What is printed electronics?
Printed electronics is an additive manufacturing process where functional inks (conductive silver, resistive carbon, or semiconducting polymers) are deposited onto substrates using techniques borrowed from the printing industry. Screen printing, inkjet deposition, and gravure printing replace the subtractive etching processes of conventional PCB manufacturing.
The result is electronics that are thin, lightweight, flexible, and manufacturable at scale without the tooling costs associated with traditional rigid circuit boards. Where a conventional PCB is millimetres thick and rigid, a printed electronic circuit can be thinner than a human hair and conform to curved, irregular, or three-dimensional surfaces.
Why printed electronics matters
Conventional electronics manufacturing is built around rigid substrates and subtractive processes. Copper is laminated onto FR-4 boards, then etched away to leave circuit traces. This works for laptops and phones, but it cannot serve applications where electronics need to be flexible, stretchable, transparent, or integrated directly into textiles and soft materials.
Printed electronics solves this by depositing function only where it is needed, onto any substrate: polyester film, thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), fabric, paper, or even skin-friendly biocompatible materials. Applications span heated garments, medical biosensors, conformal antennas for defence and IoT, transparent heating elements, and smart packaging.
Printed electronics in India
India's printed electronics ecosystem is emerging, with growing demand driven by defence modernisation (conformal antennas for military helmets and vehicles), wearable medical devices for rural healthcare, and the textile industry's push into smart fabrics and e-textiles.
Suryudey Plastic Electronics (SPEZL) was founded in Mumbai in 2021 to build a full-stack printed electronics manufacturer in India. Our capabilities span conformal electronics, e-textiles and smart fabrics, ultra-thin printed heaters, transparent antennas, and batteryless NFC biosensors.
We are supported by iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) for military-grade conformal helmet antennas developed in co-creation with Bharat Electronics Limited, the Venture Center (a CSIR-NCL incubator) which invested through the SISFS CCD programme, and our work has been displayed at LOPEC, ISPO Munich, Aero India, DefExpo, and MEDICA.
Our capabilities
Screen-printed heaters
Silver-carbon resistive heaters deposited onto TPU and PET substrates. Flexible, stretchable, and available with optical transparency. Precise thermal control via NTC thermistors and PID algorithms. Used in heated apparel (our iðoona brand), medical warming devices, and industrial applications.
PTC heaters
PTC (Positive Temperature Coefficient) heaters are self-regulating heating elements that automatically cut off at a set temperature without any external controller. The ink's resistance increases sharply as it approaches its target temperature, inherently limiting heat output. This makes PTC heaters extremely safe for critical applications such as medical patient warming, precise industrial heating, food warming, and battery thermal management where overheating is not an option.
Conformal antennas
Silver nanowire and silver paste antennas screen-printed onto flexible PET and TPU, operating across frequency bands from NFC to 5G. Conformal to curved surfaces, transparent variants available. Design patents registered with the Indian Patent Office for IoT smart meter antennas.
E-textiles and smart fabrics
Conductive circuits printed directly onto textile substrates. Not sewn in, not clipped on. The result is electronics that add no perceptible weight or stiffness, and survive washing. Applications include heated garments, fabric-based biosensors, and wearable connectivity.
Biosensors
Batteryless on-skin NFC sensors for neonatal monitoring, developed in collaboration with St. Johns Research Institute. Built on skin-friendly TPU, these sensors harvest energy from a smartphone NFC signal, making them cost-effective for deployment in rural Indian healthcare settings. We can also print dry ECG/EEG and stimulation electrodes with Ag, Ag/AgCl, and carbon on biocompatible TPU on request.