NanoMarkets TOP Blog - House Blogs

Thin-Film and Printable Batteries: Strategies for the Future

Fri, 28 May 2010 13:19:00 -0700

From NanoMarkets' recent report, Thin-Film and Printed Battery Markets

The thin-film/printable battery sector continues to excite the imagination of futurists and journalists because it summons up images of an Internet-of-things, with the things in question being powered by paper-thin batteries.

This is an exciting prospect, but the realities of the thin-film/printable batteries business have so far not proved as rosy as most once hoped. Many (but by no means all) of the firms active in this space are unfunded or otherwise stretched financially. Others are pretty close to being science projects. NanoMarkets' estimates for this year's revenues from thin-film/printable batteries is just under $30 million; not impressive for an industry sector that has been around for quite a few years now.

NanoMarkets recent report on this topic, however, suggests that there is considerable hope for the thin-film/printable batteries in the future. We see especially good prospects for such batteries in the sensors, smart cards and RFID sectors. However, this is a demand-side analysis and begs the question of whether, how and to what degree firms in the thin-film/printable battery space are able to design strategies to capitalize on the opportunities.

Success in the Thin-Film/Printable Battery Space: How Four Companies Define Their Strategy [More]

How Improvements in Thin-Film Silicon PV Will Keep it Alive in the Marketplace

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:57:00 -0700

This article is based in part on research from Materials Markets for Inorganic Thin-Film Photovoltaics: 2010

Thin-film silicon (TF Si) photovoltaics has been around for a long time, but went through boom times during a period when there wasn't enough crystalline silicon to satisfy demand by the PV industry; TF Si uses about one-hundredth the amount of silicon used by crystalline silicon PV. The most mature of the TFPV technologies, TF Si currently accounts for about 43 percent of the TFPV market.

But now that the silicon shortage is over, TF Si PV has to compete on its own merits at a time when CIGS and CdTe PV offering a compelling alternative. Such technologies offer the same lightweight and small form factor as TF Si but with higher conversion efficiencies. CdTe has the lowest cost-per-megawatt of all TFPV technologies. CIGS PV, on the other hand, offers the highest efficiency of all TFPV technologies--20 percent for champion cells.

While there may be some niche applications in which TF Si offers some benefit over the other TFPV technologies, only cost and/or performance improvements will help it hold onto its market share. NanoMarkets suspects these improvements, if they come at all, will arrive through changes in the absorber layer. We believe that there are four specific technical directions from which these improvements might emerge: multi-junction cells, cells using micro-silicon materials, cells using nanocrystalline silicon and printed silicon.

[More]

Opportunities for Carbon Materials

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:52:00 -0700

This article is based in part on research from Opportunities in Carbon-Based Inks, Pastes, and Coatings for Electronics Applications: 2010

Carbon materials have been an important part of electronics throughout the industry's history. But far from being a stagnant class of materials, new developments in carbon materials are poised to make dramatic performance improvements in the applications that use them and to enable completely new applications. Eventually, these new classes of materials may even revolutionize the electronics industry as we know it.

Conventional carbon inks, pastes, and coatings make up a critical--if sometimes overlooked--class of materials in the electronics industry, providing solutions that are modestly conductive as well as cheap, easy to apply, and inert. Carbon is thus an important entry in the portfolio of materials used for conductive coatings, especially when extremely low resistivity is not required. While these conventional materials and applications are certainly not the most exciting in the electronics industry, they have been a consistent source of revenues. But now new, breakthrough materials--carbon nanotubes and grapheme--are breathing new life into the carbon materials market and making carbon "sexy". Nanocarbon materials are already enabling new applications that take advantage of conductivity much higher than that of any metal. Down the road are even more possibilities that could provide carbon the status that silicon currently holds in the electronics industry.

[More]

OLED Lighting: What to Look Forward to in 2010

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:44:00 -0700

This article is based in part on research from An Opportunity Analysis for OLED Lighting: 2009 to 2016

It's the beginning of a new year, and like any other we like to look back on the year past and look forward to see what's cooking for the year ahead. For OLED lighting, this is of especial importance: the industry saw its first commercial products, albeit extremely expensive ones, in 2009, which begs the question, will 2010 be the year for "affordable" OLED lighting-ones you and I could possibly purchase?

