Applications Driving Growth in Conductive Coatings

Published: January 09, 2012    Category: Advanced Materials Electronics and Devices

In NanoMarkets' upcoming report on conductive coatings, we identify two key growth areas:

• Fast growing and highly dynamic application areas such as solar panels, emerging electronics, etc., where the needs for conductive coatings are still in a state of flux.  NanoMarkets firmly believes that some conductive coatings firms are going to make considerable amounts of money in these sectors, where they will benefit from growth in the underlying addressable markets; but the flip side of this scenario is that these markets are constantly shifting ground, and demand for new materials can disappear here as fast as it appears.  Put in economic terms: they are quite risky!

• Legacy applications, where there are still plenty of examples of existing coating technologies that are less than perfect. Electroless copper for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding coatings and indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent electrodes for displays could be cited here.  There are fewer risks for entering coating manufacturers, but also less opportunity to build a very large new business.  Still, we think that it is encouraging that conductive coatings firms that look hard into existing markets are likely to find some new ways to make money.

While in a broad sense the applications for conductive coatings haven’t changed much in years, there are some important trends that are shifting demand patterns.  In the solar energy sector, NanoMarkets expects to see a growing emphasis on energy conversion efficiency as solar subsidies begin to go away.  This shift translates into a need for more effective electrodes and hence for improved electrodes.  With energy storage also becoming more important, there are new kinds of batteries and supercapacitors on the market that also need higher performance electrodes.  These demands for better electrodes obviously translate into new opportunities for conductive coatings of various kinds going forward.

Meanwhile, the display industry is itself looking for ways to adjust to the fact that the boom days for LCDs are over.  On the one hand, this effort includes trying to squeeze the biggest possible margins out of the (still gigantic) demand for LCDs that remain.  On the other hand, it means looking for entirely new business opportunities outside the mainstream LCD industry.  To date, these opportunities have included e-paper, OLED displays, transparent displays and flexible displays.  All of these new types of displays have appeared on the market (with varying degrees of success) or are about to do so. 

The details of these changes in the display industry are not all that important here, but suffice it to say that all of these new kinds of displays represent a challenge to the dominant transparent conductive coating: indium tin oxide (ITO).  No one – and certainly not NanoMarkets -- believes that ITO is going to be anything other than the dominant transparent conductor for a long time to come.  However, it is also impossible to doubt that the trends described above in the display industry will not enhance the opportunities for new conductive coatings of various kinds.

While these developments in the display and solar panel industries are new – or at least new-ish – and, we think, deserving of immediate attention for market strategists in the conductive coatings industry, it is also important to recognize that trends in the electronics and communications industries continue to promote growth in the conductive coatings market.  Thus, there is nothing really new in the following items, but they continue to counteract the core maturity in the conductive coatings space:

• The expansion of electronics, especially of electronics that support pervasive wireless computing, is fueling growth in the market for EMI and radio frequency interference (RFI) coatings.  Legacy products will continue to do well, but new solutions for shielding are also expected to grow.  This application was once considered slow growth, but has transformed into one that has greater potential than ever before.

• Electrostatic dissipation (ESD) and antistatic markets are benefitting from the trend toward pervasive electronics, and are further fueled by the onward march of Moore’s Law, which makes errant charges ever more harmful in electronics manufacturing and assembly.  Antistatic coatings for packaging and industrial clothing are likely to see a boom as feature sizes decrease.

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