NanoMarkets believes that in aggregate the opportunities for nanosensors are immense and need for small systems to double as analyzers and data storage entities will drive market growth. But participants in this market must remember that nanosensors are still a new technology, however, and, just as for sensors based on microtechnology, it will take some time for nanosensors to start earning significant revenues.  Continuing progress in nanotechnology tools and increasing understanding of nanoscale phenomena, will be necessary to further enhance performance of existing nanosensors and allow researchers to develop nanosensors based on novel mechanisms. 

NanoMarkets believes that quantum dots have developed to the point where they can be a useful tool in the constant struggle of television display makers to stand out in the marketplace. Although barely out of the R&D phase, quantum dots (QDs) do offer some compelling reasons for adoption in a market that sometimes seems to be very good at offering new technologies and not so good at making them succeed.

NanoMarkets believes that transparent displays represent a substantial opportunity over the next decade. However, we do caution that both the market and technical risks are quite daunting in our opinion. 

The market risks are high because there is not a full understanding of how transparent displays fit into the retail and advertising market going forward.  Even more uncertain are the prospects for AR, a primarily software-based technology that is fueling much of the current attention in transparent displays.

To date, the history of thin-film and printed batteries has not been an entirely happy one.  Both RFIDs and medical/cosmetic patches have failed to live up to the “killer app” expectations of the thin battery sector.  And there are now perhaps 40 percent fewer firms making thin batteries than there was when NanoMarkets started covering this sector.

In this environment, one might be forgiven for condemning thin batteries as a technology in search of an application.  And even if one considers smart cards, the one area where thin batteries have achieved some traction, it is hard to think of the battery firms creating large amounts of value.  A CEO of a thin battery firm seeking that IPO down the road doesn’t have much to hang his or her hat on.

But although still in the making, NanoMarkets points to wearable and flexible products as well as devices connected to the “Internet-of-Things” that potentially offer a large market for thin batteries going forward; big enough to make the whole thin battery opportunity much more worth pursuing than ever before.

If this proves to be the case, the disappointments around RFID, patches and the like can be forgotten.  These new wearable and flexible and “IoT”-oriented products could well give the market for printed and thin-film batteries a new lease on life.

NanoMarkets believes that Quantum Dots (QDs) have good potential to be a dominant large display format technology in the near term, but will take some more time to find commercial applications in the small display segment. In addition, NanoMarkets believes that in the near to mid-term, the lighting industry is likely to witness a good number of commercial launches, particularly in the solid-state lighting (SSL) segment, in which QDs have the potential to replace LED phosphor-based lighting solutions.

Downstream suppliers of QD raw materials are likely to expand their manufacturing facilities in order to meet the growing demand for QDs from consumer electronics producers, particularly TV manufacturers, as well as research facilities and some SSL-based lighting solution providers.

NanoMarkets has provided coverage of the smart lighting sector since the sector’s earliest days.   Our definition of smart lighting comprises adding intelligence – in the form of additional electronics – to enhance the capabilities of lighting systems in useful ways.  Smart lighting, the way that NanoMarkets has discussed it, does not specify the light source and it could use CFL, LED or even incandescent lighting theoretically.  However, almost all commercially viable smart lighting that is likely to be sold going forward is likely to use LEDs.  So it is in LED-based smart lighting systems that the potential for chipmakers lies.

NanoMarkets believes that there are, however, indications that self-cleaning windows have a bright future. The trends that impress us here are mostly technological in nature, but this shouldn't be taken to mean that they are restricted in some sense to what is going on in an industrial lab.

On the contrary, what we are seeing are signs that there is a growing technological impetus behind self-cleaning windows that will enable them to meet their “obvious” market potential.  NanoMarkets believes that these newer technologies—and riffs on older technologies—will (1) improve the performance standards for self-cleaning windows and (2) make such windows more affordable.

Given the overall disappointing results to date for printed electronics, it is perhaps surprising that there has been something of a revival of interest in strategic printed electronics in the last couple of years. Not surprisingly, this effort is much more modest than the narrative of developing a large and distinct PE industry, and in the sense that the number of applications to which the new PE is directed are fairly limited.

There are a number of ways that these efforts could be viewed.  A cynic might view them as no more than a last desperate gasp of firms that were active in the second phase of PE story.  However, NanoMarkets believes that there are now genuine opportunities to be had as the result of PE development and that this new kind of PE, which we are going to call Printed Electronics V3.0, can learn from the failures of the past, both in applications and in printing itself, to generate new business revenues.

Today, the LCD market heavily dominates the optical coatings and films needs of the display industry. LCDs and their backlight units use diffuser films, polarizers and reflective polarizers, contrast enhancement and prismatic films, as well as antireflection, antiglare, and privacy films.  But most display makers are now looking for the “next big thing” in displays.  This next big thing could come in the form of 3D devices, OLEDs for mobile computing applications, and perhaps even OLED TVs in the near-term; e-paper has also grown in importance over the last few years.

Although most of the revenues from optical coatings and films used in the display industry for years to come will be generated by those used in LCDs, NanoMarkets believes that the opportunities in this space will be shaped by the emergence of the new kinds of displays outlined above.  These new kinds of displays can be expected to create new kinds of optical films, and may create openings for new firms to establish a market presence and gain market share versus the competition.

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.