IDTechEx Ltd

Graphene industry is entering a new phase, a phase of growth. The industry has accumulated significant experience over the past ten to twelve years to bring about this phase. In this article, IDTechEx Research offer opinions about the recent past and future outlook of the graphene industry based on the report ‘Graphene, 2D Materials and Carbon Nanotubes: Markets, Technologies and Opportunities 2019-2029’. 

Power electronics is a growing market thanks to the electrification of many industries including the automotive industry, as outlined in the IDTechEx Research report ‘Conductive Ink Markets 2019-2029: Forecasts, Technologies, Players’. The power electronic modulus are also growing in performance. 

Machine makers in many established markets sell their machines directly or through dealer networks. At times, they create additional revenue streams by offering technical after-sales support. They often hope that the installed base of their machines together with limited incompatibility with competitors’ products provides some lock-in mechanism.

Solution processed light emitting organic materials were demonstrated in 1989 with a tiny 0.1 EQE (external quantum efficiency). Since then there has been tremendous progress on material synthesis/production as well as on display processing. However, thus far, commercialisation has remained elusive.

Bendable Displays have finally become a consumer product. It’s been no easy feat - making multiple layers of sensitive materials work reliably while the whole device is being flexed. By Raghu Das, CEO, IDTechEx.

Quantum dots (QDs) are a commercial success for nanotechnology and are already used in display applications. Importantly, the QD technology and application landscape is rapidly evolving. Here, IDTechEx have discussed the multiple innovation and commercialisation frontiers of this technology. 

The market composition of transparent conductive films (TCF) and materials (TCM) has not dramatically shifted for some years. It is heavily reliant upon select markets such as flat consumer small/medium sized electronic touch screens. The IDTechEx Research report ‘Transparent Conductive Films and Materials 2018-2028: Forecasts, Technologies, Players’ puts this reliance around 85-90% today. 

Last week while most of us this side of the pond were at the electronica exhibition in Munich, approximately 3,500 attendees from 42 countries headed to the IDTechEx Show in Santa Clara, California, which featured 284 exhibiting organisations. Raghu Das, CEO, IDTechEx, explains.

IDTechEx Research will focus on some of the key frontiers of short-, medium-, and long-term change in quantum dot (QDs) films. In particular, we will argue that the transition away from Cd based QDs will soon be complete; we will show how QD material improvements are translating into total cost reductions and how that is reshaping the market’s pricing strategies; and finally we will consider whether film type QDs can continue their supreme reign, or whether relentless innovation soon render them obsolete.

Supercapacitors will be a large market, it will interest suppliers of a wide range of speciality chemicals and added value feedstock. The new IDTechEx Research report Supercapacitor Materials and Technology Roadmap 2019-2039 appraises these and identifies gaps in the market for device variants and new material capabilities. 

Iron-based redox flow battery developer, ESS has announced a contract to design and install a combined energy warehouse flow battery storage and solar energy system in Brazil. According to Energy Storage Report, the $1.3m project will be funded in part by a grant from the US Trade and Development Agency through Pacto Geração Distribuída, a subsidiary of the renewable energy plant developer Pacto Energia, with the goal to prove the value of energy shifting using the ESS Energy Warehouse with solar PV.

A new IDTechEx Research report predicts that the Redox Flow Battery market will be worth $4.5bn by 2028. Redox flow batteries (RFB) are an energy storage technology initially developed by NASA in the 70’s for space applications. After several years of intensive R&D, in 2006, several key patents on the technology expired, opening up the arena to companies all around the world.

The release of Ready Player One this past weekend is a significant moment for the Virtual Reality industry. Ernest Cline's bestselling science fiction adventure will achieve a Spielberg-fueled launch to new heights of popular culture fame. It describes a world where living in the virtual reality of the OASIS becomes preferable to living within a dystopian future society riddled by war and energy crises.

The world of agriculture is being quietly transformed by robotic technology. One question to consider is whether tractors will evolve towards full unmanned autonomy? Tractor guidance and autosteer are well-established technologies. In the short to medium terms, both will continue their growth thanks to improvements and cost reductions in RTK GPS technology. Indeed, ID TechEx estimates that around 700,000 tractors equipped with autosteer or tractor guidance will be sold in 2028.

Autonomous mobile robots are causing a paradigm shift in the way we envisage commercial and industrial vehicles. In traditional thinking bigger is often better. This is because bigger vehicles are faster and are thus more productive. This thinking holds true so long as each vehicle requires a human driver. The rise of autonomous mobility is however upending this long-established notion: fleets of small slow robots will replace or complement large fast manned vehicles.

IDTechEx Research's most recent report, Battery Elimination in Electronics and Electrical Engineering 2018-2028, notes that billions of wireless electronic and electrical products consuming microwatts to milliwatts or more operate without batteries or even capacitors to store energy. Among the most successful are the piezoelectric gas lighter, the bicycle light with dynamo and the EnOcean wireless building controls such as sensors, lights and light switches in over 400,000 buildings and some boats.

Robotic technology will transform the forklift industry, causing a colossal transfer of value from human-provided driving services, towards spending on autonomous industrial material handling machines, thus fuelling an industry revenue boom far exceeding recent growth trends. By Dr Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, Research Director, IDTechEx

IDTechEx predict that 2017 will be the first billion dollar year for wearable sensors. These critical components are central to the core value proposition in many wearable devices. The Wearable Sensors 2018-2028: Technologies, Markets & Players report includes IDTechEx’s latest research and forecasts on this topic, collating over three years of work to provide a thorough characterisation and outlook for each type of sensor used in wearable products today.

By 2027, mobile robotics in material handling and logistics will have become a $75bn market. It will then more than double by 2038. These staggering headline figures mask turbulent transformative change underneath: some technologies will rise and transform the fortunes of industries, fuelling growth rates far outpacing recent trends, whilst others will face with decay and obsolescence. We are at the beginning of the beginning of a transformative change, and the time to plan is now.

Flexible consumer electronic devices are now a reality, and as forecasted by IDTechEx in the launch of the first ever market research report on the topic of barrier films for electronics almost ten years ago, innovation in encapsulation was one of the critical requirements that needed to be met in order to realise commercially viable consumer products. By Dr Harry Zervos, Principal Analyst, IDTechEx