Semiconductors, Data Centers & AI

Printed/flexible sensors offer multiple benefits relative to their more established rigid counterparts, including lower weight, flexibility/conformality, and potentially lower manufacturing costs since printing facilitates high-throughput continuous production methods. In this article IDTechEx identifies top five innovative printed/flexible sensor technologies along with their associated applications.

Like the Beatles in the 60s, Tesla has arguably achieved the feat of being simultaneously the best and most popular at what they do. As the IDTechEx report "Electric Vehicles: Land, Sea & Air 2021-2041" discusses, Tesla enters a new market and quickly becomes the top-selling electric vehicle maker. In this article, we focus on Tesla's innovations in the field of power electronics and some of the new materials opportunities being created.

Given the exciting properties, graphene has always been linked as a revolutionary material for the electronics industry. CVD graphene is cited as the ideal solution in providing a perfect single layer produced in a low cost continuous R2R process, but the manufacturing and commercial reality have proved very different. After a long period of research, and with players regularly exiting and entering the field, we are only now starting to see this technology mature and the dawn of the commercial reality.

With sensors, the systems and software are a bigger business than the sensors themselves. For example, your body has primitive sensors such as eyes and fingers, but it processes the data in combination, so the whole is greater than the parts. Call it "sensor fusion", something increasingly seen in the automotive, healthcare, and robotic industries.

Thursday 18 February 2021 - Emerging 3rd and 4th generation emissive materials for OLED displays; A technological transition that increases the efficiency of organic photovoltaics; Functional inks for lighting; and Low temperature component attachment materials.

Wednesday 3 February 2021 - 5G communications has come to a phone near you and 6G communications received strong investment in 2020 as we move to its standards, specification and substantial rollout in 2030. However, this time will be different because the objective is far more heroic.

In 2017, after four years of setbacks and crashes, Alphabet shut its project flying solar-powered fixed-wing drones in the upper atmosphere to beam the internet to those cut-off. They have now ended their upper-atmosphere balloon version as well.

Printing solar panels like newsprint using organic semiconductors is the longstanding aspiration, given the obvious benefits of renewable energy and the potential for low-cost, large-area, energy-efficient production.

IDTechEx currently have a number of printed electronics related webinars, including 2020 end of year highlights, available to watch on-demand today. These include presentations on printed sensors, micro-LED displays and electronics reshaped.

This article analyzes the recently revealed robotaxi from Amazon-owned Zoox.