Printed and flexible sensors

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Thursday 12 July titled Gas Sensors for Internet of Things.

Last week Paris experienced its worst spike in pollution since records began. Cars were banned from the streets and public transport made free in the city and surrounding areas. Such vehicle bans have only been introduced four times in the last two decades, and never before on consecutive days.

Sensors that are printed on flexible substrates represent a growing market. Although the biggest segment — blood glucose test strips — is currently shrinking, the next generation of printed sensors will enable other applications...

As poor air pollution affects 92% of the world's population, there is a growing need for low cost direct pollution measurement in order to combat growing air quality concerns. Chemical gas sensors will play a key role in pollutant monitoring over the next decade and IDTechEx predicts that the environmental sensor market will be worth more than $3 billion annually by 2027.

Sensor development is driving the next generation of wearable devices, and this development is now going further than simply attaching sensors to devices that can be stuck on the body

Large investments have been made to enable flexible, thin sensors rather than rigid sensors.

There will be over 3 billion sensors in wearable technology devices by 2025, with more than 30% being emerging sensor types.

The printed electronics industry shows a huge interest in sensors as it seeks to forget the failures from the past.

In this article we focus on the current status of the main printed electronics technologies for components in consumer goods and healthcare applications, providing for each one market drivers, case studies and key suppliers, cost structures and challenges.

There is a new generation of sensors that are directly printed on flexible plastic substrates.