Transparent market grows

The market opportunities for the transparent conducting oxides, polymers and nanomaterials used in display, photovoltaics and other applications will exceed US$6.9 billion in revenues by 2016, says NanoMarkets.

A report notes that while the market will continue to be dominated by indium tin oxide, transparent conductors based on carbon nanotubes and nanosilver are also expected to see strong growth.

The firm’s latest report, “Transparent Conductor Markets - 2011”, identifies the new business opportunities for transparent conductor materials worldwide. The materials covered comprise ITO, other transparent conducting oxides, other ITO/TCO inks, carbon nanotube films, nanosilver and other nanometallic films and conductive polymers.

The applications considered are flat-panel displays, OLED displays, e-paper displays, touch-screen sensors, OLED lighting, thin-film photovoltaics, organic PV/DSC, antistatics and EMI/RFI shielding.

Among the firms discussed in this report are Agfa, Cambrios, Canatu, Carestream, Chasm Technologies, Cima NanoTech, Dow Chemical, Enthone, Ferro, Heraeus, Kodak, Kurt J Lesker, Linde, NanoForge, PolyIC, Samsung, Saint-Gobain, Sigma Technologies, Suzhou NanoGrid Technology, Sumitomo, Toray and Unidym, among many others.

NanoMarkets is now seeing serious interest among traditional LCD makers in alternatives to ITO and other TCOs. This is being driven by the need to reduce processing costs in the LCD industry and fears about the rising cost of ITO.

NanoMarkets predicts that ITO alternatives sold into the LCD industry will generate revenues of US$690 million by 2016.

Carbon nanotube inks have lost some of their former market momentum due to ongoing technical issues and silver-based solutions have surpassed them.

The report predicts that nanosilver-based transparent conductors will achieve more than US$540 million in revenues by 2016 ahead of transparent carbon nanotube inks which should still exceed US$410 million in that same time period.

Despite the opening up of transparent conductor markets to ITO alternatives, NanoMarkets does not see the traditional ITO business as seriously threatened. Indeed, it expects this market to thrive - doubling in size to US$5.5 billion in 2016.

Transparent conductive polymers have already seen significant deployment as an alternative to ITO in touch-screen sensor and e-paper displays. However, the performance of traditional PEDOT materials seems inherently limited.