World-leading fruits of our core technologies

We are the world’s leading electronic compass manufacturer, with a dominant market share.

Pedestrian navigation systems on smartphones rely on an electronic compass that tells you the direction you’re facing and enables the map to rotate as you turn.

Ever since the launch of the world’s first 3-axis electronic compass equipped with a digital interface in the summer of 2003, Asahi Kasei has been widely recognized as the world’s No. 1 electronic compass manufacturer, maintaining a dominant market share.

There are three main features of our electronic compass:

• 1)Si monolithic Hall sensor technology enabling measurement of the geomagnetic field in three dimensions with a single-chip device, achieving the very small package size of 1.6 mm square and 0.5 mm thick.
• 2)Hall sensors don’t saturate even when used in close proximity to strong magnetic sources such as speakers. This provides more flexibility and ease in design.
• 3)The patented algorithm we developed to automatically compensate for magnetic offset caused by temperature change and external magnetic disturbance. This software enables us to provide total solutions together with hardware to customers worldwide.

With this innovative, world-leading process, it’s possible to make plastic without oil.

Acrylonitrile (AN) is the main raw material for acrylic fiber and ABS resin, which are commonly used in products all around us. These include sweaters, carpets, automotive parts, home electronics, office equipment, and video game consoles.

AN is conventionally produced using propylene from cracked naphtha, a petroleum derivative. Asahi Kasei developed the world’s first successful propane process for AN production using propane obtained from natural gas. This breakthrough process that avoids the need for oil as feedstock is a testament to the strength of our core technology in catalysts.

This propane process for AN was first used in commercial operation in 2007, at the Ulsan Plant of Tong Suh Petrochemical, a subsidiary in Korea. In the following year, Asahi Kasei and PTT of Thailand decided to jointly construct a propane-process AN plant in Thailand, and the plant started operation in 2011.

Cutting-edge Microza™ water-processing technology is widely used in electronics, power generation, automotive, and pharmaceutical applications.

Microza™ is a hollow-fiber membrane filtration system developed by Asahi Kasei. Featuring uniform pore size and pore shape, Microza™ membranes made of special organic polymers are used to purify and clarify liquids by passing the feed liquid through pores in the membrane walls, while blocking the passage of microscopic particles. It is used for water processing and clarification technology in a wide range of fields, including electronics, drinking water supply, wastewater treatment, and power generation, as well as in the automotive and chemical industries, and in environmental preservation applications.

Hall elements from Asahi Kasei provide high precision and high performance even under extreme temperatures.

The Hall effect is the generation of an electrical voltage perpendicular to a magnetic field. It was discovered by Dr. Edwin Hall in 1879.

The Hall element is a magnetic sensor that uses the Hall effect to detect magnetic fields, with the strength of the output signal varying in proportion to the size of the magnetic field. Hall elements are mainly used as sensors to detects motor rotation.

Asahi Kasei is the world’s leading manufacturer of Hall elements, and has developed many new applications by combining Hall elements with signal processing ICs to form Hall ICs that provide highly precise detection of position and angle. We have also pioneered the use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrates, which provide substantially improved temperature characteristics and detection accuracy. Hall elements from Asahi Kasei are widely used in home electronics and automotive electronics, where stable operation under severe temperature conditions is required.

Therapeutic apheresis products from Asahi Kasei use membrane separation and selective adsorption technology to enable the treatment of many intractable diseases that can’t be treated using drugs.

“Apheresis” is derived from the Greek word for “to take away.” Therapeutic apheresis is used to treat a wide range of intractable diseases, such as autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis, neurological diseases, lipid disorders, and chronic hepatitis C. Blood is drawn from a patient and circulated through a medical device that removes pathogenic substances by separation or adsorption; the treated blood is then returned to the patient. Therapeutic apheresis is the only treatment option in many cases where there is no safe and effective drug, or where side effects are contraindicative, and is increasingly used in the field of preventive medicine.

Asahi Kasei’s world-class membrane separation and selective adsorption technologies, using hollow-fiber membranes, nonwovens, and other advanced materials, enable the production of a wide range of therapeutic apheresis devices for the treatment of a variety of conditions. Examples include the Plasmaflo™ separator for plasmapheresis, Cellsorba™ leukocytapheresis column, and the Immusorba™ immunoadsorption column.

As the world’s largest manufacturer of therapeutic apheresis devices, Asahi Kasei is also a leader in the advancement and promotion of this unique type of therapy. As one part of this effort, we operate a training center for therapeutic apheresis called the Apheresis Technology Square (the A-Square). The A-Square provides a venue for health care personnel from throughout Japan and around the world to obtain practical, hands-on training together with information on the latest therapeutic apheresis technology and products.

Reference material: Pocket Manual of Therapeutic Apheresis (published by Ishiyaku Publishers, Inc.), etc.