Advanced Materials

ITO and ITO alternative have, in recent years, faced challenging market conditions. Sluggish growth, together with increased supply and the threat of substitutes, led to price falls, even price wars, forcing an industry consolidation.

Excitement is building in the printed and organic electronics sector as demand grows and investors focus in on the opportunities.

In this article, we provide an overview explaining the major technology changes and market trends that underpin this growing interest. We will also consider how the future will look like, discussing the rapid rise and fall of multiple technologies.

This week an announcement came that Aspen Aerogels has won the initial determination in a US International Trade Commission (ITC) investigation. IDTechEx has been closely following the aerogel industry and discuss here the reasons behind this case, the initial result, and the implications of this announcement.

Trucking is a big business. In the US, trucking industry revenues are in excess of $726bn. No wonder then that autonomous trucking is a hot topic.

While grid load from electric vehicles is expected to rise in the near future. Engineers are already looking for solutions to make electric vehicles function independently of the grid.

Robotic technology will transform the forklift industry, causing a colossal transfer of value from human-provided driving services, towards spending on autonomous industrial material handling machines, thus fuelling an industry revenue boom far exceeding recent growth trends.

Last mile delivery remains an expensive affair in the parcel delivery business, often representing more than half of the total cost. Its importance is also growing thanks to a change in the composition of total deliveries with B2C deliveries rapidly taking on a bigger share.

Cast you mind back a few years and you will find a conductive ink business that appeared very mature and slow moving. The boom years of the photovoltaic industry were ending, the dominant big suppliers seem well entrenched, and the technology was, at best, only incrementally improving, with new technologies such as nanoparticle inks failing to get traction. Then everything began to change.

Ceramic Metal Composites (CMC) and Metal Matrix Composites (MMC) are not new concepts, but they have never reached their potential.