The answer to this question appears to be "no." While companies have achieved significant strides in OLED performance, materials costs as well as the high cost of manufacturing (low volumes) still leave OLEDs with a high price tag. This is not to say that there's nothing to look forward to this year. On the contrary, as we discuss below, we expect to see more "products," ones being commissioned by designers and luminaire companies, as well as museums and the like. This on-slot (onslaught) of products will bring OLED lighting to the forefront of public attention, possibly giving the attention needed to push up demand and thus justify the construction of large-scale manufacturing lines for OLED lighting. This will hopefully bring down the price, making 2011 the first year for a "more affordable" OLED lighting product.

Year in Review

Last year was supposed to see the commercial takeoff of OLED televisions. [More]

Transparent Conductor Markets; ITO Remains Dominant....

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:58:00 -0700

NanoMarkets has released a new report, "Indium Tin Oxide and Alternative Transparent Conductor Markets". The following is an excerpt from the report.

The transparent conductor industry is dominated by a single material-indium tin oxide (ITO). Manufacturers of flat panel displays (the largest users of ITO) have relied on this material for years but have always griped about ITO's inability to meet their requirements. When used as a conductor, ITO is not very conductive, and as a transparent layer, it is not very transparent. Beyond this fundamental shortcoming is the fact that ITO is generally difficult and expensive to apply as a thin film of sufficient quality. Once it is applied, it is brittle, and therefore can easily wear out or crack when used in applications where bending is involved. The price for this mediocre performance is quite high, since ITO is dependent on indium, which has been priced at $350 to $1,000 for the last several years.

ITO's many faults would seem to create a ripe environment for competition-new transparent conductor materials offering improved performance in the areas where ITO falls short, and different methods of using and applying ITO to address these issues. [More]

Innovation in Thin-Film Silicon PV

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:50:00 -0700

NanoMarkets has just released a new report on thin-film silicon photovoltaics. See here for details.

Amorphous silicon (a-Si), a type of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technology, is experiencing a dramatic growth curve worldwide and offers a compelling business opportunity in power generation, building- integrated solutions and consumer applications. Thin-film PV solutions are the most rapidly growing portion of the PV landscape with approximately 23 percent of the overall PV market in 2008 and a-Si represents the largest component at over 50 percent of the overall TFPV market production in 2008. Amorphous silicon is well positioned to become low-cost PV solution of choice for many applications in the eight-year time frame covered in this report. Lower cost per kWh is the main driver for the shift from crystalline silicon PV to thin-film PV, as well as the increasing acceptance of a-Si thin-film PV for new applications. Cost, product maturity, excellent reliability, and availability of product in high volume are all reasons a-Si has become the most popular of the thin-film technologies; other TFPV technologies include CIS/CIGS and organic PV, which have product maturity issues, and CdTe, which suffers from government regulatory issues at end of life disposal/recycling.

The economics of all photovoltaics involve a high upfront cost to pay for the solar panels, but free feedstock in the form of light from the sun and relatively low operating costs because of the relatively low, periodic maintenance costs compared to traditional methods of power generation. The PV technology that is able to provide the quickest path to lowering these upfront costs and deliver product in high volume is likely to become the dominant PV solution. Amorphous silicon thin-film PV is well positioned to be the PV solution that can provide both large volumes quickly and a roadmap to low cost faster than competing TFPV technologies.

Amorphous silicon solar cells were introduced initially in the late 1980s, with expectations that they would dominate the PV market and be competitive with fossil fuels by the mid-1990s. This did not come to pass as the efficiency was less than 5 percent and initial cell reliability was less than 10 years. These drawbacks coupled with the pullback in fossil fuel prices in the late 1980s, off of peaks in the early 1980s, eliminated almost all demand for a-Si PV except in low-cost/low-power applications such as solar calculators, watches, etc.

Despite a lack of large-scale commercial applications, research continued on a-Si, which resulted in a much better understanding of a-Si PV physics. This research resulted in the development of tandem a-Si/Si:Ge alloy and a-Si/µc-Si cells that had efficiencies nearing 10 percent and field reliability of over 20 years. This positioned the a-Si PV to capture market share when renewed interest in PV energy emerged in the early 2000s.

