Annual global nanotech research funding running at $10 billion per year

MONTREAL, CANADA: ELECTRONICS.CA PUBLICATIONS, the electronics industry market research and knowledge network, announced the availability of a new report entitled "Metamaterials: Technologies and Global Markets".

The global market for metamaterials was worth $222.3 million in 2010 and $256.1 million in 2011. Analysts expect the market to grow to $758.7 million by 2016, a CAGR of 24.3 percent since 2011, and to reach $1.9 billion by 2021, a CAGR of 19.6 percent between 2016 and 2021.

In October 2006, David R. Smith of Duke University and other researchers announced that they had created an 'invisibility shield'. Using concentric rings of fiberglass, circuit boards that had been printed with millimeter-scale metal wires, and C-shaped split rings, the researchers were able to divert microwaves around a metal cylinder placed at the center of the ring. The microwaves behaved as though there was nothing there.

In principle, there is no reason why a similar device that cloaks an object from visible light could not be built, although such a visible-light cloak is probably years away from becoming a reality. While not yet exactly the stuff of science fiction, the invisibility cloak is probably the most dramatic demonstration so far of what can be achieved with metamaterials, which are composites made up of precisely arranged patterns of two or more distinct materials.

Metamaterials offer seemingly endless possibilities, but it is unlikely that all of these possibilities will become reality. The goal of this report is to survey emerging metamaterials technologies and applications, identify those that are most likely to achieve significant commercial sales in the next five to 10 years, and develop quantitative estimates of potential sales.