White Paper on market opportunities within transparent electronics. Prepared from NanoMarkets recent report.

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A NanoMarkets White Paper
Transparent Electronic Materials: An Emerging Market Opportunity
Published January2012
© NanoMarkets, LC
NanoMarkets, LC
PO Box 3840
Glen Allen, VA 23058
Tel: 804-270-1718
Web: www.nanomarkets.net
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Transparent Electronic Materials: An Emerging Market Opportunity
The information for this paper was sourced from the recent NanoMarkets report, Transparent
Electronics Markets-2012 that was released in December of 2011.
Page | 1
As we enter 2012, NanoMarkets believes that three major industry sectors—displays, solar
panels and the windows industry—will soon require novel transparent electronics materials.
These new materials sets will embrace conductors, semiconductors and dielectrics and
NanoMarkets believes that all this will provide an important new opportunity for both
established specialty chemical firms and start-ups.
In a recently released report, Transparent Electronics Markets-2012,NanoMarketsprojected
that revenues from transparent electronic materials are expected to reach $325 million in 2015,
going on to reach $1.1 billion in 2019 (See Exhibit I). In addition, some of the materials
development that NanoMarkets expects to be undertaken with transparent electronics in mind
will generate additional revenues outside of the transparent electronics sector. We are thinking
here especially of oxide thin-film transistors (TFTs) for use in both OLED and LCD backplanes for
distinctly non-transparent displays. But some of the work on developing transparent
conductors may have implications in the ITO replacement market as well.
Three Crises: A Transparent Solution
In the three industry sectors mention in the first paragraph of this paper management is coping
with strategic “crises” that have become only more serious in today’s slow growth economy. In
each case, transparent materials may prove a key to dealing effectively with those issues.
Crisis #1—Transparent displays and the end of the LCD revolution: Not only has the world
economic downturn hurt television and computer sales, but we are also in the last gasp of the
liquid crystal display (LCD) revolution. All computer and mobile displays and almost all
televisions are LCD now.
So the display industry is looking for those “next big things” to keep its revenues growing. And
it is coming to realize that transparent displays (along with flexible displays, OLED displays and
e-paper) may be one of those “things.”
Transparent displays using relatively crude CRT and electroluminescent (EL) technology have
been used for signage and heads-up displays (HUDs) for years, but Samsung and LG are now
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promising to upgrade the technology for transparent digital signage in the near future. In
addition, there is the promise of mass market transparent displays as part of a move towards
augmented reality features on tablets and smart phones. This product trend has the backing of
both Microsoft and Apple, which we think is reason enough that it should be taken seriously.
Page | 2
One of the next iterations of the iPhone and iPad are likely going to have a transparent display
that enables you to receive additional information about the place you are standing in on a
transparent screen, while looking at the place through the screen.
Crisis #2—Windows, transparency and the construction bust:The windows industry, whose
main addressable market traditionally is the new construction market, is not a good place to be
these days! In some countries, construction growth is tepid; in others the worst is yet to come.
Window manufacturers are therefore rethinking product/market strategies. Inevitably, they
need to come up with new products that have (1) high value-added, which helps make up for
lost revenues, and/or (2) a value proposition focused on energy efficiency; in the light of rising
energy prices and environmental concerns this is a likely to be an important selling factor.
For the windows industry the use of transparent materials needs no explaining. It is implicit in
the whole idea of windows. But increasing value added means a whole new set of window
functionalities. Self-dimming windows have been available for some time and the windows
industry is now looking at windows that are also displays (for unobtrusive large-screen TVs),
windows that are also lighting, and windows that are also solar panels. There may be even more
complex hybrids in the future. One could, for example, imagine a panel that was a window and
a solar collector during the day and a light at night.
Commercial developments like this imply the need for higher performance transparent
electronics materials capable of monolith integration of the functionalities mentioned above
into windows. Self-dimming windows, in particular, have not done well in the marketplace,
mainly because they have never achieved the performance capable of attracting many
customers. New transparent materials could expand the addressable market for these
innovations in the window space.
Crisis #3—Solar panels: After a spectacular 2010, the solar industry has slowed. NanoMarkets
believes that the worst is yet to come in that we expect to see solar subsidies decline
significantly as governments around the world reduce these subsidies as part of budget cutting
efforts.
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The result? The solar panel industry will be desperately seeking ways to improve its economics.
One way that it might do this is through building-integrated PV (BIPV). BIPV is a product design
strategy that integrates PV panels with other building materials. By doing so, the shared cost of
the substrate can significantly reduce the total cost compared with buying the roofing or siding
plus the PV panel separately. Page | 3
Not all BIPV products are transparent, but BIPV glass in skylights, facades, curtain walls, and
shade structures such as canopies already exist, although they are deployed mainly in high-
visibility commercial buildings. In addition, what transparent BIPV mostly means today is
standard crystalline silicon solar panels glazed into larger modules with some areas left open to
enable light to come through.
