Arrowhead Research Corporation announced today that it will begin a collaboration with Dr. Andrew Rinzler to further develop flexible electronic devices made at the University of Florida. Arrowhead will have the first option to exclusively license and commercialize the technology, says a company press release

Thin film transistors (TFTs) can be used to make products such as low cost RFID (radio frequency ID) tags, flexible displays, and electronic paper. Further, unlike state of the art electronics manufacturing facilities which cost billions of dollars, flexible electronics are likely to be produced with low cost ink-jet printing technologies.

Under the agreement with the University of Florida, Arrowhead will provide $647,000 over a two year period to develop optimized TFT devices and prototypes of TFT arrays. That may sound like a pretty big chunk of change, but according to estimates from NanoMarkets, the total market for products based on thin film transistors could reach over $20 billion by 2012. (photo Nanonics)