Printing

1. Nanotechnology Contributions at a Glance
As the manipulation of matter on the scale of the molecules and atoms, nanotechnology is a powerful tool enabling products which people need in their daily life. It has the potential to transform many industrial sectors, among which is the printing industry, from printing inks to the printing process. A lot of achievements in the printing industrial sector is being done by the pioneers in the field of inkjet printing and suppliers of ink raw materials since they have a strong position to draw the future of ink technologies.

NPD consists of data about 163 printing nanoproducts of 24 various types. These products are introduced into global markets by 74 companies, the headquarters of which are located in 19 different countries. The products are classified into inks, papers, printers, and writing and drawing sub-industrial sectors.

Various inks, additives, ink body conditioning agents, conductive films, security films, holograms, electronic price labels, diffraction image writers, and printing hydrogels are introduced by manufacturers in the ink sub-industrial sector. Many nanostructures have been widely studied for inks applications. Inks containing gold, silver, carbon, and magnetic nanoparticles can be easily printed onto various types of substrates because the nanoparticles are so small that they seep into the pores available on the surface of substrates. This feature provides users with the highest ink performance optimization in properties such as conductivity, adhesion, and flexibility, in a wide range of applications. The paper sub-industrial sector contains a variety of papers, polyethylene films, and paper protective coatings such as paper fire retardant solutions, some properties of which (eg., strength, fireproofing, and moisture resistance) are enabled or enhanced by titanium dioxide nanoparticles, polyethylene thin films, and poly(lactic-acid) nanofibers. Silver nanoparticles, nanoclays, and graphene are the most common nanostructures used in printers to improve their mildew prevention, mold resistance, anti-bacterial activity, thermal stability, mechanical resistance, self-lubricating, self-cooling, thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity, leading to increased production cycles. Pencil leads, artist paints, pencils, pens, and watercolor palettes are the other products which are categorized into the writing and drawing sub-industrial sector. In this category, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and silver nanoparticles play an important role in providing such properties as quick-drying, smoothness, anti-reflection, mechanical resistance, stability, water resistance, break resistance, and stain resistance.

2. Best-Performing Companies in Nanotechnology Exploitation
There are quite a lot of nanotechnology manufacturers active in the printing industry, but only some of them can be known the giants of the industry, some examples of which are Suzhou Coloron, NovaCentrix, SVG Optronics, Advanced Nano Products Co, NANOBRICK Co, Toppan Printing Co, Suzhou Nanoforever Materials, ULVAC Inc, NanoLab Inc, Mitsubishi Imaging (MPM) Inc, Sackel Co, Mitsubishi Pencil, NanoPAINT, Taiwan Nanotechnology Co, Muchcolours, Danaflex nano, UT Dots Inc, C-INK Co, Cheap Tubes Inc, NanoIntegris Inc, Gwent Group Ltd, Inkron, Nanobiofab, and NanoPaper.

‎‎‎3. Top Countries in Nanotechnology Promotion
Having reviewed the monitored companies, China, USA, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Taiwan, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and Iran are the most active countries in directing manufacturers consideration into exploiting nanotechnology merits for printing prosperity.

4. Search String
The keywords used to build up the printing industrial sector database are as follows:
Nano + printing paper, ink, printer, aqueous inks, liquid ink, paste ink, powder ink, toner-based printers, liquid inkjet printers, solid ink printers, dye-sublimation printers, thermal printers, impact printers, typewriter-derived printers, teletypewriter-derived printers, daisy wheel printers, dot-matrix printers, line printers, liquid ink electrostatic printers, copy paper, ledger, manifold, and paper cup.