IDTechEx

Lessons from a burning Tesla and a sinking Titanic

A Tesla Model S was filmed burning in the road recently, allegedly having struck a metal object.

Supercapacitors increase range of electric vehicles

Supercapacitors are increasing the range of electric vehicles in several ways and by doing so they are hugely increasing the addressable market for those vehicles. Typically, they last for the life of the vehicle regardless of how many cycles are endured.

Printed and flexible sensors: there will be many winners

IDTechEx forecasts that the market for printed and flexible sensors will increase by more than $1 billion by 2020. This is one of the many findings discussed in the latest report "Printed and Flexible Sensors 2014-2024: Technologies, Players, Forecasts" (www.IDTechEx.com/sensors).

Graphene moves beyond the hype at the Graphene LIVE! USA Event

The Graphene LIVE! USA event has lined up top-class speakers for its business-orientated conference and tradeshow on graphene.

PST Sensors

PST Sensors (pty) Ltd is a spin-out of the University of Cape Town, founded by Professor Margit Harting and Professor David Britton, to commercialise their printed silicon technology. PST Sensors is actively commercializing its first range of temperature sensors, and promoting the worldwide adoption of printed silicon electronics.

Electromagnetic induction in energy harvesting applications

According to recent IDTechEx research on the topic of electrodynamic energy harvesting, almost 20 million devices will be sold in 2024 that will not be bicycle generators. Instead, they will be wireless switches, energy harvesters enabling wireless sensing in transport, industrial and building automation, devices that put the common alternator to work in market segments that there was previously no use for it.

Surprises at Printed Electronics USA

Ten years ago IDTechEx hosted the first Printed Electronics USA event attended by around 150 people. Presenters covered early results of R&D projects with new materials. On Nov 20-21 2013, IDTechEx will host the tenth annual event on the topic in Santa Clara, CA, which features more than 150 exhibitors and 2000 attendees.

Assessing the $6.3 billion printed and flexible sensor markets

Sensors do not require transistors and generally speaking have a simpler structure than displays or logic circuits. Printing works well with sensors because the manufacturing does always not require high resolution or accurate registration.

Nanotech and Beyond N&B

Nanotech and Beyond N&B was formed in 2010. It is based in Korea. In 2011 it developed an ITO alternative material for transparent electrodes for touch screen panels. In 2012 the company developed silver nanowires.

Zink Technologies

ZinkTech was formed in 2011. It is attached to a group of patent attorneys who look for interesting patents that are not fulfilled, and buy them and try to commercialise them, with the help of groups such as universities.

InkTec Co., Ltd

InkTec was formed in 1992. It has 375 staff, of which 80 are involved in R&D. The company had annual sales last years of $74.8million and is a publicly listed company. The company is very active in printed electronics, offering a variety of conductive inks as well as printing services.

Kunshan Printed Electronics Co Ltd

The company was founded by local investors together with Dr. Xia-chang Zhang in 2013, inventor of SoftBatteryTM and one of the founders of Enfucell. Kunshan Printed Electronics worked in co-operation with a local machinery company to set up a R2R printed battery mass production line with a capacity up to 40 million cells a year.

Sumitomo Chemical and CDT

Sumitomo Chemical is a Japanese company. It's a member of the Sumitomo group and is listed on the Nikkei 225. The company is one of Japan's major chemical companies and was founded in 1913. The company has been working on organic materials for OLEDs for about a decade, forming a joint venture with Cambridge UK based CDT (Cambridge display Technology). Sumitomo Chemical acquired CDT for $285 million in 2007, at price similar to the amount that had been invested in CDT until that point.

CPI

The Center for Process Innovation (CPI) was set up by the Government in 2008 as an initiative to help UK companies bring products to market, by giving them access to specialist equipment and scientists, over coming the burden of initial capital cost to test and develop products. £35 million has been invested in the center, which is based in the North East of England.

Teknek Ltd.

Teknek was founded in 1978, supplying consumables to the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) industry worldwide. In 1984 Teknek started to develop a contact cleaning technology to meet the growing need for high levels of surface cleanliness required in the electronics industry, particularly PCB manufacturers. The Teknek Clean Machine soon became popular and an integral part of any PCB production line.

Promethean Particles

Promethean Particles design, develop and manufacture inorganic nanoparticle dispersions to customer's specifications. The company uses continuous hydrothermal synthesis to make the desired product for each application and backs this up with large scale manufacturing capability (currently up to 10 tonnes per year with a 1000 TPA plant build underway).

PhosphonicS Ltd

PhosphonicS technology was developed by Professor Alice Sullivan at Queen Mary, University of London. At Queen Mary, a general and economically viable method for silica functionalisation was discovered using vinyltrimethoxysilane (VTMS) as a coupling agent. In 2001 PhosphonicS acquired the technology from University of London to select and commercialise areas of application

DZP Technologies Ltd

The company was formed in 2008 and is head-quartered in Cambridge, UK. It is a small company working on a range of technologies, including low temperature conductive inks, graphene inks and laser-nduced transfer for printing electronic devices (LITPED)

Printed and organic electronics in Korea

IDTechEx has spent almost two weeks in Korea visiting executives at leading companies and attending conferences. Company profiles will be given in our Market Intelligence Portal over the coming weeks. In this article we summarise some of our observations from the country.

Vinci Technologies

Vinci Technologies are developing a measuring instrument for water vapour permeation.