Advanced Materials

IDTechEx CEO Mr Raghu Das interviews Steven Bagshaw of UK-CPI, discussing the projects they are currently working on in the smart packaging industry and how this sector interacts with the printed electronics and energy storage sectors.

It took a decade and half to enable the first commercial products using flexible barrier or thin film encapsulation technologies. Contrary to some assumptions however, this success does not mean that the question of barrier technology is forever settled. Indeed, there is still much work to do to render flexible barrier technology a ubiquitous, widely-available, and low-cost component in devices of all sizes, sensitivity levels, flexibility degrees, and so on.

Graphene is not a young material: the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2010 and the first pioneering firms were established before that c. 2006. Graphene thus has more than a decade of commercial experience already. As IDTechEx have argued previously, after all this time, graphene is becoming increasingly available and affordable and is finally findings its first wave of volume markets. In this article, we will look at the evolution of graphene commercialization so far and will offer some insights about the future.

Synthetic biology is making strides in key applications, armed with the ability to create materials never possible before.

This article concerns TactoTek in Oulu Finland and how its technologies can scale up and create billion dollar businesses.

Advances in laser technologies over the past three decades have enabled lasers to progress from specialist scientific instruments to a diverse range of end-user markets. In this article, time periods where data storage and data communication segments dominated the laser diode market are coloured yellow, while the current era of emerging laser diode applications in material processing, sensing and healthcare is indicated by green shading in the charts.

Key areas discussed and displayed at the LCV event include the battery, powertrain, lightweighting, autonomous driving and electric vehicle charging, from not only the technology but also business model and policy perspectives.

The key next iteration for fiber reinforced polymer products will be the concept of multifunctionality. This is the idea of making a structural part carry out additional role(s) beyond their current primary mechanical task - the market for smart composite material is forecast to exceed 5 kilotons by 2029.

This is a technological megatrend. Dumb load-bearing metal structures move to plastic and composite and incorporate energy harvesting and storage material - massless energy. Indeed you could call some of it negative mass energy. Goodbye components-in-a-box.

In April 2018, IDTechEx gave a presentation at the world copper conference in Santiago Chile. This was part of work carried out for the International Copper Association to benchmark the commercial status of emerging conductive material. The presentation delivered can be seen below.