Research Articles

As the penetration of variable renewable energy increases in key countries, so will the need to manage the increasing uncertainty and variability in electricity supply.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are underway, and elite athletes from all over the world are competing in various games using a range of different skills. With constant debate over gold, silver, and bronze medals, a comparison can be made with the conductive inks market. Silver flake-based inks are set to win gold in a number of different application areas, beating out competition from a host of conductive ink types.

Thursday 8 August 2024 - Flexible Batteries: Differentiation of Technologies and Application Market Analysis. This webinar will first examine the different flexible battery technologies, then move onto an analysis of flexible battery application markets.

While the focus of the automotive market has been on electrification to meet CO2 regulations, these are not the only regulations that will significantly impact the automotive industry. PFAS are becoming a greater concern throughout multiple industries. With the uncertainty around PFAS regulations, there are a few avenues that automotive players could pursue to replace the refrigerants they use.

Roboshuttles are small, fully electric, and operate at Level 4 autonomy, making them an ideal last-mile solution. They were once highly anticipated in the autonomous driving industry as a promising mobility solution, and at one point, over 25 companies were competing in this space. However, IDTechEx has observed a yearly decline in the number of active companies from 2020 to 2024, and the industry has not advanced to the large-scale commercial testing phases as hoped.

Over the past decade, the capacity of data center Ethernet switches has surged from 0.64 Tbps to 25.6 Tbps, driven by the adoption of 64x400 Gbps or 32x800 Gbps pluggable optical transceiver modules. However, these high-speed modules, within their current form factors, pose significant challenges. Issues include the required densities of electrical and optical connectors, as well as escalating power consumption.

Efficiency is the key goal of electric vehicle development. This is especially true of power electronics, where one increasingly adopted approach is to integrate multiple functions into the same package. For automotive OEMs, this can result in reductions in overall weight to increase the efficiency of the vehicle while also reducing the cost of production.

The advanced recycling market predominantly focuses on technologies like pyrolysis and depolymerization (thermal, chemical, and enzymatic). To a lesser extent, methods such as gasification and hydrothermal liquefaction are also being explored. However, these technologies face increasing scrutiny and restrictions in some regions due to their environmental impact.

Materials informatics is transforming how materials companies approach R&D, bringing data-centric approaches, including AI and machine learning, to materials science to reduce costs and develop new products faster.

Thursday 1 August 2024 - How Emerging Business Models and Technologies Will Accelerate Point-Source CCUS Deployment. This webinar will explore the CCUS business model, including methods of profiting from CCUS even within the current regulatory landscape, and how carbon markets are set to shape the future of CCUS.

Electrification is tough. It has taken around 15 years to convince car owners that battery power is a viable alternative to their fossil fuel comfort blanket. In the construction, agriculture, and mining industries, electrification is an even steeper uphill battle. In these industries, if a machine runs out of battery, the operators will soon start losing money.

IDTechEx Explores Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies - Carbon dioxide removal is required alongside reducing emissions to help reach net zero. Once removed from the atmosphere, CO2 can be stored in numerous ways, such as trees and ecosystems, ocean reservoirs, and underground geological storage.

Since the conception of flexible battery technologies, suppliers have searched for strong application markets for their products. In the last five years, niches have finally begun to materialize, though the specific use case depends on battery technology.

By 2044, it is expected that the global trucking fleet will be supported by an additional half a million L4 autonomous drivers, while the remaining drivers will either act as supervisors or work in less developed regions. The autonomous truck industry is projected to have an annual growth rate of 25.6% over the next 20 years.

IDTechEx expects the printed and flexible sensor market to reach US$960 million by 2034, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.6%. Being connected to infrastructure systems or partnering with suppliers and distributors will help printed sensors take off, alongside their ability to be available at scale, robust, and have long product lifetimes.

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies strip carbon dioxide (CO₂) from waste gases and directly from the atmosphere before either storing it underground or using it for a range of industrial applications.

Future mobility will be electric, autonomous, and increasingly interconnected. As a result, many new enabling technologies are now clambering to enter the automotive value chain. In recent years, there has been a surge of support for quantum technologies to enter the race.

Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are composed of thermal fillers and matrix materials. Thermal fillers are highly thermally conductive substances, while matrix materials are typically used to enhance mechanical properties.

Fuel cell electric vehicles, Li-ion battery-powered cars, and carbon dioxide removal strategies all work to reduce global CO2 emissions. IDTechEx has a multitude of sustainability reports that give outlooks on the shared efforts of various sectors to reduce CO2 emissions in the air, to promote a cleaner way forward.

Thursday 25 July 2024 - The Definite Future of Land Logistics: Autonomous Trucks Replacing Drivers. Comprehensive analysis of industry challenges and solutions; In-depth market dynamics and commercialization factors; Detailed TCO analysis and future market outlook

VR goggles for interactive physio sessions and the use of online platforms for remote consultations contribute to new decentralized healthcare innovations. IDTechEx's portfolio of healthcare reports explores new approaches, from remote patient monitoring to the use of AI in drug discovery.

Thursday 18 July 2024 - EV thermal system architecture and fluids used; Battery thermal management and trends; Motor thermal management and trends; Future refrigerants; Outlook for fluid content and forecasts

Owing to their exceptional design flexibility, structural versatility, and high porosity, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are gathering interest for a wide range of applications, such as water harvesting for HVAC, direct lithium extraction, refrigerant reclamation, hydrogen storage, chemical purifications, and many more.

Industries have traditionally used fossil fuels to produce heat for their processes or to fuel power plants to generate electricity, including the use of natural gas, oil, and coal. Industrial heating processes are responsible for ~25% of global emissions, and therefore, great attention from governments and states is being seen to decarbonize this area of industry.

Electric buses are booming, with sales growing in Europe, America, India, and other key regions. Transport operators have shown themselves keen to electrify urban transport and cut greenhouse gas emissions. As emissions regulations tighten, city buses are likely to be all-electric within the next few years.

First came the eVTOL hype, followed by startups, investments, prototypes, and vertiport planning. Now, designs are being refined, and type certification is progressing. Battery and hydrogen fuel cell R&D are at their peak. eVTOL pilot training plans are forming, and vertiport construction is starting worldwide.

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.

Improving the performance and reducing the cost of Li-ion batteries have been primary concerns for the Li-ion battery industry over the past 10-15 years. The environmental and societal implications of Li-ion battery production and deployment have come under increasing scrutiny, along with concerns regarding supply chain concentration.

Thursday 11 July 2024 - SiC, GaN, and the Evolution of Power Electronics. In this webinar, IDTechEx will summarize the current market landscape concerning the wide bandgap semiconductors SiC and GaN and other EV power electronics market trends.

SWIR sensors and hyperspectral imaging are two of the largest types of emerging image sensors, and IDTechEx predicts the market value will reach US$739 million by 2034, highlighting just how valuable the technology will be.

With the trend from Si IGBT to SiC MOSFET in electric vehicle (EV) power electronics, the junction temperature is expected to increase from 150°C to 175°C with the potential to exceed 200°C. This brings significant challenges for thermal management.

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 Lidar market for automotive applications will grow to US$9.5 billion by 2034. This article discusses Lidar components, which are crucial to enable precise scanning, detection, sensing, and perception. Analyzing the Lidar components helps to understand their functionalities and the latest developments shaping the Lidar landscape.

Electric vehicles, much like combustion vehicles, require a suite of fluids in order to operate optimally. However, the quantities and properties of these fluids can be quite different. With a strongly growing EV market, this presents a large opportunity for not just fluid suppliers but also fluid additives and fluid handling component suppliers.

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.