We have published a new white paper on the NanoMarkets website that addresses the opportunities and challenges for materials suppliers in the thin film and organic photovoltaics sector. It examines each of the major materials classes used in this sector and discusses where the most profitable areas are likely to be found for specialty chemicals firms and similar firms. It also takes a look at the evolving relationship between materials suppliers and solar panel manufacturers and the factors for materials suppliers to take into consideration in assessing the size and growth of the opportunities available to them. The markets for photoactive materials are the primary concern of this paper, but it also discusses the market for contact materials and other materials used in the "new PV."

Click here if you would like to access the file.

NanoMarkets has issued a new white paper titled, "Five Opportunities for ITO Replacement". You can access the document via the following url: http://www.nanomarkets.net/resources/ITOWhitePaper.pdf or by clicking here

Five Opportunities for ITO Replacement

There is a market for low-performance transparent conductors that Indium Tin Oxide or ITO only marginally competes in. This market consists primarily in certain conductive coatings. For example, tin oxide is used in large amounts as an IR protective coating for architectural glass. However, when this low end of the transparent conductor market is excluded, the analysis above would tend to suggest that everything in the transparent conductor business would seem likely to be dominated by ITO for some time to come and that there will be few new opportunities unless one happens to be in the ITO business already and can simply climb up the growth curve with everyone else. Or if one happens to have a revolutionary new way to extract indium and/or process it into ITO products.

However, as firms in the transparent conductor business-including some with materials offerings that do not involve ITO-are quickly beginning to realize, this static view of the transparent conductor market is not accurate. There are five key opportunities in which transparent conductors are used and in which ITO doesn't quite meet the necessary specs.

In the first two of these opportunities-touch-screen displays and flexible displays-ITO is limited by its tendency to crack or break. In the third opportunity-printable electronics-ITO is limited by the ability of the industry to turn ITO into a high-performance conductive ink. In the fourth of these opportunities-solid-state lighting-ITO has been widely used as a transparent conductor for electroluminescent (EL) lighting for quite some time, but it is an open question as to whether it would be the transparent conductor of choice for the emerging area of OLED lighting. Finally, there is thin film photovoltaics, an area where ITO has never really established a presence and there may be better materials to do the job.

Flexible displays, OLED lighting and printed electronics have a certain niche-like character at the present time. This will change; both areas have the potential to generate quite sizeable amounts of transparent conductor demand in the future. Thin-film photovoltaics is only just emerging from a niche status. Touch-screen displays are already a large and growing market. All four areas are generating a demand for transparent conductors that have different characteristics than ITO classic can provide.

Click to access full chapter.

Photovoltaics of all kinds have excited the imagination of researchers, investors, and business people over the past four or five years as general energy prices have crept closer to those of PV. A decade ago, PV seemed merely niche-like opportunity for use in the sunniest climes and for applications that the grid did not easily reach; traffic lights, swimming pools and electric fences. Today, PV is being touted as a possible long-term supplier of up to 20 percent of the world's energy. PV has gone through booms before and there can be little doubt that it is being somewhat hyped today. But there seems no likelihood of a significant decline in the cost of traditional energy sources any time soon. This time the PV opportunity seems to have "legs."

It is no surprise then that money that is now being poured into the PV sector by businesses large and small, by investors and even by consumers and that this has prompted a surge of interest in research of new photoactive materials. Until recently, almost 100 percent of solar cells were based on crystalline silicon (c-Si), the only major exception being the thin-film amorphous silicon (a-Si) material used for "solar calculators." In the past few years, however, other thin-film materials, notably CIS/CIGS mixes and CdTe, have also started to be used and many plants around the world are now coming on stream that will manufacture solar panels using these newer materials.

The attraction of these materials is that they are (at least potentially) low-cost, low-weight and easier to manufacture than conventional PV. They have also had the advantage that PV manufacturers that use them have been able to avoid competing with the semiconductor industry for crystalline silicon. This shortage is, however, a problem that has now all but disappeared as silicon materials companies have ramped up production to meet the needs of the PV industry. The biggest challenge of thin-film PV is now getting the energy conversion ratios to a point where thin-film PV can compete directly with crystalline silicon PV in large addressable markets.

Techradar.com posted a story this week on luminescent wallpaper that uses silver and ITO.

Not an application that we considered in two recent reports we have released but perhaps it might be that thing that gives Grandma's house a more modern look.

Check out www.jonassamson.com for more on the inventor.

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