News & Press releases

Bayer MaterialScience joins Holst Centre flexible electronics research

Leverkusen/Eindhoven, July 2010 – Bayer MaterialScience AG, one of the world’s largest producers of polymers and high-performance plastics, and Holst Centre, an open innovation initiative by research organizations imec (Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands), have now announced their partnership in the field of flexible electronics. By joining the Holst Centre eco-system, Bayer exchanges its own expertise with the existing network of academic and industrial partners.

Together with leading players in the domain of flexible electronics, Holst Centre subscribes the vision of a smart foils industry. The vision describes a value chain that starts with materials and equipment suppliers delivering to manufacturers of smart foils such as organic light emitting diode (OLED) lighting, battery or organic photovoltaics (OPV). At the end of the chain are producers of smart devices who develop products by integrating foils with various functionalities.

Jaap Lombaers, Managing Director Systems-in-Foil at Holst Centre: “We are proud to add Bayer MaterialScience as a leading materials supplier to our existing partner network. Over the past few months, I have met with many colleagues of Bayer. I am convinced that their dynamic spirit and world class technical expertise is a valuable asset to our program.”

“We are committed to deliver improved films product solutions to our customers addressing new applications within the flexible electronics industry”, adds Bernd Steinhilber, Senior Vice President and Head of Functional Films at Bayer Material Science. “The partnership in Holst Center is an excellent opportunity for us, bringing together competent industry in the open innovation surrounding. The growing demand for increased functionality in the materials we supply is matched perfectly with the improvements we expect from this collaboration.”

To stimulate innovation and decrease time-to-market in this eco-system, Holst Centre aims at gathering academic and industrial partners from across this value chain around shared technical roadmaps. Already Holst Centre teams up with several global leaders and local startups to jointly develop technologies for flexible electronics such as OLED and OPV.

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About Bayer MaterialScience:
With 2009 sales of EUR 7.5 billion, Bayer MaterialScience is among the world’s largest polymer companies. Business activities are focused on the manufacture of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products used in many areas of daily life. The main segments served are the automotive, electrical and electronics, construction and sports and leisure industries. Bayer MaterialScience has 30 production sites around the globe and employed approximately 14,300 people at the end of 2009. Bayer MaterialScience is a Bayer Group company.

About Holst Centre:
Holst Centre is an independent open-innovation R&D centre that develops generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous Transducer Solutions and for Systems-in-Foil. A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model with industry and academia around shared roadmaps and programs. It is this kind of cross-fertilization that enables Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to industrial needs. Holst Centre was set up in 2005 by imec (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands) with support from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Government of Flanders. It is named after Gilles Holst, a Dutch pioneer in Research and Development and first director of Philips Research. Located on High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Holst Centre benefits from the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over 150 employees from around 25 nationalities and a commitment from around 30 industrial partners.

Contact:
Bayer MaterialScience AG:
Dr. Frank Rothbarth, Tel. +49 214 30-25363
E-Mail: frank.rothbarth@bayermaterialscience.com

Holst Centre:
Koen Snoeckx, Tel. +31 40 402 05 61 and +31 612 71 98 43
E-Mail: Koen.Snoeckx@holstcentre.com

Find more information at www.bayermaterialscience.com and www.holstcentre.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group or subgroup management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer’s public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.