 Hi, I'm Kasha, and I'm the head of consulting at ID Tech Eggs. My background is in electronic materials and electronic devices, but at ID Tech Eggs I look at advanced materials like graphene, I look at printed electronics, I look at OLED lighting, I look at some PV technologies and so on. And I'm also responsible for looking after many of our clients around the world, so I try to understand what they do, what their needs are and make sure that they have the information and the analysis and the insight that they need and when they need it. So you say like graphene for example? Yes. What is that? Well graphene on paper is this wonderful material, it has super natural properties almost, it is the best in everything that it does, and therefore because it has such a diverse and such an excellent set of properties, it can be used in so many different applications, in applications from composites and batteries and electronics and many other things. But despite the potential on paper, there have been some bumps on the road when it has come to commercializing graphene. The graphene industry as a whole is still trying to find the so-called killer application and the way companies have tried to go to the market is by replacing something that already exists. So the commercialization strategy really is one of trying to get a little bit of market share on multiple fronts and that's tough. So is it because it's expensive or it's hard to make or what's the problem? Why is it not everywhere so far? Well I mean you said some of the problems, so I mean like most early stage technologies the manufacturing of it is a problem so it is not easy to manufacture in high volumes and at low cost. And I think one problem is that it hasn't found an application in which it has a very very unique or very very strong value proposition. So the story has been that I'm a little bit better than something that already exists. And I think part of the challenge is that when you try to manufacture graphene you don't make that ideal, that perfect graphene that gives you the best properties that we hear from the labs. The actual factory level graphene or the commercial high volume graphene is a different type of material with not properties as great as we've seen. But the interest is huge. Almost every chemical, every material company in the world will have got their hands on some graphene or will have invested in some internal R&D on graphene. We are seeing a lot of activity now interesting in China so in China there are five or six companies with very big announcements about production capacity. We are seeing a lot of interest in Korea and Korea is an interesting case because there is already installed capacity for carbon nanotube manufacturing and also a lot of accumulated experience in the industry. And we know that players like Samsung and LG are really aggressive in trying to pull the strings and pull the industry in Korea. So there's a lot of interest happening in Asia. What's carbon nanotubes? So carbon nanotubes are... Is that the one they are talking about with the space elevator? Well yes, they did actually a long time ago. That's an old story now. That was when the carbon nanotubes were at the peak of the hype cycle. There was a lot of hope, there was a lot of interest. So carbon nanotubes are kind of a nanotube made of carbon and they too, like graphene, have many wonderful properties. But again, commercialization has been somewhat difficult to achieve and it's taken much longer than many had expected. But carbon nanotube has qualified success. So I think around the world there is something like 270,000, 3,000 tonnes per year production capacity and there is actual success in selling carbon nanotubes as an additive in the electrodes for lithium-ion batteries and also as an additive in composites with electrostatic dissipation properties. So the industry exists but it has not reached the same levels that many had expected. And one of the challenges with the carbon nanotubes was and still is that it is hard to disperse. So when you add it to composites, the viscosity goes up by several orders of magnitude. And this is where graphene may actually have an advantage over carbon nanotubes because some of the early indicators are that it is easier to disperse and that's an advantage. And that is why we see in the industry many of the companies that have started by producing just powders and now offer much more, they offer intermediary products dispersed graphene in composites and inks and so on and I think that's a very welcome step towards commercialising graphene. So what's printed electronics? Printed electronics is many things. It's not one thing. It's a manufacturing method and it's an umbrella term. It can be used to describe components like transistors, memory and the conductive tracks. It can be applied to make displays, lighting but it will take applications. So it's a very, very broad industry and there are very many different printing methods that can be used to make printed electronic devices. So when we see how printed electronics, we don't speak of one industry. We speak of a common thread that runs into many different industries. So there's going to be some exhibitors here showing a bunch of stuff that's in the market or stuff that's in the future only. So because it is such a diverse market, if you try to map the different applications that are out there on the market from the R&D level to the commercialisation level, you see diversity. There are applications on the market that are already mature, high volume, almost old mature technology but then there are things that are still at a much earlier stage and there's everything in between. It's a broad industry with different technologies and different players at different degrees of progress. And what's going to happen at the supercapacitors summit here? What's that about? Well, supercapacitors is a very exciting technology. It's an energy storage device which in so many ways is complementary to lithium-ion batteries. It can discharge and charge up much quicker than most batteries out there but it doesn't hold as much energy. It's a big industry already. It is used in cars, in buses and we think that it's going to have a role in the future. We think that it's a market that's going to experience a 30% growth year on year going forward. And the interesting thing about this event is that we've designed it in a way that there is overlap, there is synergy between the different tracks and the different conferences. So let's take supercapacitors as an example. Supercapacitors are in fact an interesting and a very promising target market for graphene. So many of the graphene suppliers that will be here will be walking the floor exhibiting. They want to speak and they want to network with the supercapacitor people because that's where the market is. One key parameter about supercapacitors is that the performance gets better as you increase the surface to volume ratio of the electrode. So the more interfacial surface there is in general between the electrode and the electrolyte the better the performance is going to be. And graphene because of its single layer properties it has the highest surface to volume ratio. But of course there are many technical problems not least on how you can maximize that surface area utilization. But I think the point I'm making is that here we bring the end users and the suppliers together in one place. So is this conference about flexible displays unbreakable displays, flexible PCBs, motherboards, electronics and like flexible batteries? Is it about that also? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean one of the good things about being printing organic electronics not just printing but potentially printing is that it feeds into the value chain of flexible electronics. And when we think of flexible electronics there are many components that are needed to make that possible. And this conference focuses on all the components that are needed. So a flexible transparent connected film, a flexible backplane, a flexible encapsulation layer. If you need a flexible battery for powering things a flexible battery is going to be there. And also we'll have the end users, we'll have the big display makers here to complete the presence across every step of the value chain. So absolutely, absolutely. And who's going to be here at the conference? Like guys from the Silicon Valley who want to see what's going on. People making this stuff. A bit of everything. I think one important thing about our conference is that it is business focused. So we don't have a lot of academics. Most of the 2,500, 2,700 people that will be working the floor will be business people. They'll be CTO level, they'll be CEO level. They'll be business development managers, marketing managers. And they will come from a diverse set of industries. You know the material, the chemical industry will have a big presence. The component makers will have a big presence. But one extremely important and unique about our conference is that we bring some of the top end users for example for Prince and the electronics. We bring some of the biggest packaging companies, some of the biggest consumer good companies, some of the biggest car manufacturers and so on. And these are the end users that the suppliers want to connect to. Alright so looking forward to a whole bunch of interesting things going on here. These are my couple of days. Thank you.