Growing Consumption of Wearable Electronics Will Boost the 3D Printed Electronics Market
Wearable devices such as smart glasses, smart bands, smart watches, and smart clothing monitor real-time fitness, heart rate, sleep statistics, and calorie intake to provide valuable health insights
Wearable technology has far reaching implications in numerous fields such as education, health and medicine, fitness, gaming, and the military. AR technology, when combined with wearables, will be able to provide a much more realistic and immersive environment in real time
Smart glasses are regarded as the next big technological advance in wearables, particularly since Google started the Google Glass project. Glasses are comfortable to wear and can be used constantly, unlike other devices. According to DataM estimates, by 2019, 9.1 million smart glasses will be rolled out in the global wearable electronics market.
In addition, the smart watch is one of the wearable devices expected to take the market by storm with the introduction of Apple's iWatch in 2015. Smart watches are expected to surpass smart bands in terms of unit shipments in 2015, which will result in the wearable electronics market in the US growing at a fast rate.
A 3D-printed circuit will be popular with wearable technology. Circuits with batteries, and anything necessary, are able to be printed on self-adhering films that can be printed, peeled, and applied directly to the skin.
Thus, increasing penetration of wearable electronics will boost the 3D printed electronics market in the near future especially in the healthcare and medical sectors.
Market segmented by product type Antennas, Sensors, Printable Displays and PCB.
3D printing has been increasingly used to design 3D electromagnetic structures owing to advantages such as smaller form-factor, lighter weight, lower cost and being more eco-friendly. There are new multi-dimensional printers on the market that can print both metal and dielectric materials that enable the 3D printing of antennas. Recently, RUAG Space, one of the major European supplier to the space industry, designed and built an antenna support using 3D printing technology for an Earth observation satellite.
In addition, researchers are developing a new kind of capacitive coupled patch antenna array by using 3D printing technology. These kind of antennas have high-gain and wide coverage, suitable for future 5G smartphone applications. North America and Europe are the potential regions for the 3D printed antennas owing to developed communication networks and increasing investments for the development of new infrastructure from military and defense, satellite, and cellular communication.
Smart bands are portable devices that can be fastened on the wrist of a user. They have built-in sensors primarily in the form of an accelerometer and a gyroscope that monitor real-time fitness, heart rate, sleep statistics, and calorie intake to provide valuable health insights. New hybrid 3D printing technologies enable the printing of different types of sensors for detecting pressure, humidity, temperature, gas, acceleration, displacement, force, and color. However, there are various challenges in the sensor printing such as printing sensing elements, conductors, and insulators, as well as interconnecting external devices. Printed sensors, a subset of printed electronics, are manufactured by using techniques like screen printing, flexography, gravure, and inkjet. Printed sensor technology makes sensing much easier and improves monitoring substantially, because it can be integrated into flexible substrates such as paper, plastic, and foil. These sensors can be woven into cloth to measure bodily functions, used to create human-centered interfaces, or can be directly attached to the skin for healthcare purposes.
While biosensors are the most commoditized printed sensors, a new generation of printed sensors are emerging with a vast variety of applications, such as detecting and measuring physical properties of objects, converting these properties into analog signals, and analyzing those signals. Advantages such as the improved performance, flexibility, and low cost of these sensors will drive this market during the forecast period. The global printed sensor market is growing at a considerable pace. In terms of geographical distribution, North America dominated the market in 2019 with a revenue share of 42%. North America is followed by the Asia Pacific with 29% of the global sales revenue.
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