Nanocrystalline silicon offers to boost thin-film silicon electronics to higher levels of performance. The benefits of this higher performance are many. Nanosilicon can potentially extend the life of Moore's Law in a way that is much more compatible with the current status quo than are many of the proposed alternatives; it also has the potential to help thin-film silicon PV devices keep up with the performance of other photovoltaic materials. More generally speaking, nanosilicon can provide new options for materials and manufacturing--across several applications--to produce the performance and cost improvements required in the ever-shrinking, perpetually cost-squeezing electronics industry. But is nanosilicon really what is required for these advancements? This article examines this question in the course of evaluating current and emerging nanosilicon technology and markets. Clearly in some respects there is no better material than nanosilicon: silicon is by all counts the best-understood--and most abundant--semiconductor on the planet, not to mention the basis of nearly the entire electronics industry today.

Printed silicon represents an untapped commercial opportunity in the thin-film electronics industry. Silicon is of course the most widely-used material in the electronics industry, and it is also the material of choice for thin-film transistors and many thin-film PV cells. But in these thin-film applications the cost of deposition is significant and the conditions required to achieve it are harsh. Printed silicon offers a likely route to easier, more rapid deposition of silicon films and thus promises to increase the volume and reduce the cost of many existing applications and also to bring about entirely new ones.

OLED lighting has received considerable attention this year from both the lighting and OLED communities. There are at least three different reasons for this. First, there are now OLED lighting products in the marketplace or close to being introduced; until this year, the OLED lighting story was all about R&D projects. Second, if progress continues toward addressing the technical and economic issues related to OLED materials, design and manufacture--and most observers are optimistic--there will be a compelling case to be made for OLED-based next-generation lighting technology. And finally, lighting appears to represent a better market than displays for OLED technology.

When the first building-mounted photovoltaic (PV) systems were installed in reasonable volume sometime in the 1980s, they were generally secured onto a rooftop with little regard for appearance. It was the case in those early days that rooftop PV panels were more of a political and social statement than an economical source of power, and those installing them may have preferred the panels to be "out there" and blatantly obvious. But now that PV has become more mainstream--especially in markets such as California, Germany, and Japan--integration of the panels into the architecture of the building is more important. PV panels can still be a political or social statement, but even if they are obviously visible on a structure, they can still look good.

Printing is not a new concept for the photovoltaics (PV) industry; in fact, it has relied on screen printing to create the top electrodes for crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV for some time. This is a somewhat unexciting application, but one that accounts for almost $200 million in sales of silver inks and pastes. In addition, this means that the PV industry is at least familiar with functional printing and what it can deliver.

Recently completed market analysis conducted by NanoMarkets and published in our recent study, "Conductive Coatings Markets: 2009 and Beyond" indicate that by far the fastest growing opportunity in the conductive coatings market at the present time lies in the area of nanomaterials. While negligible in 2009, NanoMarkets expects sales of conductive coatings using nanomaterials to reach more than $625 million by 2016.

Rapid growth in the photovoltaic industry has resulted in equally rapid growth in consumption of the materials used for manufacturing PV cells and modules. This, in turn, has led--and will continue to lead--to tremendous opportunities for the suppliers and others involved with these materials, in addition to the device makers themselves.

Significant efforts are underway to enable the use of roll-to-roll printing to manufacture CIGS PV cells. NanoMarkets believes that these will result in significant new business revenues. Our research suggests that inks for the CIGS absorber layer will grow from $8.4 million in 2011, to close to $189 million in 2016, about 18 percent of total revenues for the CIGS absorber layer materials.