Glossary: Printed electronics

Printed electronics is a term loosely used to cover very thin electronic devices and circuits and even some that are purely electrical. This is because these technologies and their applications interrelate and overlap. They have a great deal in common. Even the word printing is used loosely because though vacuum deposition, as an example, may not be regarded as printing by the purists, it often evolves into conventional printing using electronic inks to produce the same thin electronic device.

Source: Aveso

Even for the same device, such as a transistor circuit, there are different approaches to production, with Plastic logic favouring ink jet printing and Poly IC favouring a variety of reel to reel processes as shown below.