The president of Kiatt group works to detect the research that will give rise to the technological advances of the next decade throughout the world. Nanotechnology is already a reality in mobile devices because it offers the possibility of designing materials with the properties that people need.
His first steps began in Shanghai and Oxford, two places where he has become not only an expert in technology transfer but also an engineer and investor. Manuel Fuertes is the president of Kiatt group, as well as director of special projects and general director for Spain at Oxford University Innovation, the technology transfer office of the University of Oxford. For this reason, he is present on the investment committee of several technology venture capital funds, which plays a fundamental role in investor relations within the British university. He himself describes: «we are a scientific group that seeks scientific findings».
His vision of the market spans ten to fifteen years: «the science that is being done today are the innovations of the next decade»., the expert explains. On the other hand, they also work hand in hand with entrepreneurs, in this case, searching for ideas for the next five years. “Two thirds of mobile phone developments are nanotechnology”, he says.
Although it seems that advances in this field are more of a prophecy, the truth is that currently «between 60 and 70% of the patents in the sector correspond to nanotechnological advances», highlights Fuertes. Its presence is notable in the transistors, the mechanisms that make up the guts, and the operating system of the device.
Graphene seems to be one of the great advances in this field, however, Fuertes refers to the challenges of transferring its production from a laboratory level to an industrial scale. «Producing a square meter of graphene costs $100,000», points out the dimension of Fuertes scaling. One of the challenges is, therefore, determining the procedures and standards to achieve cheap production of graphene. What is most curious is that Fuertes assures that every week there is news of companies or scientific teams that manage to make the production of graphene cheaper: «it is their daily bread», he says while implying that none of them are a really viable procedure. However, «a group of scientists from the University of Glasgow seems to have found the key. Let’s see if it’s true».
According to Fuertes, «the size limit to which silicon can be minimised has been reached and we have finished the periodic table». The main advantage of silicon is that it can be turned off and on quickly, something currently impossible to do with graphene. However, nanotechnology itself has the advantage of presenting malleable properties that respond to the needs of man, such as graphene having a conductivity up to thirty times greater than silicon. «Nanotechnology gives us the possibility of designing materials at the atomic level with the properties we want. It is possible to achieve, for example, more conductivity and less size».
Among the main nanotechnological promises in the mobile sector are flexible and transparent screens. Fuertes talks about a future in which they will also include photovoltaic cells in a formula in which the mobile device charges only its battery using solar energy. «The next step is that everything around us becomes a screen», says Fuertes as he opens the doors to the connected future of the Internet of Things.
And as an observer of future developments, what stands out, among many others, is a screen that applies nanotechnology to adjust the image to vision defects. «The device is capable of measuring, thanks to an internal camera, the distance between the eyes and the screen and projects it the way you should see it», he explains.
And if the life of mobile phones’ batteries is another of their handicaps, Fuertes aims for a new source of energy that comes from encapsulating hydrogen. These are hydrogen fuel batteries that, in addition to being low polluting, are now possible to develop with low pressure, which definitively eliminates the threat that existed of them exploding. Among the advances that the expert already points out as a reality, there is a battery of this type that charges in half an hour and lasts for a week.
Nanotechnology brought to mobile devices will lead to greater power and processing capacity. It will, in this way, be capable of processing real artificial intelligence: “it will be able to predict and calculate accurately and in real time,” the expert bets.
In any case, it is a matter of time, by 2025 the Mobile World Congress will explode with flexible screens and perhaps bionic implants: “screens will be on surfaces that we cannot even imagine”, Fuertes bets.