As such, transparent BIPV today is not really a materials play. But we would expect it to be
much more about materials going forward; with the ultimate goal being the development of PV
absorber layers that are inherentlytransparent. And while NanoMarkets does not believe that
transparent BIPV is the killer app that organic PV (OPV) has long sought, this is one niche were
OPV would appear to have an inherent competitive advantage.
One final point on “transparent” PV absorber materials. While in the case of the other sectors
that we have reviewed in this article, “transparent” really means transparent, in the PV sector it
means something less than that. The point here is that no material can be both completely
absorbent and transparent; so there is always a tradeoff. A general transparency target for
commercial BIPV glass is around 50 percent. This lets in most of the current thin-film PV
materials, which, if made thin enough, can be at least considered translucent. In addition, since
novel transparent materials for PV absorbers do not have to be that transparent, the bar is
lowered a little in terms of product development.
Transparent Conductors for Transparent Electronics: A New Direction for the ITO Alternatives
Firms?
There is already considerable work being done on developing new transparent conductors, but
most of this is aimed at coming up with alternatives to the indium tin oxide (ITO) that is used
almost ubiquitously in the display industry—and in some cases in the solar panel industry—as a
transparent conductor. ITO is expensive, sometimes brittle but highly entrenched in the display
industry as a top and bottom electrode material for LCDs.
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Various materials have been used or proposed as substitutes for ITO including other transparent
conducting oxides, conductive polymers and a variety of nanomaterials; especially inks made
with silver nanowires and carbon nanotubes. The big issue faced by all the firms in this sector,
however, is that the big LCD makers are reluctant to shift to an ITO alternative because of the
large investment that they have made in ITO. Page | 4
Given this, many of the manufacturers of ITO alternatives have found that the touch-screen
sensor market is easier to break into than the mainstream LCD market. Touch-screen sensors
may be a good place to start, but they will never generate enough revenues for manufacturers
of transparent conductors to build substantial businesses on. However, the rise of a vibrant
transparent electronics business means that there is potentially a new sector where
transparent conductors can be sold.
And, what is more important in the context of this report is that transparent conductors are the
one area of transparent electronics materials that arereadily available and mature
technologically. And the firm to watch in this sector, we believe, is Cambrios. This is not so
much because of its nanosilver-based transparent conducting material, but because of the fact
that it has so effectively managed its business development and supply chain strategies to
become the first firm to get a high-performance transparent conducting nanomaterial into a
real-world product; the touch-sensor for a smart phone, that is available on the market today.
It is also worth mentioning that this sector is one in which not just start-ups, but much bigger
firms see opportunity. Thus Dow Chemical, Kodak, Linde, Saint-Gobain and Sumitomo have all
already staked a claim in the transparent conducting nanomaterials space.
Transparent Semiconductors of the Future
The emerging markets that we described at the beginning of this article are obviously going to
need more than just transparent conducting materials and as in any materials set, the materials
that are central to creating value in future transparent material sets are the semiconductors.
And it has not proved especially easy to find materials that can serve as semiconductors and at
the same time be transparent. NanoMarkets believes that there are three types of research
efforts that can lead—or are leading—to practical transparent semiconductors. These are (1)
organic electronics, (2) efforts to develop electronics using nanomaterials or nanostructures of
some kind and (3) metallic oxide semiconductors:
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 We note that as a practical matter most of the work in this field is focused on using (3);
semiconductor materials based on metal oxides of various kinds. Although the
semiconducting transparent oxide class of materials, as yet, lacks truly useful p-type
semiconductors, functioning devices have been built using n-type oxide semiconductors.
Indeed, there can be little doubt that the whole area of transparent electronics received Page | 5
a considerable boost in credibility in the early 2000s from a number of research devices
(TFTs) that were built using (mostly) ZnO as a semiconductor.
 Nanomaterials appear to offer considerable potential for creating transparent TFTs at
some time in the future, but few researchers are focusing on this right now. But it
should, perhaps, be mentioned that ZnO nanowires have been used in transparent
conductor research devices from time to time.
 Organic electronics is a research program that often makes use of transparent materials
(PEDOT is a notable example), but it hasn’t focused on transparency as a goal, but rather
on a complete electronics paradigm built around organic materials.
The most promising TCO material in terms of performance out of the common ones that are
proposed for transparent electronics appears to be indium oxide; it offers the highest electron
mobility, for example. In addition, we should note that there have been some successes in
developing transparent p-type semiconductors. A recent text on this topic described as
“excellent” the transparency characteristics of AlCuO2, SrCu2O2:K, LaCuOS:Sr, CuInO2:Ca and
CuScO2:Mg, among other materials. However, we note that in this case, “Excellent” is defined
as greater than 70 percent.
