The terahertz technology market is expected to grow from €46 million in 2015 to €98 million in 2020, at CAGR of 16 per cent, according to a new report by photonics market research firm Tematys. The market will be driven by industrial non-destructive testing, which accounted for 46 per cent of the total terahertz market revenue in 2015 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19 per cent.
A better understanding of terahertz abilities together with evolution of the application markets will also drive the growth of terahertz technology, it said in the report.
In 2013, Tematys released a terahertz report on market and technology trends covering the electromagnetic spectrum from 200GHz to 10THz. Since then, terahertz technologies have been tested in a wide variety of applications outside the historical scientific market, including non-destructive testing (NDT) in industry, defence and security, and biomedical. The industrial NDT market will be the major driver of the terahertz market growth, according to the report, because of the development of new and more complex composite and ceramic materials and coatings.
Thanks to ongoing feasibility studies, manufacturers and end-users gained a much deeper knowledge about the abilities and the limitations of the different terahertz systems and identified the three main functions that terahertz technologies address: detection of objects and defects on large areas; thickness measurement on large areas; and chemical and structural characterisation of small objects and defects on small areas (2D) or volumes (3D).
Tematys’ research found that each of these functions generally leads to a specific type of terahertz system with distinct requirements in terms of performance and cost. For detection, manufacturers are developing cheap and compact imaging systems able to probe large areas in a limited time, the main systems being terahertz cameras. For thickness measurements, cost-effective, high speed instruments with high quality of measurement are being developed, the main being time-domain spectroscopy time-of-flight (TDS-TOF) systems.
Lastly, for characterisation, high-resolution and high-reliability sensing systems for real-time chemical and structural characterisation of objects are being sought, an example being real-time telephone data systems.
For each product family, the report studies the innovative systems developed to answer end-user needs. It also details current and future trends in component developments as well as perspective on cost decrease.
Further information
Terahertz Components & Systems: Technology and Market trends - Update 2016