Several events occurred starting in the early 2000s that accelerated the adoption of PV in general and that of a-Si in particular. First was the spike in fossil fuel costs that increased interest in all PV solutions. With this increased interest, the PV demand exceeded supply. Because crystalline silicon dominated the market, the increased need for silicon combined with the robust demand for silicon in the semiconductor industry caused silicon prices to skyrocket and resulted in a silicon shortage. These high prices spurred companies to invest in capital to expand capacity for a-Si (<2 percent silicon consumption of c-Si) and CdTe-based thin-film PV, as well as accelerated research and development into CIGS and organic PV. Fortunately for a-Si, the renewed interest in PV solutions happened at the same time the industry was transitioning to tandem and multi-junction architectures with much more attractive overall efficiency and reliability than the single-junction designs, which were the dominant products available in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In addition to the demand for alternative energy sources strictly due to cost of fossil fuels, the global warming/climate change movement helped drive demand for PV solutions as they have a zero carbon footprint. Government subsidies for PV solutions (especially in Germany and Spain where such subsidies can be viewed as either jump starting the PV industry or distorting the marketplace, depending on your point of view) have made it economically feasible to build large PV arrays. Amorphous silicon is very competitive for these applications and this has created demand for more capacity.

By the end of the period covered by this report, the roadmap for thin-film silicon PV cells will most likely transition from the a-Si/µc-Si cells, which are now becoming the mainstream a-Si product, to tandem-junction cells that most likely will be tandem- or triple- junction cells based on combinations of amorphous silicon, microcrystalline silicon and nanocrystalline silicon. The roadmap by the end of the reporting period will see the introduction of silicon-based quantum dots or silicon nanowire-based architectures ramping to high-volume manufacturing. This a-Si PV materials roadmap predicted in this report provides a path to 15-16 percent cell efficiency leveraging the cheap SiH4 as a feedstock, no changes to the TCO or reflector materials (although there are certainly improvements in materials processing that can improve efficiency), and most likely will use much of the equipment infrastructure of the current tandem cell factories that are currently coming on line. This reuse of capital equipment and infrastructure represents an excellent value proposition to constantly increase efficiency, aggressively driving down costs, while not being saddled with heavy capital costs to improve efficiency with the exception of those to satisfy increased capacity.

OPERA Organic Electronics Entrepreneur Training Day and Venture Forum

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:03:00 -0700

Passing this on......

The OPERA Organic Electronics Entrepreneur Training Day and Venture Forum May 18-19 2009 at the Novotel Brussels Centre Tour Noire in Brussels, Belgium. Organised by the EU-funded project OPERA, which aims to strengthen the position of Europe in the field of organic electronics, especially start-ups and SMEs.

Organic Electronics Entrepreneur Training Day
The objective is to enroll a maximum of 10 individuals or small teams with a preliminary business idea that they want to evaluate and develop further. In the morning we will have two real-life business case presentations and a presentation of what is required from a good business plan. In the afternoon the participants will work on their own ideas in small workshop settings. Workshops are facilitated by experienced mentors. The objective of the workshops is to produce a refined, business-plan-like version of each business idea plus a set of concrete action points to continue the process.

Note: Registration is complimentary, there is no participation fee.

Organic Electronics Venture Forum
The OPERA Venture Forum will bring together ventures seeking new capital and private capital firms seeking investment opportunities. The objective is to enroll 15-20 presenting companies to present their business cases in front of 15-20 VCs. Start-ups are encouraged to participate although early stage companies are welcome. Presenting companies can represent any part of OLAE value chain - from materials to commercial applications.

Note: there is no participation fee for presenting companies.

Details: http://opera-project.eu/index.php?id=13&lang=EN.

Contact: victoria.plompen@Plastic-electronics.org

CIGS Based Photovoltaics in Today's Economic Environment

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:56:00 -0700

CIGS PV is coming to be known as the rising star of the TFPV world. More than ten companies were already commercially producing megawatt volumes of CIGS PV modules by the end of 2008. CIGS PV has achieved the highest efficiency of any thin-film PV technology; as of the writing of this report NREL was preparing to release certification for a 20.0 percent efficient champion cell created in its lab. Although this falls below the efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cells (barely below that of multicrystalline cells at 20.3 percent efficiency), CIGS cells can be substantially cheaper because of their reduced material usage and the ability to manufacture them using low-cost processes.

