< Key Hightlight >
This report is based upon years of research. In the past eight years alone, our analysts have interviewed more than 150 industry players, visited numerous users/suppliers across the world, attended more than 35 relevant conferences/exhibitions globally, and worked with many industry players to help them with their strategy towards this market. Prior to this, our analysts played an active role in commercializing conductive pastes, particularly in the photovoltaic industry.
In parallel to this, IDTechEx has organised the leading global conferences and tradeshows on printed electronics for the past decade in Asia, Europe and the USA. These shows bring together the entire value chain on printed electronics, including all the conductive ink suppliers, printers, and end users. This has given us unrivalled access to the players and the latest market intelligence.
What does this report cover?
This report provides the most comprehensive and authoritative view of the conductive inks and paste market, giving detailed ten-year market forecasts segmented by application and material type. The market forecasts are given in tonnage and value at the ink level.
It includes critical reviews of all the competing conductive inks and paste technologies including firing-type pastes, sintering pastes, PTFs, laser-cut or photo-patterned pastes, nanoparticles, stretchable inks, In-Mold inks, copper, copper/silver alloys, nanocarbons, and more. Here, we outline the latest performance levels/progress, technology challenges, key suppliers, existing and emerging target market, and forecasts where appropriate.
It also provides a detailed assessment of more than 30 application sectors. Here, we analyse the market needs/requirements, discuss the business dynamics, market leadership and technology change trends, competing solutions, latest product/prototype launches, key players and market forecasts in tonnes and value.
The markets covered include 5G, automotive (sensors, electronics, heaters, etc.), photovoltaics, power electronics, package-level EMI shielding, In-Mold Electronics, electronic textile and wearable electronics, skin patches, RFID, flexible hybrid electronics (FHE), printed sensors (piezoresistive, capacitive, piezoelectric, other), 3D antennas and conformal printing, touch screen edge electrodes, heating, hybrid or fully-printed metal mesh (transparent electrodes, heaters, or antennas), printed PCBs (DIY/hobbyist, professional, seed-and-plate), printed TFT and memory, OLED and large-area LED lighting, flexible e-readers and reflective displays, large-area heaters (battery, plant, seat, etc.), conductive pens, digitizers and more.
In the report we also cover more than 130 companies. For most, we provide insights based on primary intelligence obtained through interviews, visits, conference exhibition interactions, personal communications, and so on.
Market overview (2020-2030)
In this section we provide a review of select markets. To learn more about the rest or for further details please see the report itself.
• 5G: We are receiving many enquiries about conductive ink opportunity in 5G. There are several interesting opportunities here. First lies in the filter technology. Current filter technologies will need to stretch to meet requirements in sub-6GHz 5G and will fall short on mmwave 5G. A range of candidates are emerging such as microstrip on PCB or ceramic as well as multilayer LTCC filters. The latter offers reasonable filter properties at mmwave whilst maintaining a small footprint, which is vital for mmwave 5G implementation where large closely spaced antenna lattices will be used to increase gain and to beam form. It is early days but multilayer LTCC seems a potential front-runner candidate if tight tolerance can be achieved at high volume production. This would translate into significant paste opportunity.
Another important opportunity lies in highly thermally conductive die attach pastes, e.g., metal sinter or highly loaded epoxies. RF GaN power amplifiers (PAs) are likely to rise as current LDMOS technology will struggle at the required frequencies, even at sub-6GHz 5G. This trend will continue until the point where antenna arrays are large enough to allow Si-based technologies in. GaN is often attached using gold-based solders, i.e., AuSn, but sinter die attach or metal (e.g., Ag) filled epoxies can achieve excellent results at lower cost. Indeed, leading manufacturers have already qualified such AnSu alternative technologies. As such, this is a growth opportunity.
There are of course further opportunities. In particular, minimizing transmission loss at high frequencies calls for both low-loss materials and minimization of distances. To realize the latter, more functions are likely to be integrated within a package. This will boost the need for conformal EMI shielding and in-package compartmentalization. Spray- and inkjet-based approaches are emerging to unseat sputtering.
