February 23, 2006 – Applications for thin-film electronics applications will generate $15.5 billion in revenue in the year 2011, more than half of which will be used for emerging markets, according to a new report from NanoMarkets.

NanoMarkets predicts demand for thin-film electronics for applications in the display market will reach $7.3 billion by 2011. However, over the next two years, those numbers will be surpassed by new applications for thin-film electronics, such as photovoltaics, batteries, sensors, information storage and lighting.

Thin-film technology has been used in electronics for years, but advances in new materials such as conductive polymers, high-k and low-k materials, silicon inks, and carbon nanotube pastes, as well as new production methods such as printed electronics and atomic-layer deposition, are bringing it to a wider audience. Display manufacturers could replace traditional ITO backplanes with lower-cost thin-film transistors printed with nanoparticulate silver inks, for example. Meanwhile, thin-film batteries and photovoltaic cells promise new ways of powering mobile electronics and smart packaging.

Such a wide range of new thin-film electronics applications represents not just the commercialization of a novel technology, but the birth of an entirely new sector of the electronics industry, the analyst firm said.