The high efficiency of CIGS PV cells is due to their very high absorption rates that allow 99 percent of available light to be absorbed in the first micron of the material. As an alloy system, the bandgap of CIGS can be tailored to maximize efficiency given the expected illumination conditions. Generally, this means optimizing the bandgap to around 1.3 or 1.4 eV to match the solar spectrum. This can be done by varying the ratio of indium to gallium and/or by substituting sulfur for some or all of the selenium. [More]

Outlook for Thin Film Photovoltaics in 09

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:52:00 -0700

By far the biggest issue is how the market will fare in 2009. The success of PV-and of all alternative energy sources-is based not so much on the cost of these alternative energy sources, but on the narrowing of the price gap between alternative energy and conventional energy. With the price of oil at the extraordinarily high levels it reached in mid-2008, PV of all kinds apparently had an unprecedented opportunity, especially since PV brings very low pricing risks as an advantage. The cost of sunlight will remain the same; namely zero. No one really knows what the future holds for the cost of oil!

Much of the impact of high oil prices on the PV market was due in part to perception. Coal and natural gas account for the majority of fossil fuel-fired electricity generation. Though costs of these fuels are also rising, their growth is less dramatic and less visible than the rising cost of oil. Nonetheless, high oil prices contributed to a favorable climate for alternative energy, and serve as a proxy for worries about energy costs.

Based on the attractive business climate earlier this year we had upgraded our forecasts for PV as a whole. At the time, we noted that there was (and still is) a large addressable market available for PV. In a recent report, the European Photovoltaics Industry Association (EPIA,) has shown that if all of the roofs in the OECD countries were fully equipped with rooftop solar, 16 percent or so of the need for electricity could be supplied. This does not seem an extravagant scenario in the long run, but it would take many times the current planned capacity for PV production to achieve it.

While such bullish analysis would still seem to apply in the long run, we have taken a different view of the short-term prospects for PV. There was always going to be some overcapacity in the PV market in 2009 which could have been dismissed as the result of building for the future. However, with construction down and both housing and energy prices falling around the world, the immediate prospects for PV are not good since sales are still strongly concentrated in the U.S. (especially California), Japan and Germany all of which are dealing with rather nasty recessions now and likely throughout next year.

Faced with downturns in the industrialized nations, many firms are looking to growth in both China and India to save them. However, while these countries may well be huge markets for PV in the future, don't expect much from them in 2009. First, although they are huge countries geographically and in terms of population, combined their economies are still 1/3rd that of the US. Both countries are also facing challenges given the decline of the US and EU based economies. Another item to consider is that rapidly industrializing countries are not known for their sensitivity to environmental matters so PV installations are limited in their appeal in this regard.

TFPV has some specific marketplace advantages and disadvantages as we enter 2009. It may in certain cases be less expensive than crystalline silicon PV, although that case is arguable. In addition, its ability to be fabricated on flexible substrates makes it especially suitable for novel BIPV products, such as solar tiles and cladding. Installation of such products may be used to give additional selling features to new homes. On the other hand, some of the TFPV technologies may be considered a more risky prospect than the longer established crystalline silicon PV technologies. This can result in reduced willingness to fund investment in TFPV materials, both at the level of the solar panel manufacturer and the ultimate customer. However, the degree to which that is important will vary with the type of TFPV.

For many TFPV firms, the best that may be hoped for in 2009 is a holding pattern. The firms best able to weather the storm will be those that have cash in the bank, a proven low-cost manufacturing solution and good management. With regard to the management issue, we note that management issues have arisen at a number of TFPV firms in the not too distant past.

We are predicting a $2.7 billion (US) thin-film pv market in 2009.

BASF--A Great BFF Indeed

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:08:00 -0700

The recent announcement of NanoMas receiving a $3.2 million ($US) infusion from BASF and Earthrise Capital Partners, LLC and NanoMaterials Investors, LLC, is a great sign for the materials business.

BASF is the right type of investor for small companies looking to capitalize on their IP and German company's sheer size and the resources it brings to the table makes for interesting possibilities. We are familiar with NanoMas and thought that they would be worth a look from a larger company with capital to invest.

