NanoMarkets Article Feed

BIPV Encapsulation Markets Preview

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:53 GMT

The PV market is undergoing dramatic change as the industry transitions from one of generous subsidies to one with dwindling subsidies, dramatically reduced prices, reduced margins, and anticipated massive consolidation. As the PV module market shifts towards a commodity business model with associated mergers, and many players are weeded out of the panel area, which dominates the overall solar industry, there are many in the industry looking for new business models with greater opportunities for high margin growth.

NanoMarkets believes that one of the areas of high growth for solar PV is in building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).This new wave of BIPV products represents an attractive opportunity for new encapsulation materials. The current materials for flexible modules are relatively expensive to manufacture compared to the glass used in rigid modules. However, for BIPV applications, where product lifetimes are 20-30 years, they represent a good value proposition for high-end applications today, and will have much wider appeal as costs come down. The larger opportunities will be in the newest generation of materials, which promise to reduce costs without reducing product lifetimes.

Metal Oxide Thin-Film Transistors as a Key Enabler for AMOLED Displays

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:39 GMT

If AMOLEDs cannot be deployed for large-area applications, then, by definition, AMOLEDs cannot replace LCDs as a dominant display technology. Worse, if AMOLEDs are restricted to small mobile displays then economies of scale for both OLED material manufacture and the production of AMOLEDs themselves cannot kick in, again thwarting high hopes for AMOLED technology. NanoMarkets believes that the technology that will cut through this Gordian knot are backplanes that are based on metal oxide thin-film transistors (TFTs). Such TFTs will also be sold into the conventional LCD sector and will generate more revenues from LCD applications than for AMOLED applications. But in the AMOLED sector, they will be more essential and will prove a key enabling technology for AMOLEDs.

The Coming of Age of the DSC Market

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:18 GMT

NanoMarkets believes that 2012 will be the year that dye sensitized cell (DSC) photovoltaics grows into itself and begins to capitalize on the available opportunities despite overall weakness in the PV market. In this article we examine a few of the factors that the industry and interested investors may be ignoring.

OLED Lighting in a Low-Growth World

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:03 GMT

While the growth rates in the countries that are likely to be the sources of the overwhelming majority of the demand for OLED lighting will inevitably rise and fall over the next decade, the likelihood is that the high growth rates that existed in the economy when OLED lighting was first thought up are not going to reoccur for some time.

And with that in mind, NanoMarkets believes that it is certainly time to rethink our forecasts for the OLED lighting market in a lower economic growth world going forward.

Reexamining Silver In Photovoltiacs

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:38 GMT

Over the past several years the photovoltaics (PV) market has been the single largest consumer of silver printing pastes, beating out even the big traditional markets like printed circuit boards and polymer thick-film membrane switches. But as the PV sector enters a period of flat or moderate growth in the next couple of years, the industry remains highly cost sensitive, and government subsidies are waning. Meanwhile, the ongoing shift in market share toward thin-film PV (TFPV) is changing the nature of the addressable market for silver materials in PV.

There is some good news, however as most of the opportunities center on providing new silver-based products that help the panel makers reduce manufacturing costs. Examples are: new silver printing pastes with reduced silver loadings that do not sacrifice performance; new printable silver materials that enable the fabrication of finer resolution silver traces; and new nanosilver-based options that enable low-cost, solution-processable and/or printable fabrication of transparent front electrodes.

Changes in the PV Market that May Influence the Adoption of Smart Coatings

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:45 GMT

NanoMarkets continues to believe that there are opportunities for commercialization of smart coatings in the photovoltaics (PV) sector, even though the PV market is quite different today than it was just a year ago, both from an economic and a political perspective.

Changes in the Photovoltaics Market for Transparent Conductors

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:43 GMT

NanoMarkets' eight-year forecasts suggest that the market for transparent conductors (TCs) in both inorganic and organic thin-film photovoltaics (TFPV) applications will be about $90 million in 2012 and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30 percent to a value of over $635 million by the end of the forecast period in 2019. NanoMarkets anticipates this growth despite the current difficult overall environment for PV, in which government subsidies are under threat and in which there are huge pressures to reduce TFPV costs to make TFPV competitive with c-Si PV and with other sources of energy in general.

The Aesthetic and Cost Promise of BIPV

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:52 GMT

Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is one of the biggest hopes for turning PV into a substantial industry that might eventually be self-sustaining without government subsidies.

Opportunities in Smart Lighting

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:55 GMT

The “smart lighting” concept means different things to different people, but distilling its essence, what seems to be intended is lighting with an additional layer of intelligence that provides enhanced functionality; creating opportunities over and above the simple provision of light where it is needed. Smart lighting systems today, generally consist of sensors located at light fixtures, which are networked back to a central controller. They distinguish themselves in the marketplace by the nature of the sensor, how the networking is provided and the degree to which they provide management information. For the immediate future, smart lighting opportunities are strongly focused on improving energy efficiency, but NanoMarkets believes that the addressable markets for smart lighting will expand to include environments where the benefits being sold will include improved aesthetics, comfort and even improved health.

Changes in PV and What It Means for Transparent Conductors

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:28 GMT

NanoMarkets anticipates significant challenges to the status quo in the photovoltaics (PV) market in the coming decade. The PV sector as a whole is entering a period of flat or moderate growth in the next couple of years, and the industry remains highly cost sensitive. Meanwhile, the ongoing shift in market share toward thin-film PV (TFPV) is changing the accepted landscape of available PV technologies. This movement, in turn, is causing a shift in demand for transparent conductors (TCs) in PV applications from market-dominant crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV that uses little or no TCs to TFPV that, in most cases, requires the use of high performance TC electrodes.