easier to dissolve in water. With simple centrifugation systems , one can even re-separate the fibers from other content.
Most papers also content a few percent of various synthetic polymers to improve various properties, but these will not prevent recycling if the paper can pass the recycling norms.
High quality papers are turned to lower grade recycled paper until becoming cardboards for a few cycles, as a fibers is fully depredated and lost through around 6 to 9 recycling cycles.
We then explore ways to carefully source and/or produce our resources and raw materials so that they are efficient, affordable and accessible while also considering their impact on the product recycling end-of-life impact.
Hardware Electronics
Once we obtained exploitable custom components, we want to evaluate its potential with custom Test Benches and simple sensor to signal ADCs. We can thus validate its behavior, compare it to other components results and better identify how to improve it when needed and obtain a functional Proof of Concept.
We can then consider how to use this new components in applicative environments to further investigate and confirm its applicative potential, and how to fully optimize the product and prepare the production process for serial and mass-production.
Firmware and Software Computing
Electronic circuits fabrication and sensors implementation at the prototyping stage starts being made in parallel with Firmware programming of the ADC microcontroller but also possibly of a fully embedded Linux OS for new generation development boards.
Microcontrollers aim for acquiring the sensors signal and operate internal DSP at will prior to send relevant signal information through various possible hardware and protocols to a computer, a phone, a hub router, a local on on-line server.
The device or application receiving the signal is then also programmed to exploit the data, store it or display it and also possibly provide interaction commands with the microcontroller(s).