NovaCentrix (Austin, Texas) has announced the release of the newest member of the PulseForge photonic curing tool family: the PulseForge Invent. This state-of-the-art photonic curing system is highly configurable for academic budgets and advanced R&D, for development in applications such as sensors, displays, circuits, and photovoltaics. The new Invent is available at a base price of $59 000, and is available now for ordering.

“Our goal with the Invent was to implement the industry-leading capabilities of the PulseForge toolset in a more compact, lower-priced configuration, making the technology accessible to more customers,” says NovaCentrix chief marketing officer Stan Farnsworth. “The feedback we received at the public debut of the new tool at the recent Printed Electronics USA event in Santa Clara was very strong.” The new Invent includes the features that have become the hallmark of all PulseForge tools, including the advanced user interface and the inclusion of SimPulse thermal modelling software, as well as an automated sample stage.

Like all PulseForge tools, the user-defined digital settings on the PulseForge Invent are directly convertible to settings on the PulseForge Industrial tools in seconds. Additionally, the PulseForge Invent baseline configurations can be expanded and upgraded at the user facility to include the highest power settings of any PulseForge tool.

Process capabilities of the base PulseForge Invent configuration include:

Sintering of conductive silver and copper inks on PET, polyimide, paper, or textiles

Drying of functional and graphic inks

Reduction of graphene oxide and copper oxide

Soldering of standard RoHS lead-free solder paste on low-temperature polymers

Crystallisation of perovskite or OPV materials

Sintering of CIGS and CdTe nanocrystal depositions

Drying and sintering of plastic coatings

Farnsworth summarises: “Printed and flexible hybrid electronics development continues to move quickly in markets such as wearables, packaging, and automotive. At NovaCentrix we work with customers who have a wide range of processing requirements. Accordingly, the PulseForge Invent is our most versatile photonic curing platform yet.”