Advanced Materials

A solar roof on a road will make twice as much electricity per unit area compared to a solar road and be more easily upgraded to affordable higher efficiency PV as it becomes available.

The Voltera V-One creates prototype circuit boards on your desk.

Some updates from interviewing O-Film at C-Touch Taiwan 2017 They process sheet to sheet. O-Film never stopped production but volume is shrinking. They focus only on big volume and mobile is still big volume. The roll speed is probably lower than photolith. Curing slows down the process as well. They can an do 50inh max but no bigger. Most of the market is 20 to 30inch. They sell transparent antenna film for Samsung smart watch interesting niche market but volume are too small. O-Film is considering ultra low sheet resistance. Their record is 0.3ohm/sqm at 85% transmission. This opens up applications in heating.

UniPixel has gone bankrupt: "Shares of touch-sensor technology maker UniPixel (UNXL) were briefly halted after market close this evening, and then plunged 69%, to 8 cents per share after they resumed trading, after the company said its board of directors authorized the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which Uni-Pixel expects to do in the next one to two business days, and that all its employees have been let go." https://www.barrons.com/articles/uni-pixel-plunges-69-going-bankrupt-all-employees-let-go-1503705889

We caught up with Sixth Element in Nanjing China in Sept 2017. We understand that Sixth Element had sales of 18 tpa last year. Its main success area is in anti-corrosion coating. Addition of graphene enables a reduction in Zn loading. Here, a high BET is useful which favours their materials over small exfoliated ones. Their main partner here is Toppen Technology. They are not yet in the battery business. They concede that BYD is currently using exfoliated (liquid phase) graphene which are more pristine. They are however developing suspensions which BYD is testing but not confirmed yet. They also have a TIM material (thermal interface material) which is commercial. They claim selling the graphene 300 rmb per kg (we hear prices around 500 per Kg from customers) Note that Sixth Element is a public company therefore it has to constantly make announcements.

Carbon nanotubes bound for electronics not only need to be as clean as possible to maximize their utility in next-generation nanoscale devices, but contact effects may limit how small a nano device can be, according to researchers.

Airborne provides complete automated digitized solutions for composite part manufacturing. Arno van Mourik (CEO) spoke with technology analyst Dr Richard Collins.

Imagine Intelligent Materials use graphene to create smart materials which sense and report real-time changes in stress, temperature and moisture.

Battery power better than lithium or even solar is under development as researchers work to efficiently capture the energy of graphene oxide (GO).

Redux ST was acquired by Alphabet (parent company to Google) in mid-2017.

Alvant (formerly Composite Metal Technology) are manufacturers of continuous fibre reinforced aluminium matrix composites (CFR-AMC). Jack Taylor (Commercial Manager) was interviewed by IDTechEx technology analyst Dr Richard Collins.

This article covers a number of topics to highlight how robotic technology within agriculture is altering the landscape.

Researchers are the first to observe the electronic structure of graphene in an engineered semiconductor; finding could lead to progress in advanced optoelectronics and data processing.

Silicon — the shiny, brittle metal commonly used to make semiconductors — is an essential ingredient of modern-day electronics. But as electronic devices have become smaller and smaller, creating tiny silicon components that fit inside them has become more challenging and more expensive.

Raghu Das introduced the technologies covered and an introduction to the IDTechEx Show! USA 2017

The following article summarises some of the key observations made by IDTechEx analysts during the IDTechEx Show! It contains details of many of the companies demonstrating products during the exhibition, notable presentations given and summaries of relevant conversations and recent updates.

As proof of IDTechEx's long-standing collaboration with the EU Commission, technology analyst Lorenzo Grande was invited to deliver a talk on the state of the art of battery manufacturing and how Europe can catch up with its Asian and North American competitors. A selection of the slides presented during the meeting have been included at the end of this premium article.

The research group of Prof. Yang-Kook Sun at Hanyang University has developed a cathode material for Li-ion batteries based on a core shell gradient, which ensures both long cycle life and high capacity.

This presentation covers the main technology trends and players relating to flexible or printed display technology.

Henkel Adhesive Technologies further strengthens its expertise for printed electronics by investing in Copprint Technologies Ltd, Israel. The advanced materials start-up has developed a novel technology for producing conductive copper inks that can provide substantial cost benefits for a variety of printed electronics applications.