NanoMarkets has announced a new upcoming report titled, Silver Inks and Pastes for Printable Electronics: 2008-2015. The following entry is an initial perspective on the silver inks and pastes market.

Silver inks and pastes continue to occupy a unique position in the printable electronics industry. They are still the only printed materials that have been mainstreamed and are widely used to create electrodes in a variety of applications, using screen printing mostly. Membrane switches, automotive heaters, capacitors, conductive tracks in PCBs, and conventional (i.e., not thin-film) photovoltaics all routinely use printed silver and printed silver is also used for certain classes of EMI shielding. Together such applications will account for hundreds of millions of dollars in silver inks and pastes in 2008. Applications in the display industry and especially in RFID antennas, a product that could end up being sold in billions are not too far off into the future. Today, there may be as many as 20 firms currently supplying silver inks for electronic applications.

It is easy to understand why silver has achieved this position. Silver is the ideal conductor, it is not only more conductive than any other metal, but unlike other metals, the oxides that ultimately grow on its surface are also conductive. And, of course, since silver has been used as a conductor since the beginning of electronics, there is already a deep understanding of its use in electronics applications. Finally, silver inks have been around for decades for graphics applications. Admittedly, there is considerable difference between printing a greetings card and printing an RFID. Nonetheless, this history has given ink makers some useful experience in making inks from silver particles and flakes. Meanwhile the latest silver inks that use nanoparticles promise performance improvements in terms of conductivity, curing costs and the ability to be used with inkjet printing.

Printed Silver: New Concerns and New Opportunities

In May 2007, NanoMarkets published a well-received report on silver inks and pastes that analyzed and quantified the markets for these materials. Since that report's release there have been significant changes in the economics of the silver inks business.

The most obvious change, of course, is in the price of silver itself. While there are obviously day to day variations, silver prices have increased tremendously since we released our last report and have reached highs of over $20 (on March 19th the prices were around $18.50/ounce). Such a rapid increase in price is having a large impact on the silver inks and pastes market, especially when no one is expecting silver prices to return to previous pricing levels any time soon.

The impact of rising silver prices on the ink business has been two-fold. First, there has been a search for new alternatives to pure silver inks that will almost certainly have to be a metal of some kind with copper the obvious choice, since it almost as conductive as silver. The problem with copper is that (unlike silver) its oxide is not conductive and in powder form copper is a somewhat dangerous material that tends to self combust. One way round this conundrum is to produce silver coated copper inks. A year ago, this was an interesting research project. Now it seems like a product design necessity. One trend we will discuss in our upcoming report is how other conductors are likely to find a role, where once silver had a 100 percent market share.

The other innovation that the high price of silver has set off is a conscious search by silver ink makers for new applications in which the cost of silver is less of an issue. There are several of these that have raised particular interest.

The most attractive of the markets being pursued by silver ink makers is probably photovoltaics. This is an established market with price sensitivity that is quite low when compared with RFID, automotive components, or discrete electronics, for example. The PV market is also clearly in rapid growth mode and will continue mostly to use the same silver inks and pastes that it has always used. To the extent that PV has a downside it is in the emergence of thin-film PV which will increasingly compete with conventional crystalline silicon PV. For the most part, this newer kind of PV uses transparent conducting oxides rather than silver in contacts. There is also the issue of PV market growth eventually slowing down since the very rapid growth is not likely to last forever.

There are also other markets which are currently attracting attention from silver inks and pastes. One of these is the high end of the RFID market where tags are used for animal tracking or inventory management of very expensive items. These are obviously much less price sensitive areas than item level tagging of supermarket items, but also much lower value. This comment can also be made - and even more emphatically - about another area where printed silver is finding a market, in medical patches and medical imaging electrodes.

However, this search for new applications is not one that should be interpreted as desperation on the part of the ink and past makers. In fact, the past year has seen an interesting development with regard to the kinds of inks that were being produced. A year ago, the development focus was mostly on inks for ink jet printing, today there has been a shift to flexo and gravure inks. This reflects the general belief in the printed electronics business that we are now moving to a real commercial production environment and away from an R&D market. This is a good thing, of course, from the perspective of the silver ink makers. On the other hand, it raises further interesting questions:

What is the future of nanosilver inks, given that they were so tied to the future of ink jet?

And given that many silver inks are currently customized to user needs, how essential will it be for more generic user-friendly inks to emerge for silver inks to achieve real mass market potential?