The top ten emerging technologies in 2021 are comprehensively selected by the international expert steering group from 75 technical nominations. These emerging technologies cover innovations in all aspects of human society such as industry, medical treatment, and transportation.

Microneedle technology

This technology can help patients achieve painless injections and blood draws. It is reported that these tiny needles do not exceed the thickness of a piece of A4 paper and the width of a hair, and are thinner than the thickness of the human skin. During the injection, the microneedles can penetrate the epidermal stratum corneum, which acts as a barrier to the drug, but will not touch our nerve endings, which minimizes the patient’s pain. This technology makes it easier to draw blood. People don’t need to go to the hospital to draw blood. They can also complete the blood draw at home. This greatly saves medical equipment and labor costs and allows more people to get more medical services.

Solar Chemistry

As the name suggests, this technology can use solar energy to promote the conversion of carbon dioxide into chemicals. In fact, this technology has been a dream of many chemists for more than 20 years. The use of ubiquitous solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into chemical energy can not only alleviate the global energy crisis, but also reasonably solve carbon emissions. Scientists have developed a photocatalyst that can break the resistant double bond between carbon and oxygen in carbon dioxide. This method is expected to reduce fossil fuel emissions by using sunlight to convert waste carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.

Virtual patient

The concept of virtual patients has been very popular in the past few years. It uses realistic and realistic models of the human body and various organs such as the liver, heart, and kidneys to provide exquisite and realistic demonstration conditions for medical research. The new virtual patient technology in 2021 is to input the corresponding data of human organs into a complex mathematical model that controls the function mechanism of the organ through a computer, and then use the most advanced computer to analyze and obtain an equation, thereby generating an equation that is exactly the same as the real organ. Virtual organs. After that, drug treatments and evaluations can first use this virtual organ for testing.

Space calculation

This technology can use cloud computing and lidar technology to digitize all people and things, monitor the location of the target at any time and optimize its path of action. It is also known as the next-generation “big event”. Specifically, the digital processing of objects connected through the cloud, the integration of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications, makes it easier for computer scientific research to track human movement and interaction. At the same time, this technology will bring new development directions for human-computer interaction in industry, medical care, transportation and homes, and is a core component of the future of smart homes.

Digital Medicine

Digital medicine is a cutting-edge cross-discipline combining information science and medicine. In theory, it can automatically perform body detection, disease management, and medical care for patients. This is more like a substitute for our family doctors in the future, which can quickly and effectively provide health protection for individuals. Of course, the current digital medicine is far from replacing doctors, but just like many smart products can detect whether the wearer’s heart rhythm is irregular, the prospect of this ability is very worth looking forward to, and the future may also be developed to help relieve patients’ breathing disorders. Personal intelligence products for diseases such as, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.

Electric aviation

This technology mainly uses electric motors to replace the fuel engines of airplanes, which can realize the decarbonization of air travel. Not only can it greatly reduce fuel costs, but electricity can also reduce carbon emissions from air travel. This is like the transition from fuel vehicles to electric vehicles. Although the current long-distance electric flight is still far away, this technology is a major trend of the times, especially in the energy crisis now, it seems imperative that electric motors replace fuel engines. One thing. For now, there are approximately 170 electric aircraft projects under development worldwide.

Low-carbon cement

Low-carbon cement is also an emerging technology related to environmental protection. This technology can optimize the composition ratio of building materials or add effective bacteria to develop low-carbon concrete, so as to reduce the overall carbon dioxide emissions during the production and application of cement by more than 50%. It is reported that the current global production of 4 billion tons of cement annually, carbon dioxide emissions during the production process accounted for 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and is increasing year by year. This is also the most direct reason that led researchers to study low-carbon cement. They hope to use carbon capture and storage technology to eliminate emissions and remove all cement from concrete.

Quantum sensing

As we all know, the next wave of cars must be self-driving cars, but unfortunately, due to various safety hazards, self-driving cars have not reached the real ideal state of people. Quantum sensing technology can help self-driving cars be safer. It can operate with extremely high precision by using the quantum properties of matter. For example, the elimination of blind spots in all corners of cars, or portable scanners that monitor human brain activity, use the difference between electrons in different energy states as the basic unit. These can all be achieved through quantum sensing technology.

Green hydrogen

It belongs to the low-carbon environmental protection field, and green hydrogen is also a technology that will attract much attention in 2020. Generally speaking, when hydrogen is burned, a certain amount of water is left behind, which makes the seemingly green and environmentally friendly hydrogen energy vehicles have a lot of constraints. When this technology can be used to produce hydrogen by electrolysis from renewable energy, hydrogen becomes “green” and pollution-free. This technology is expected to be applied to the green hydrogen energy industry with a market size of 12 trillion US dollars to help reduce transportation and manufacturing. The carbon content of industries and other sectors plays a key role in the energy transition. These sectors are difficult to electrify.

Whole gene combination technology

This is the only technology related to gene sequences in 2021. This technology uses software to design genetic sequences, supplemented by 3D printing technology for biological manufacturing and medical experiments. This technique of redesigning genetic sequences can help scientists gain in-depth understanding of the way the virus spreads, which in turn can help produce vaccines and other treatments. This technology can also help scientists design plants that are resistant to pathogens, or re-help some genomes that are beneficial to our humans, thereby opening a new door to the elimination of genetic diseases such as hemophilia, albinism, and phenylketonuria.