Who's next?

New nanocluster to boost thin films for semiconductors

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:40:00 -0700

Oregon researchers have synthesized an elusive metal-hydroxide compound in sufficient and rapidly produced yields, potentially paving the way for improved precursor inks that could boost semiconductor capabilities for large-area applications.

The key to a "bottom-up" production of possibly the first heterometallic gallium-indium hydroxide nanocluster was the substitution of nitroso-butylamine as an additive in place of nitrosobenzene.

The substitute was identified during a comprehensive screening of potential alternatives by Zachary L. Mensinger, a doctoral student in the lab of University of Oregon chemist Darren W. Johnson. The additive acts to optimize and speed crystallization, allowing for reaction yields up to 95 percent. Comparable compounds traditionally made under caustic conditions often take months or even years to crystallize and result in low yields.

See Release

Thin Film Solar Summit 2008

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:18:00 -0700

NanoMarkets Associate Analyst, Katherine Derbyshire will be giving a presentation at the Thin Film Solar Summit 2008 taking place in San Francisco on December 2nd - 3rd. Full information is available here.

The summit will begin with a high level opening panel of global experts with representatives from ersol Thin Film in Germany, Indian company Moser Baer as well as Schüco, SCHOTT and Applied Materials from the USA. Facilitated by EuPD Research, the discussion will center on the latest market and product developments and the challenges that companies looking to take advantage of the booming industry potential face.

Katherine's talk:

Thin Film Photovoltaics Markets: 2008 and Beyond

A fresh assessment of where the thin-film PV market is headed

Which companies and technologies are currently leading the way

Analyze the strategies of leading firms active in this space and take away best practice examples

How far thin film PV can eat into traditional photovoltaics markets and how companies can take advantage

Review of each of the technologies in terms of their key performance characteristics and how these might improve in the future

A comprehensive update on the evolution of roll-to-roll, printing and other manufacturing processes

registration information

Novel Dielectrics for TOP Electronics

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:39:00 -0700

NanoMarkets will soon be issuing a report on dielectric materials. More details available here.

Until recently, the focus of materials development for thin-film, organic printable (TOP) electronics was on conductors and semiconductors. However, as this rapidly growing area of electronics becomes more sophisticated, there is a growing need for new or enhanced dielectric materials for both processors and memories. The search for such materials has been particularly important as electronics materials firms begin to talk about organic versions of CMOS and new dielectric materials have to meet the needs of flexible substrates.

Electronics based on printable and largely organic conductors, dielectrics, and semiconductors, with OFETs as the core devices, have become a research area in their own right and have spurred significant investment by established and emerging companies such as BASF, DuPont, Evonik, Merck, Polyera and Thin Film Electronics, and also by leading research institutions including Cambridge University, Max Planck Institute, North Western University, PARC and University of Groningen.

NanoMarkets believes that novel dielectrics for TOP electronics will find great suitability in providing higher performance at lower cost initially for low-end item-level tags over the next few years and then thrive, evolving and specializing over time to support a broader range of high-end applications. [More]

OLED Materials

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:22:00 -0700

The following was taken from an upcoming NanoMarkets report due to be released in early October, OLED Materials Markets-2008.

Materials science rarely has those "Eureka" moments of pure, serendipitous discovery. Instead, an initial breakthrough points toward a promising area of inquiry, followed by years—even decades—of grinding experimentation and exploration. As Thomas Edison said, "Failed? - why we haven't failed, we only know the thousands of ways that won't work." This is the case for OLED electroluminescence.

Chin Tang of Kodak discovered OLED electroluminescence in 1979 while working on organic solar cells. And, in 1989 Richard Friend, Jeremy Boroughs, and Donal Bradley at Cambridge University discovered polymer-based OLED electroluminescence. These initial discoveries launched research efforts that continue to build momentum. So far, OLED researchers have identified a compendium of viable materials, along with the large pile of materials that won't work. [More]

Call for ECTC Abstracts - due Oct 15, 2008

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:59:00 -0700

The Electronic Components and Technology Conference is seeking abstracts for its international conference that will take place May 26-29, 2009 in San Diego, California. More information is available at http://www.ectc.net/.

Description of our Emerging Technologies topics for this year is given below. [More]