A Conclusion and a Few More Companies to Watch
In Exhibit II we set out how we see the transparent electronics space evolving and we note here
that the optically active materials that will be used in smart windows and solar panels will also
evolve in sophistication and performance. In addition, while we have focused in this article on
the crucial conductors and semiconductors, there will be other materials needed to complete
the transparent materials set. For example, the fabrication of transparent TFTs is going to
require settling on a gate dielectric material; this choice will significantly impact the
performance of the devices under consideration. And a number of materials have been
proposed or used for gate dielectric materials including SiO₂, Al₂0₃, HfO₂, ZrO₂, and Y₂O₃.
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And with the exception of the transparent conductor space, it is still too early to pick real
winners and losers in the transparent electronics materials space. Indeed, NanoMarkets
predicts that we will soon begin to see some new firms begin to appear in this space to
capitalize on the opportunities that we have identified here. This is not to say that some of the
big boys won’t also play a significant role. For an overview of what NanoMarkets considers the Page | 6
top firms to watch in the transparent electronics space see the somewhat speculative Exhibit III.
The main criterion for being on this list is the likely level of influence that these firms will have
on the transparent electronic materials sector across a wide variety of applications; they are
not necessarily materials firms themselves.
One large company to watch in this space is 3M, which has a broad patent portfolio covering
transparent conducting oxides and is a recognized leader in this field. Another interesting
company is Kurt J. Lesker, which has reported to us in the past that its materials group has been
able to identify 17 novel transparent conducting oxide that it believes have potential to
eventually make a commercial impact.
It is out of this kind of work that the new transparent materials set that we are predicting will
be forged.
Exhibit I:
Forecast of Selected Transparent Electronics Materials by Type ($ Million)
2012 2015 2019
Oxide electronics materials for transparent displays 12.8 55.7 205.9
Active materials for smart windows 15.0 42.8 121.3
Absorber layer materials for transparent solar panels 77.2 226.6 784.7
Transparent sensor materials 0.2 0.5 2.0
105.0 325.5 1,113.8
TOTAL
© NanoMarkets 2012
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Exhibit II
A Provisional Roadmap for Transparent Electronics Materials
Current state of technology Next three years Future evolution
Broad range of Page | 7
Growing rapidly in importance. commercial devices,
Future unclear, alternative
Oxide electronics Emphasis on OLED TFT especially if p-type
paradigms may arise
backplanes semiconductors can be
developed
Doesn’t really exist, but some
Transparent organic work done in this area when The rise of transparent electronics may give a motivation
electronics OTFTs were being seriously for reviving this research program
considered
Nanomaterials would seem
Nanomaterials and
to have the largest potential
nanostructures have been used Possible that a consistent
to emerge as the
to build transparent electronic effort to develop a
Transparent underpinning for electronics
devices in scattered transparent
nanoelectronics that is both highly
experiments. Nanomaterials are nanoelectronics could
transparent and offers high
also eating into the conductive develop.
performance electronic
transparent coating market
capabilities
© NanoMarkets 2012
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Exhibit III
NanoMarkets’ Top Seven Firms to Watch in Transparent Electronics Materials
Influence on the market What to watch for in the future
Prime mover in transparent Page | 8
electronics. Offering the first
Will Samsung’s next-generation transparent electronics
displays and other products. Has
1. Samsung products take off and will the materials this company
a history of trying out new
uses become the industry standard?
materials faster than other display
firms
Apple could be the first firm to provide a sophisticated
consumer product with a transparent display in it. As
Has patents for transparent
such it could be a strong influencer on the type of
displays to provide access to
2. Apple materials used in transparent electronics products. As an
augmented reality. Seems likely
indication of what could happen, consider that Apple
to add this to iPad and iPhone
single-handedly turned Pro Cap touch-screen technology
into a major industry.
Saint-Gobain has not specifically identified transparent
Major glass firm with influence in
electronics as a target market, but seems to be creeping
3. Saint-Gobain smart windows and transparent
into this space and is well positioned for further growth
conductors
in the future.
Not yet a supplier of materials to the transparent
The first transparent conductive electronics business, but its materials could have some
4. Cambrios nanomaterial firm to announce a interesting applications in transparent electronics and
real-world customer. this may still be an easier sector to get into than the
mainstream display sector
Has extensive portfolio of In a position to be a major supplier of materials to a
5. 3M transparent conductive oxides future transparent electronics sector. But would
and films probably be a low-key one.
As the leading display glass firm, likely to emerge as a key
6. Corning Not specifically active yet supplier of substrates for transparent electronics. Could
perhaps offer specialty glass for this sector
Carrying out R&D work on a This work has considerable relevance to the future of
7. Kurt J. Lesker number of novel transparent transparent electronics and may make Lesker a player in
conducting oxide materials the future
© NanoMarkets 2012
For additional information about the NanoMarkets report, Transparent Electronics Markets-
2012 please follow the hyperlink in the report title. You may also contact us at (804) 270-1718
or sales@nanomarkets.net.
NanoMarkets, LC | PO Box 3840 | Glen Allen, VA 23058 | TEL: 804-270-1718 | FAX: 804-360-7259