Electronic gold ink — one of Sweden's most promising research projects

Thor Balkhed

The list highlights their work on gold nanowires for large‑scale printed electronics — a technology with the potential to redefine how future flexible displays, solar cells, and sensors are manufactured.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) aims to strengthen Sweden’s ability to translate academic research into innovation, competitiveness, and tangible societal benefit. Publishing IVA’s annual list is one of its tools. Each year, a committee from academia, industry, and the public sector selects around 30 projects considered to have exceptional potential to address major societal challenges — from climate and energy to digitalization and health.

Thor Balkhed

Klas Tybrandt’s research tackles one of the most persistent problems in modern electronics: today’s transparent electrodes for applications such as solar cells and wearable devices are often brittle, unstable, or too expensive to manufacture at scale. Silver and copper nanowires have long been promising alternatives, but they degrade when exposed to oxygen, UV light, and moisture.

Gold nanowires offer nearly all the desired properties:

● High conductivity — thanks to their network of long, thin wires
● Transparency — light passes between the wires
● Flexibility — the material withstands bending and stretching
● Chemical and thermal stability — unlike silver and copper

The obstacle has been cost. Existing gold nanowires are short, difficult to produce, and can cost over a million dollars per gram, limiting their use to niche biomedical applications.

Thor Balkhed

Tybrandt’s team — including Dr. Aiman Rahmanudin, Dr. Venkata Kishore Perla and Jakob von Heideken — has developed a cost‑ and energy‑efficient method to produce long gold nanowires at scale and turn them into a printable ink. This ink could replace today’s metal oxides and silver nanowires.

The result is electronics that are more durable, energy‑efficient, affordable, easier to recycle, and optimized for flexible and wearable technologies. This opens the door to flexible solar cells, printed displays, optical components, high‑performance sensors, and next‑generation wearables such as smart contact lenses and e‑skin.
The technology is moving toward pilot‑scale production, and the research team is seeking industrial partners to scale up applications.Thor Balkhed