Printed Electronics Overview
November 20, 2013, Printed Electronics Show, Santa Clara, CA—Raghu Das from IDTechEx provided an overview of the printed electronics industry, covering both the technologies and business aspects. The ability to print circuits on almost any substrate is a disruptive force that encompasses organic and flexible technologies.
The technologies can replace existing devices, but the high investments and risks coupled with few successes denotes this area as one for the brave or foolish. OLEDs are making inroads into small displays and some specialized lighting, but trail LCD for large display functions.
Some of the new capabilities will supplement existing manufacturing processes. For example, nano-materials are considered viable as replacements for ITO, which is fairly brittle and high resistivity. The low temperature processing and high flexibility bodes well for the curved and future flexible displays.
Some markets are doing well. E-paper is in many readers, conductive inks are over $2B a year, inks for sensors are over $1B and the sensors are an additional $6B. Despite these successes, many flex and organic functions have been in development for over a decade, and still need more work. Some of these functions include electro-chemical circuits, logic and memory, organic photovoltaic cells, and thin-film batteries.
Emerging markets show the potential for these other technologies, OLED as replacement for LCD enables flexible and curved displays, and started in ’10 in phones. Big-screen OLED TVs appeared at CES this year, and are starting to move down from the ultra-premium sector. The organic markets are growing also, as metal oxide transistors are starting to replace amorphous silicon for the driver electronics in big displays.
OLED lighting is seeing similar changes in markets. The dropping materials costs and higher yields allow the OLED lights to approach LEDs. The big issue is the need for much more development and cost reduction to address lifetimes and color shifts over time. The advantage of OLED over LED is continuous light emission over an entire surface, compared to an aggregation of many discrete points. OLED lighting will be about $15M this year, growing to over $1B in the next decade. The OLEDs might take up 1 percent of the LED market by 2020.
E-readers will be flat to down this year, but will still bring in $1B in sales. To really compete with the tablets, they need video-rate color displays. The main market will be in the education fields, where low cost and robustness matter more than color and Internet connectivity.
Metal-based conductive inks continue to grow. Silver is the dominant material, claiming over 95 percent market share. The primary markets are in photo voltaics, touch screens, and automotive applications. The biggest issue is the cost of the silver. The nano particle versions still need a lot of work, but the inherent high conductivity should lead to lower costs as less metal is needed. Research continues in copper and other metallic conductors.
Printed and organic sensors represent a $9B market led by blood and glucose strips. The primary materials are carbon, silver, and a growing presence with the metal oxides. In many applications, hybrid CMOS and organic layers out perform the base CMOS. Other printed sensors are in the works.
One stumbling block is logic and memory. There is lots of work and many demonstrations, but no real products. Organic and metal oxide materials are the leaders in the efforts to make thin-film transistors, especially for OLED backplanes. Here again, hybrid CMOS and organic and metal flex circuits work together.
Organic photovoltaic products are facing very high startup costs, so are not going to be competitive with standard photovoltaic cells. In areas like low light levels and other adverse conditions where the standard PV cells are inefficient, the organic materials have advantages.
The nanomaterials and other versions of printed and flexible conductors are becoming a bright spot. The demand for alternative materials is growing due to the high resistivity of ITO which is too high for large area screens. The candidates are silver nano-wires, metal mesh, carbon nano-tubes, and graphene. Although the materials are now available in industrial quantities, there are few buyers.
The whole area of printed and organic materials needs to identify new product categories where the technologies are well suited for the applications. Success will require greater systems-level integration, as the users will want a complete solution and innovation. The technical solutions need to move lower into the value chain to gain more traction. Overall, the industry looks good for long-term growth.
