Indium Tin Oxide and Alternative Transparent Conductor Markets

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is the most widely used transparent conductor in the display industry and has also found important uses in photovoltaics, lighting and various kinds of optical and conductive coatings. However, the choice of ITO is not usually made comfortably. ITO is a relatively expensive material and it has mechanical limitations in certain applications. The reason why it is so popular is primarily because there are few other materials that have such an optimal combination of transparency and conductivity. As a result, there is an accelerating effort by both materials firms and research groups that can meet or beat the performance of ITO as a transparent conductor, but at lower costs and with more physical resilience than ITO can offer.

During 2008, NanoMarkets published a report on the future of the ITO market, which was one of our best received reports to date. This report continues in this tradition and focuses on important new developments that have occurred over the past year.

There have been significant changes in end user markets since NanoMarkets previous ITO report was published. The worries about the ITO market being hit by Indium priced at $10,000 per kilo have dispersed as commodity prices have fallen. The display industry into which so much ITO is sold is suffering as the result of the financial meltdown and two of the remaining growth sectors within displays - flexible displays and touch screen displays - just happen to be areas where ITO use faces some of its biggest challenges. Meanwhile, OLED lighting and thin-film photovoltaics, two other technologies that have seen considerable commercial progress in the past year, should be natural opportunities for ITO, but in many cases applications developers in these areas are actively looking for alternatives to ITO.

With all this in mind, this report gives an up-to-date analysis of how the alternatives to "ITO classic" are succeeding in the marketplace. We survey the current role of other transparent conductive oxides, with special attention being given to zinc oxide a material that is rapidly rising to prominence for electronics applications. We also review the role that conductive polymers are and will have as an ITO replacement. And in this report we give much fuller account of the future role of nanomaterials and exotic composites as ITO substitutes. We believe that this is especially important because nano-engineered materials hold out the best prospects for a transparent conductor that can surpass ITO, not just in terms of its physical characteristics and price, but also in terms of transparency and conductivity.

In examining these newer materials we pay special attention in this report to current and expected performance, taking into consideration the high level of development work going on in this field. We also analyze the impact for ITO and its substitutes in the latest thin-film manufacturing techniques, given special attention to low-thermal and solution processing approaches such as printing and sol-gel.

This report also discusses strategic marketing issues and it includes both short and longer term forecasts of the various types of ITO materials and ITO alternatives. The report also profiles the latest activities of leading companies and labs working in this field. The study will be of vital interest to firms in the ITO industry itself, as well as firms with new or existing materials that can serve as ITO replacements. Indeed, any business that manufactures, uses or invests in transparent conductors will find much to interest them in this report.