With an increase in temperature, there is an increase in demand for tap water. One area which is affected is the South West Water network, with water shortages across Sussex and up to 300 households left without tap water for five days. But could this have been averted? Yes - it could.

The new IDTechEx report, "Sensors 2021-2041" uniquely analyses the whole subject in the light of such seismic changes as the COVID-19 virus. The sensor business is in turmoil. The industries that spend most on sensors are changing as are the sensors.

Imagine the environmental benefits if we could all simply paint solar cells onto the roof of our houses, or onto any surface for that matter. We could do this using perovskite solar cells, but, due to their instability, they have not yet been widely introduced. Now, researchers from the Graphene Flagship have developed hybrids of graphene and molybdenum disulphide quantum dots to stabilise PSCs.

DuPont's new webinar is coming soon! Find out how DuPont is pushing the performance boundaries of circuit performance in high-frequency applications.

The metal additive manufacturing market will be negatively impacted by the 2020 pandemic. Despite this short-to-mid-term setback, the industry is forecast to rise and exceed $10Bn within the next 10-years. The emerging and established printer players grab nearly all of the headlines, but most of this forecast annual revenue will be in material sales in which there is great untapped potential.

In the past two decades, the car market has declined twice: first due to the 2008 economic crisis, and then due to falling sales in China. Most recently, the lockdowns implemented to combat the coronavirus pandemic, causing auto-production plants to close globally and a loss of consumer spending will lead to an unprecedented 23% decline in 2020 (IDTechEx prediction).

Printed electronics tags could convert everyday objects into smart devices, exchanging data with each other wirelessly. An EU-funded project addressed the crucial material advances needed for Internet of Things applications - initially in the packaging, healthcare and home appliance sectors.

The battery factories being built today have a weakness - their battery cell production lines only produce one battery cell form factor. These assembly systems are very special and expensive. The manufacturing process of the electrodes is energy-intensive and dangerous solvents are used.

When it comes to the future of solar energy cells, say farewell to silicon and hello to perovskite.

Nearly every sector is proposing the use of artificial intelligence. Materials science R&D is relatively late to this trend, and there are many industry-specific hurdles, but the opportunities are beginning to be realized and the potential impact is significant.

How layers of 2D materials are stacked can have a profound effect on the properties. The twist angles can be the only difference between relatively mundane performance and the capacity to behave as a superconductor.

Tuesday 11 August - The electric car market is facing fresh, unforeseen challenges in 2020, and in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, electric vehicles with a higher upfront price are a hard sell. How is the industry, and how are governments, responding? Are electric cars de-railed from their pre-coronavirus trajectory?

A team of researchers has developed a new form of electronics known as "drawn-on-skin electronics," allowing multifunctional sensors and circuits to be drawn on the skin with an ink pen.

IDTechEx currently have a number of printed electronics related webinars available to watch on-demand today. These include presentations on materials informatics, micro-LED displays and electronics reshaped. There is also another chance to view our virtual conference - Opportunities for Printed & Flexible Electronics.

Citrine Informatics has launched their materials informatics platform

Researchers have discovered that electrochemical doping with ionic liquid can significantly enhance the optical and electrical properties of transparent conductors made of single-walled carbon nanotube films.

Repeated activity wears on soft robotic actuators, but these machines' moving parts need to be reliable and easily fixed. Now a team of researchers has a biosynthetic polymer, patterned after squid ring teeth, that is self-healing and biodegradable, creating a material not only good for actuators, but also for hazmat suits and other applications where tiny holes could cause a danger.

These next-generation photovoltaics show great promise: their performance competes with current technology, but they have the advantages of being flexible, lightweight, cheap to produce, and they can be printed directly onto products during manufacture.

MicroLED, believed by many to be the next generation of display technology, has been pursued by players of LED, display, OEM, materials and so on. Differentiated from LCD and OLED, microLED is considered to be the only display technology that has no size limitation. What are the potential applications?

New research suggests that graphene could be used to make more durable hydrogen fuel cells for cars.