Research Articles

These naturally occurring, but mostly manufactured, piezoelectric materials are fast becoming a hot topic for exploration in energy harvesting, exhibiting 10 times as much voltage output compared with polycrystalline PZT(1) are utilized in applications where the emphasis is on high output and sensitivity.

Starting with more humble killer applications such as meter reading in buildings, WSN will grow rapidly from $0.58 billion in 2012 to $2.4 billion in 2022 according to IDTechEx research.

IDTechEx recently visited South Korea as part of a UK Trade and Investment mission. Here we summarise some highlights of the trip.

Designed to serve as an important link to assist communications between the various organisations active in Printed Electronics, it will carry a list of organizations segmented by their activity and alphabetically - compiled from our extensive database.

The annual printed electronics award winners were announced at the IDTechEx Awards Dinner in Berlin, Germany on April 3rd. The awards recognize outstanding progress in the development and commercialization of printed electronics, an industry that produces a huge amount of technical innovation which will be used in many products.

The gross sales of presenting companies at Printed Electronics Europe next week - including end users, integrators and providers, is more than €700 Billion annually. Attend the event in Berlin, on April 3-4 to learn how these organisations are progressing printed electronics.

Shipment of tablets with touch screen technology is expected to reach 100 million units in 2012.

The 4th IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Storage event will be taking place on the 15th and 16th of May in Berlin, Germany and will cover recent progress and developments in energy harvesting, wireless sensors and related technologies.

Printed electronics manufacturing is becoming increasingly integrated as companies work on putting together different printing, lamination, substrate handling, curing and finishing processes.

At the forthcoming event, Printed Electronics and Photovoltaics Europe 3-4 April in Berlin, one third of the 94 presentations and masterclasses primarily concern organic compounds but two thirds primarily concern inorganic and composite devices. The organisers did not steer it that way: the customers did.

IDTechEx is once again meeting its promise to allow a wider community of e-mobility players to compare notes. As its name implies, {{Electric Vehicles Land Sea Air USA 2012|www.idtechex.com/evusa}} in San Jose California March 27-28 lets you meet people not present at events with a narrower product and geographical focus. This unique forum is vital to those widening their scope in the EV value chain, leaving behind those with tunnel vision.

This includes devices not yet printed today but which are moving towards being printed. Of this market, 30% of the devices studied are made predominately by printing, and 6% are on a non-rigid substrate.

Opening speaker at Electric Vehicles Land Sea Air USA 2012 in San Jose California March 27-28, Raghu Das of leading analysts IDTechEx says: "Unlike other events, we delight in slaying the myth that most of the market value is in cars.

The toolkit of technologies that energy harvesting and wireless sensors are making available, are enabling system integrators to come up with solutions in a variety of vertical markets.

Electronics and electrics on or in paper is being used for security, safety, crime prevention, brand enhancement and merchandising.

IDTechEx is currently in Silicon Valley having spent over a week in Tokyo at EV clients and events. Both are a bellwether of what is really happening on the ground with EVs because they have a relatively large number of early adopters.

Old electric vehicle reports are useless: the subject is moving too fast. IDTechEx is the only analyst with 18 current reports forecasting sales of electric vehicles and their key components and they are kept up to date. Information is fed into these documents continuously as the PhD level IDTechEx analysts tour the world's companies, research institutes and conferences to spot the many changes in technology and business success and interpret them.

IDTechEx's Energy Harvesting & WSN conference in Berlin, on May 15 and 16 this year (www.IDTechEx.com/EH ) will focus both on wireless sensors as well as the photovoltaic and other harvesting technologies that are being integrated and are creating exciting new market segments for solar cells.

We have entered 2012 with an electric vehicle scene that is very different from that which was envisaged not long ago. There are now six key enabling technologies not three and vehicle makers increasingly make some of them, so suppliers increasingly have to compete with their largest potential customers. Precious metals in EV components are being removed remarkably rapidly.

OLED versus LED lighting, the energy storage gold rush, replacing ITO and more.

2011 turned out to be a very interesting year for energy harvesting, full of scientific advances, technology breakthroughs and new product developments. IDTechEx predicts that the trend is set to continue, with further developments expected in 2012, along with expansion of commercialization efforts which will push energy harvesting adoption forward.

IDTechEx's Printed Electronics Europe 2012 event in Berlin, Germany on April 3-4, will be the largest gathering of end users discussing their needs and experiences with the technology. The event matches technology providers with adopters.

Last week IDTechEx held the largest (worldwide) printed electronics and photovoltaics conference and tradeshow in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Convention Center, California). This show brought together more than 1300 attendees from 28 countries. Players active across the entire value chain were present; covering the full range from research organisations to end-users, and from small start-ups to multi-billion internationals.

The annual printed electronics award winners were announced at the IDTechEx Awards Dinner in Santa Clara, California. The awards recognize outstanding progress in the development and commercialization of printed electronics, an industry that produces a huge amount of technical innovation which will be used in many products.

Energy harvesting comes to the fore with electric vehicles because the price they pay for being environmental and exhibiting many performance advantages is that they have limited energy available.

Energy harvesting is the use of ambient energy to provide electricity for small and or mobile equipment, whether electrical or electronic. In 2011, $700 million is spent on the energy harvesting component itself, rising to just under $5 billion in 2021.

Next week the 8th annual IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA event opens at the Santa Clara Convention Center in CA, USA, on Nov 30 - Dec 1. Pre-registrations are 22% higher compared to this point last year and the number of exhibitors has grown by 19%. Pre-registered attendees are coming from 29 countries, with a particularly large contingent from Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Attendees are also coming from afar as China, Australia, India, South Africa and all over Europe.

At the Energy Harvesting & Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) awards dinner on November 15 in Boston, USA companies were recognized for making significant technical or commercial progress with these technologies.

One of the best examples of a niche billion dollar and highly profitable market in RFID is that for animals, food and farming. In the IDTechEx research report "RFID for Animals, Food and Farming 2011-2021." IDTechEx find that by 2021 the market will have increased 3.7 fold from $1.17 billion in 2011 to $4.09 billion.

This article shares some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report, {{RFID in Russia, CIS, Baltic States 2012-2022| http://www.idtechex.com/research/reports/rfid-in-russia-cis-baltic-states-2012-2022-000285.asp}}.

Three weeks remain until the IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2011 conference and tradeshow, the biggest event in the world on the topic. This year's tradeshow will be the largest Printed Electronics exhibition to date, with 105 exhibiting companies already confirmed to exhibit on the 46,000 sq.ft. tradeshow floor of the Santa Clara Convention Centre.

Those designing electric vehicles have much in common, whether they are hybrid or pure electric, on-road, off-road, on-water, underwater or in the sky.

Less than two weeks remain until the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting & Storage conference and exhibition and already exhibitors are prepared to demonstrate their capabilities and technology advances, and not just on paper.

In understanding EV markets and trends it is absolutely vital to realise that their adoption is not usually for the popularly understood reasons such as saving the planet or getting a government subsidy.

Screen Printing is one of the more established technologies utilised in the manufacture of what a lot would consider "conventional" electronics. And although they represent a hybrid state between fully printable electronics and electronics processed in silicon fabs, they also represent the intermediate step that leads to more accurate, fully automated atmospheric processing at very high volumes, with equally high yields.

Most of the well-known objectives of printed electronics remain elusive because they are glamorous, Olympian dreams based on some very exciting demonstrations in laboratories.