Advanced materials, chemicals, fibers and ceramics.
A century-old Japanese packaging company will launch a flexible CIGS solar cell in early 2027, betting that proven, long-life thin-film tech can beat still-maturing perovskite to Japan's weak roofs and walls. The contrarian logic, and the catches.
Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo have created a surface electrene: a crystal whose outermost layer is a sheet of loose electrons, with a work function lower than cesium. It survives open air because nitrogen caps it, then leaves as ammonia. Here is what it means for green fertilizer, and how it compares with the electrochemical routes pursued in China, Europe and the US.
Mitsubishi Gas Chemical has signed an MOU with Australia's Gold Hydrogen to study green methanol made from natural hydrogen in South Australia. Here is why a Tokyo chemical maker is going to the wellhead abroad, what the Toyota-ENEOS consortium is really buying, and how the global race for natural hydrogen is splitting along national lines.
Glass is the front-runner for AI chip packaging substrates, but its smooth surface won't hold wiring. Nikon's new PAP material uses light to solve it. A look at the hidden Japanese chokepoints in the chip-substrate supply chain.
Kubota says its existing waste-melting furnaces destroyed three regulated PFAS at over 99.999 percent, with greenhouse-gas markers below detection. We check whether 'destroying forever chemicals' is really the breakthrough it sounds like.
Tokyo's Orbray and De Beers' Element Six have established a reproducible process for one of the largest single-crystal diamond wafers yet, at three inches. How a sapphire trick beat the cracking problem that long held back diamond, the material many call the ultimate semiconductor.
αGEL is the Japanese gel that keeps a raw egg intact after an 18-meter drop. The same material hides in mechanical pencils, G-SHOCK watches and ASICS shoes, and now damps drone vibration.
A team led by Japan's QST has shown, for the first time, a magnetic memory that writes with a laser pulse instead of current — and made it work on CoFeB, the alloy already inside commercial chips. Here's how, and why it matters for data-center power.
RIKEN and Enplas drill 1.1-micron, aspect-ratio-1,000 holes through glass in under a nanosecond, hitting 3,000 holes a second. As the chip race shifts from shrinking to packaging, here's why glass through-glass vias matter, and where Japan's materials and equipment makers fit.
Kyoto University's Takuji Hatakeyama and colleagues linked multiple-resonance units to reach a 5.5nm emission band in solution, pushing spontaneous emission toward laser-like color purity. Published in Science, it points to purer, more efficient next-gen displays.
A Japanese radiative cooling film that stays below air temperature in direct sun, with zero electricity. How SPACECOOL dumps heat into space, its 29% energy cut in Saudi trials, and why passive cooling matters as the planet warms.