Raghu Das and Dr Peter Harrop of IDTechEx and Wolfgang Mildner of Organic and Printed Electronics Association discuss major materials, processing, and applications developments in the field of printed electronics. Major development areas include applications in OLEDs and new thin-film solar photovoltaics, and nanotechnologies for printed electronics.

Topological insulators act as both insulators and conductors, with their interior preventing the flow of electrical currents while their edges or surfaces allow the movement of a charge. Surface conduction channels in BiTe topological insulator nano ribbons are tunable, according to new research from UCLA and Australia's U of Queensland.

Research teams from Japan and Finland have developed a simple and rapid technique to fab carbon nanotube (CNT) thin film transistors on plastic film. The methodology could be extended to R2R manufacturing to enable complex ICs for flexible electronics.

GIA released a comprehensive global report on microscopes markets. Scanning-probe and charged particle microscopes were severely hit by the recession, as the microscopes are largely used in semiconductor industry. Going forward, scanning probe microscopes represents the fastest growing product segment in the global microscopes market.

Nanocarbon -- carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, graphene, etc. -- production reached less than 25% of capacity in 2010, according to a new report from iRAP Inc. Capacity utilization is expected to reach 50% in 2015. Prices for these products will drop annually by more than 10%.

The funding will enable C3Nano to scale up its hybrid carbon nanotube (CNT) based transparent electrode ink and film for use in devices such as touch screens, OLED devices, PV panels and flexible displays and to collaborate with customers.

IBM said that its inventors received a record 5896 US patents in 2010, marking the 18th consecutive year it has topped the list of the world's most inventive companies, and the first time a company has received >5000 patents in one year in the US.

Displaybank's latest report covers graphene technology patents registered in Korea, U.S., Japan, and Europe by August 20, 2010. Valid patents corresponding to graphene manufacturing and applications are culled from 891 items of raw data.

CVD Equipment Corporation (Nasdaq: CVV) announced that new orders received during January 2011 totaled approximately $9.3 million dollars. These orders are for both production and research equipment in the fields of solar, LEDs and nanotechnology.

NEi Software debuts its free finite element analysis (FEA) mobile application, NEi Stratus, experimenting with how and when finite element analysis solutions can be delivered to engineers. NEi Stratus will be available by the beginning of the second fiscal quarter and will be initially offered at no charge.