Advanced Materials

Refractive lenses are one of humanity's oldest and most ubiquitous technologies. They have developed to dizzying levels of sophistication in the last few hundred years, with today's tiny, high-quality lens assemblies found in smartphones often costing less than a dollar to produce.

Wednesday 3 July 2024 - Introduction to the broad family of conductive inks; Status and outlook for the dominant conductive ink type, silver flake-based ink, including an assessment of current demand and a ten-year forecast; Overview of emerging applications; Critical assessment of the outlook for non-silver inks such as stretchable/thermoformable inks and copper inks.

The mounting global plastic waste crisis has compelled scientists and engineers to seek novel solutions. Among the various technologies being explored, the pyrolysis of plastic waste has emerged as a significant contender.

The use of quantum dots in displays has made it to high-quality prototypes amongst established tech companies like Samsung, Sharp, and TCL. These semiconductor nanocrystals, the size of just 2-10 nanometres, can enable realistic and high-definition displays for TVs, monitors, and smart tablets.

Thursday 27 June 2024 - Comprehensive Overview of Thermal Interface Materials: Trends and Developments; An overview of thermal interface materials by TIM form; TIMs in EV battery packs: Trends of TIM's thermal conductivity and property trend; TIMs in EV power electronics: TIM1 (die-attach technologies) and TIM2 overview; TIMs in data centers: TIM opportunities with the transition to liquid cooling; TIMs in 5G TIMs in ADAS; TIMs in consumer electronics

Thursday 20 June 2024 - Exploring the Transformative Potential of Electromagnetic Metamaterials; A brief introduction to RF (radio frequency) and optical metamaterials, highlighting key market opportunities; Analysis of the emerging usage of metalenses, one of the most exciting applications of optical metamaterials, with important manufacturing processes potential challenges highlighted; Analysis of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS), the most promising applications of RF metamaterials, with discussion on players, technology roadmap, key case studies, etc; Adoption roadmaps for optical and RF metamaterials; Outlook for the electromagnetic metamaterials market

The conductive inks market will grow to exceed US$6.5 billion by 2034 but remains a highly segmented industry, underpinning both photovoltaics and the emerging field of printed electronics. Taking stock of the different outlooks for the myriad of conductive ink types and the various application areas is a complex task. IDTechEx has tackled this problem by assessing the market for different conductive ink types across 15 application areas and providing granular ten-year market forecasts.

Creating a circular economy is an essential sustainability target for numerous stakeholders in the supply chain: governments, brands, suppliers, and consumers. A key element of this is reducing plastic waste; the OECD estimated that over 350 million metric tonnes of plastic waste was generated globally in 2019

2024 has marked the 20th anniversary of the original isolation of graphene, first achieved at the University of Manchester in 2004, prior to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. In the two decades since its isolation, graphene has been the subject of immense hype, labeled as a wonder material with superlative properties capable of enabling society-shifting technologies.

Material innovations underpin many of the exciting applications offered by emerging quantum technologies. IDTechEx's latest report, "Quantum Technology Market 2024-2034: Trends, Players, Forecasts", compares platforms based on superconductors, silicon photonics, alkali vapors, semiconductors, nanomaterials, and more. Each is seeking to enable solutions for quantum computing, sensing, and communications, with various advantages and disadvantages for each method.