The ability to develop new materials and bring them to market ever faster is an obvious goal. There continues to be countless developments that improve chemistry and materials science R&D, but perhaps none represent the same paradigm shift that materials informatics offers. Major industry players are waking up to this as the technology matures.

In-mold electronics enables electronic functionality to be embedded within molded and thermoformed plastic components. With the integration of capacitive touch, lighting, and even haptics alongside size and weight reductions of up to 70%, IME is an efficient approach to making curved touch-sensitive interfaces. Given these benefits, IDTechEx forecasts IME to be a $1.5 billion market by 2032, with applications mainly within the automotive and consumer goods sectors.

5G is paving the way for a fully digitalized and connected world. The past two years have seen many new field trials and an accelerating number of commercial rollouts. Moreover, 5G is starting to be adopted in a wide range of industries, from manufacturing to healthcare.

Printed and flexible sensors constitute the largest printed electronics market outside of displays. Indeed, we forecast that the market for fully printed sensors will reach 4.9 billion by 2032.