The electronics industry to consume US$1.3 bln in conductive polymers by 2016

Often branded as a class of ‘miracle’ advanced materials that will transform electronics and photovoltaics, conductive polymers have a decidedly mixed reception. The early expectations for the role of polymer-based PV, or conductive polymers as a transparent conductive coating, have never been met. And in other areas of organic electronics, polymer materials – areas such as OLEDs and OTFTs – polymers have played second fiddle to small molecule materials. However, NanoMarkets’ report analyses and quantifies the opportunities for conductive polymers in conductive and semiconductor applications including ant-static, EMI/RFI shielding, ITO alternatives, OLEDs, organic photovoltaics (OPV), energy storage and sensors. It provides a broad coverage of polymer types but focuses on PEDOT, other polythiophenes, polypyrrolle, PANI, and PPV. According to the report, sales of conductive polymers to the electronics industry will reach US$1.3 bln by 2016 as polymer firms diversify away from low-performance materials and look for higher-margin opportunities.NanoMarkets believes that the conductive polymer industry will be able to meet this goal by reducing costs and increasing performance in a number of key electronics and optoelectronics sectors. The researchers say that if low-cost roll-to-roll (R2R) printing processes and simpler device architectures can be effectively deployed for use with polymer OLEDs, conductive polymers will generate $295 million in sales to the OLED sector by 2016 for use in OLED displays and OLED lighting. Furthermore, it is believed that conductive polymers, used principally as electrodes, can boost energy and power densities for batteries, fuel cells, capacitors and supercapacitors, enabling weight and size reduction for some of these devices. By 2016, energy storage applications will account for almost $190 million in conductive polymer sales. NanoMarkets sees conductive polymers as a key enabling technology for enhancing advanced sensors performance. This may occur through the use of polymer sensing materials or in the use of organic electronic devices such as ChemFETs and polymer memories. Sales of conductive polymers are expected to reach US$105 mln by 2016 for sensor applications.