Scouting the market for energy harvesting for almost 7 years now has allowed IDTechEx significant insight into the markets for the technologies, the potential applications and their prospects for growth. The following list of applications comes from recent IDTechEx research that has looked into the level of maturity of a wide range of end user applications, and the technology of choice in most of them. Dr Harry Zervos, Principal Analyst & Bu...

Whilst existing battery technologies such as lead acid and lithium-ion batteries will dominate the battery market in the following 10 years, advanced and post lithium-ion batteries given the right conditions can potentially take a considerable dent of about 10% of whole battery market by 2026. This is mostly because some of them are already in use in niche segments that will present high growth in the following 10 years. Indeed advanced and post ...

  Large investments have been made to enable flexible, thin sensors rather than rigid sensors. By Guillaume Chansin, Senior Technology Analyst, IDTechEx.

Forget the obsession with driverless autonomous cars; Energy Independent Vehicles (EIV) are the new megatrend according to the IDTechEx Research report Energy Independent Vehicles 2016-2026, which explores the latest developments in the booming energy autonomous vehicle industry. By Franco Gonzalez, Senior Technology Analyst, IDTechEx.

Perovskite PV efficiency gains are double those of organic PV, exciting researchers from KIMM in Korea to Dyesol in Australia. However, it can be like the little girl in the nursery rhyme: 'When she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was awful'. Perovoskite PV promises over 20% efficiency, low cost materials and even flexible, transparent and stretchable versions needed for new applications. Record power to weight ratio is ...

The 3D printing industry is still going from strength to strength. According to the IDTechEx report 3D Printing 2015-2025 Technologies, Markets, Players this industry is set to grow from $1bn in 2012 to $20bn in 2025. This growth is due to both improvements in existing printing technologies and the development of completely new technologies. Keeping track of these developments is a challenge. By Dr Jon Harrop, Director, IDTechEx.

The printed electronics equipment and consumables supplier base consists of over 100 global organisations, according to IDTechex Research in their report Printing Equipment for Printed Electronics 2015-2025. The majority of these are based in Europe, followed by a roughly even share of US and Asian based companies. Within Europe itself, Germany is home to more equipment makers than other European countries. By Raghu Das, CEO, IDTechEx.

Haptics are an essential feature of the UX platform in many electronic products today. Whether as notification provision in a vibrating smartphone, tension building in a video game controller, or input confirmation in an industrial scanner, this billion dollar industry is something that most people will experience every single day. By James Hayward, Technology Analyst, IDTechEx.

Primarily by enabling new products, the thin flexible batteries market is set to be worth $400m in 2025 mainly. By Raghu Das, CEO, IDTechEx.

In 2020 flexible barrier manufacturing for flexible electronic devices such as displays will be a market worth more than $184m, according to IDTechEx. That equates to 3.8 million square meters of flexible barrier films for electronics. By Dr Harry Zervos, Principal Analyst, IDTechEx.

Core applications of PV & touch panels continue to grow demand, but new opportunities emerge in the form of wearables, circuit boards & structural electronics. By Dr Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, Head of Consulting, IDTechEx.

According to research from IDTechEx, China looks set to spend up to $1 trillion on electric buses over the coming 15 years. This will reduce the financial impact from air pollution by over $22.5 trillion, at least 1% of GDP. More insurrection will occur if corrective action is insufficient because hundreds of thousands are dying from traffic pollution and far more are suffering resultant serious disease.

In 2012 a tsunami of media hype began around consumer 3D printing that turned a lacklustre 30-year-old technology into a household name and created massive growth in the industry even among large established players. The same pattern of hype is about to repeat with the advent of consumer-level 3D printed electronics. This represents the collision of the multi-billion dollar markets for printed electronics and 3D printing. The impact this will hav...

Examining a newly significant off-grid energy market, IDTechEx has announced its latest report: High Power Energy Harvesting: Off-Grid 10Kw-100Kw 2016-2026. Sales of small off-grid wind turbines may make up just a tiny fraction of the $100bn wind turbine market, but there are many other electrodynamic ways of using ambient energy to generate electricity on location.

Tracking the development of 45 electric vehicle categories (not just electric cars), IDTechEx research indicates that there are now Li-ion battery options for everything from forklifts and mobility vehicles to e-bikes. Indeed, almost all the e-bikes in the West and Japan use them. 8,000 forklifts in the USA have fuel cells with Li-ion batteries though the Toyota Mirai fuel cell car and the Prius hybrid car still use NiMH.

 A new design strategy has emerged for making batteries flexible. Companies no longer purely focus on changing the chemistry or thinning the device. Instead, the special arrangement of cells make the existing batteries flexible or even foldable. This will be a quick win for wearable devices in the short-term period as the technology can result in flexible batteries based on traditional battery manufacturing.

Wearable technology is part of a megatrend involving integration of electronics into every aspect of our surroundings. Our most immediate surroundings - our clothing, watches and even our bodies themselves - are a key part of this. Features such as sensors, actuators, processors, interfaces and all that is needed to support and power them are being integrated onto and into the body with unprecedented reach and volumes.

IDTechEx says that there is divided opinion on the future of traction fuel cells in EVs, though few continue to argue that they will power the majority of EVs. Nonetheless some manufacturers are very enthusiastic, and now could be the beginning of the end of the trough of disillusionment - the time to invest, as analysed in the IDTechEx report Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles 2015-2030: Land, Water, Air.

By Raghu Das The printed electronics sector has been fascinating to follow and report on. Several billion dollar industries such as OLED displays already exist but the OLEDs today are not printed. OLED displays alone exceeded $16bn in sales last year, driven by the need to differentiate in the tight margin LCD business. By revenue, the second largest sector is the printing of sensors. In 2014, the glucose test strip market accounted $6.4bn, whil...

Recent research, conducted by IDTechEx, finds that the Thermal Interface Materials market (TIM), including tapes, adhesives, greases, gels, pastes, elastomeric pads, phase change materials, graphite, solders, compressible materials and liquid metals, will grow from $1.7bn in 2015 to $3.7bn in 2025. Most growth is due to elastomeric pads, phase change materials and solders. Full details of the analysis is available in the IDTechEx Research report ...