Advanced Materials

Visual Planet is a niche Cambridge-based company offering very large-sized transparent touch sensors. Their technology is based on a fine metal wire mesh concept, which enables low-cost but large-sized solutions. They key target markets are interactive digital signage and advertisement. A key selling point is their ability to customize the sensor layout and performance in this fragmented space.

What may be the ultimate heat sink is only possible because of yet another astounding capability of graphene.

Questions arise as to how much supercapacitors can improve if organisations more like NASA took over. After all, if supercapacitors can replace many batteries when, as today, they store one tenth of their energy, what will happen in the marketplace if they approach the theoretical ten times the lithium-ion battery figure while acting as a near-perfect "battery"?

Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) technology developer Solar Press has entered into a distribution agreement with specialist equipment company FOM Technologies for the sale of its unique, high performance fabrication and test equipment for functional materials research.

Elbit System is an international defense electronics company. They have diversified into energy storage technology through a comprehensive supercapacitor research program. They are focusing on aqueous electrolyte based supercapacitors, which are safer but with lower performance than organic electrolyte based supercapacitors. However based on improvements in electrode materials (such as carbon nanotubes) they are closing the performance gap. They are a company with high-level research capabilities.

UNIST scientists have combined graphene with silver nanowires to form a thin, transparent and stretchable electrode which overcome the weaknesses of each individual material, resulting in a new class of electrodes with widespread possible applications

Colloidal Ink is a recently formed spin-out from Okayama University. IDTechEx awarded Colloidal Ink the best Technical Development Materials Award at its Printed Electronics Conference (Europe) 2013. Colloidal Ink has developed a patented and promising formulation technology which enables rapid sintering of conductive nano inks at room temperature. They have so far demonstrated their conductive paints using gold nanoparticles and are also developing nano silver in their pipeline. Their samples today are conductive paints and the formulation will have to be modified to create screen- or inkjet- printable inks. Colloidal Ink is now in the sample distribution mode.

Rolith, Inc has developed a rolling mask lithography technology based on near field optical lithography and with the ability to pattern 300 nm features or better. They have attracted strategic funding from Asahi Glass Corporation, which is a major player in their target customer group. Their business model is to sell equipment through their partner, Suss MicroTec, and to directly design and sell masks. Their main technological competitor is nano-imprint.

A self-funded Spanish start-up producing large-sized CVD graphene and carbon nanofibre using home-made equipment. Graphenano was established in 2012 and developed its production technology with University of Castilla La Mancha. Their business model is to work directly with potential end users (e.g., composite or ceramic makers) to bring end products onto the market. They can produce 10 sqm/day of CVD graphene and 30 Kg per day of carbon nanofibre.

Dr Bor Jang founded the company in 2007 and prior to this he had started Nanotek Instruments in 2002. Dr Bor Jang is a well-known figure in the field of graphene and claims to be the first to file patents on the material. Angstron Materials produces graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide powdres. Angstron Materials currently has a 20 tonne per year production capacity (by powdre weight). Their production technique is based on oxidization-reduction. Indeed, they sell both graphene oxide and graphene powdres. Recently, they have started moving up the value chain and are developing silicon anode materials for Li-ion batteries. This is because, as Mr Beech puts it, no one is going to get rich from supplying graphene alone.

Graphene has already come a long way towards commercialisation, despite its short history. But really hard questions still remain about what comes next and how to grow revenues.

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) was founded in 1876 and is one of the largest printing companies in the world. DNP also have enormous expertise in photography, which DNP is leveraging to offer transparent conductive films. DNP manufactures ITO-on-glass and ITO-on-PET. The films are pre-patterned with double side coating. DNP has also developed transparent conductive films based on copper metal mesh and another option based on silver nanowires.

Carestream is a $2.5 billion company with 7,000 employees active in the medical industry. The have a large market share in producing medical imagers and X-rays. They produce approx. 100 million sqm of X-ray films annually using their roll-to-roll machines. They also have a strong know-how in silver chemistry and formulation. These two factors enabled Carestream to enter the transparent conductive film (TCF) market as a vertically integrated entity producing both silver nanowires and continuous roll-to-roll single-side coating on PET.

A new transistor capable of revolutionising technologies for medical imaging and security screening has been developed by graphene researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Nottingham.

Ceradrop is pleased to announce that the Tobin J. Marks research group, part of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, has acquired a CeraPrinter X-Serie machine as part of an ongoing close collaboration with Ceradrop (Limoges, France).

Goss International is a global company manufacturing, selling and distributing offset printing presses. They have 2,200+ employees (400 engineers) and have sold 15,000 offset print units since 2000. They are now slowly becoming involved in printed electronics by leveraging their strong R&D capabilities (strong understanding of machine manufacture, printing and inks). To this end, they are developing a transparent conductive films (TFC) consisting of printed metallic grids on a PET substrates.

Graphene Batteries is young lean start-up developing formulation for use of graphene as an additive in Li-ion battery electrodes. Their main expertise is in formulation while their graphene is externally sourced. Their value propositions are (a) reducing the wt% of carbon black and (b) extending the cycle number of batteries. Their business model is licensing IP. They are still however in the very early stages.

The new report from IDTechEx titled Printed, Organic & Flexible Electronics: Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2013-2023 finds that the total market for these technologies will grow from $16.04 billion in 2013 to $76.79 billion in 2023.