• Automotive: The automotive sector has emerged as an important target market for conductive ink suppliers. The traditional applications include printed defrosters especially on rear-windows. This has been a mature and notable business. A key trend here is to implement transparent and efficient larger-area heating to eliminate the visible defroster lines. Here, printed metal mesh is an excellent candidate, and is already advancing through the qualification process. Furthermore, transparent heating can have other applications, especially in defrosting of perception sensors used in highly-automated and autonomous driving, e.g., cameras or lidar.
Furthermore, seat heaters are also a notable market with ample upside growth opportunity. Printed heating can further expand within the interior of vehicles. Printed occupancy seat sensors and other printed sensors are also existing opportunity with strong potential upsides.
• Electric vehicles and power electronics: Furthermore, the emergence of electric vehicles is a growth opportunity. Printers are developing large-area battery pack heaters to help regulate battery temperatures, especially in cold environments. Importantly, metal sintering die attach pastes have already been commercialized in the EV power electronics. This trend will continue rapidly as higher power densities, partly boosted by the growing transition to wideband semiconductors, pushes the operating temperatures beyond the capabilities of many solders. Indeed, the competition here is intense and many metal sintering material supplies are innovating to offer drop-in form factors, lower sintering time, pressure-less sintering, higher thermal conductivity, etc. This is an interesting space which is analysed in great detail in the report.
There are of course other opportunities in vehicles. In-Mold Electronics (IME) is being used to develop both interior and exterior parts, but we will cover IME in a subsequent article. LTCC (low-temperature-cofired-ceramics) has long been a commonplace board technology especially for the ECU, gear control, ABS controller, steer by wire, etc. Last but not the least, there can be niche opportunities in electrochromic glass, even in battery EMI shielding, etc.
Forecasts excluding PV
• Electronic Packaging and conformal metallization: There are multiple aspects to this trend. Aerosol printing had gained some popularity in mobile phone direct-on-part antenna production and similar. This opened a market for mono-disperse nanoparticles. The rise of 5G will likely put such designs at risk. Furthermore, some products have reached end of cycle. As such, the defining question will be whether aerosol can find new applications beyond mobile phone antennas.
Conformal EMI shielding is a megatrend which will accelerate in the coming years. Here, we see a transition from low-cost but bulky lid-based board-level shielding to thin conformal package-level shielding. This trend is not exactly new and one of the early adopters was the application processor on the 2015 Apple watch. Many components today in mobile phones have conformal EMI shielding. In general, the most common elements are WiFi, Bluetooth and other RF front end modules. Conformal coating on NAND memories is rarer but increasing.
Sputtering is the well-entrenched processes here. It benefits from being proven and from sunk capex investment. It, however, may not have the highest unit per hour (UPH) rate given that sputtering rates will need to be slowed to achieve good adhesion to the epoxy molding compounds. This approach uses a SUS-Cu-SUS structure and is thus light on bill of materials. Instead, it is heavy on machinery costs as multiple sputtering tools will be needed.
Multiple ink-based alternatives are now emerging. Spraying is one option. Here, the process is non-vacuum. The ink composition and particle morphology do matter. The thicknesses here are 3-6um and good side and top thickness uniformity is obtained. The ink-jet based approach is novel. It uses particle-free inks activated by light exposure. Here, there will be no nozzle clogging. The suppliers are suggesting that they can achieve sufficient shielding at just 1-2um thickness with UHP reaching 12k on 10mm2 packages. In both approaches, Capex is low, making the technology accessible to all manners of OSATs and to lower value ICs and applications. This can, in the longer term, boost volumes.
In general, ink-based approaches can only partly conformably cover the package, leaving some areas unexposed. Furthermore, jetting can also be used to fill in trenches created to isolate parts within a package, leading to in-package compartmentalization. This is a critical attribute especially when antenna-in-package designs, important for 5G, are considered.
• Photovoltaics: This remains the largest market worldwide for firing-type pastes. This is an irreplaceable market volume-wise. Indeed, the PV market has been roaring ahead since 2014, more than doubling in size. Indeed, global installations are expected to have exceed 114GW in 2019. This is not an easy market for paste or powder suppliers, however. Here, price pressures are immense and performance advantages temporary and short-lived. Only those with large and well-established production lines can participate.
Non silicon wafer-based PV technology are now confined to very small niches in the market. These, nonetheless, represent important sales opportunity especially in forming the electrodes. This opportunity extends mainly to thin and highly conductive lines which cured at low temperatures. Such requirements match well with what nanoparticle inks seek to offer.
• Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE): This emerging technology frontier allows printed electronics to be combined with, or hybridized with, rigid ICs and electronics, thus marrying the best of both worlds. Indeed, a limiting factor thus far for printed electronics has been that many components such as logic and memory are either non-existing and don't come close to matching the cost and performance of non-printed technologies.
FHE is of course not straightforward to implement. Thinned ICs are being developed to enable flexibility. Novel attachment techniques such as low-T solder or photonic sintering are being developed to enable the transition from the expensive PI to the low-cost and low-temperature PET. At the first instance, digital printing is likely to be employed, cutting turnaround times, allowing customization, and producing limited units. In the longer run, high-throughput roll-to-roll techniques will be required. This will require innovation on rapid pick-and-place on a roll able to handle thin ICs. This is indeed a major innovation opportunity.
All in all, in the long term, this technology will enable flexible, complex, and relatively large circuits to be rapidly produced. Imagine the multi-billion-unit RFID business but imagine more complex and larger area circuit lines as well as larger and more powerful ICs. This is the long-term transition.
Conductive inks will play a central role here. Rapid sinter/cure technologies will be needed to enable high-throughput production. Low-cost is also essential. To address this, new copper formulations are being offered that seek overcome the cost/performance trade-offs and to enable simple and rapid sintering. Narrow linewidth and high-throughput printing will also be needed to support complex ICs with many closely spaced I/O pins. This will be an increasingly important area. At first, the industry will be led by many well-funded research centres. However, the transition to commercial production will soon take place in earnest.
• In-Mold Electronics: In-Mold Electronics is projected to exceed $1Bn by 2029 at the product level across automotive, consumer goods, wearables, and home appliance applications. The progress will start with smaller and simpler devices launching in areas where reliability and product lifetime requirements are more relaxed. It will then transition into more challenging markets. In other words, this time around, the industry will probably learn to walk before it runs. We expect the automotive market to adopt IME product starting from the 2022-2023 period.
IME is no longer a young field. The first products were launched more than five years ago. Conductive ink innovations have played a key role in enabling this method. Today, many inks are available. Suppliers are seeking to bridge the conductivity gap with standard conductive inks, to improve reliability individually and as part of a stack, and to extend the limits of stretchability. The innovations are mainly on the formulation step and the powder requirements are rather relaxed. The product development works have been undergoing as such the early pioneers are well placed to reap the rewards when the first generation of products launches. Once the requirements become more standard more suppliers can enter the business.
• Skin Patches: This is already a major business. Indeed, IDTechEx estimates that skin patches generated $7.5Bn in 2018 and forecasts this to rise to over $20Bn by 2029. Several skin patch product areas, particularly in diabetes management and cardiovascular monitoring, have superseded incumbent options in established markets to create billions of dollars of new revenue each year for the companies at the forefront of this wave.
Whilst many people may imagine skin patches to be thin, highly conformable devices that sit close to the skin, the reality is that many of the most successful products today are still bulky devices. Future developments utilising flexible, stretchable and conformal electronic components seek to change this. This is important because skin patches offer continuous monitoring and are thus worn for extended period. As such, convenience is critical. Furthermore, stretchable electronics can allow more and/or longer electrodes to be integrated without compromising user comfort, boosting the locations the skin patch can sense.
Conductive inks are an enabling component of this long-term trend. Indeed, already fully or partly printed skin patches are commercially launched in cardiovascular, diabetic foot, temperature, respiration, blood oximetry, and humidity/moisture monitoring as well as muscle simulation and sensing. The printed element almost invariably includes conductive inks. The ink requirements here often extend beyond stretchability and include, for example, the ability to withstand harsh hydrogels, high conductivity to pick up weak signals, adhesion to stretchable substrates, and so on. Early close engagement with this field will bear fruits.
• E-Textiles: This market is already expected to exceed $100M in 2020 across all application sectors at the textile level. The snapshot of the e-textile application readiness levels shows a robust pipeline. Applications such as elite sports biometric (chest straps or apparel), heated clothing, illuminated apparel, high-fashion e-textile apparel, carpet pressure sensors and similar extend from the early commercial sales to full market penetration. There are also many applications at early development phases, rendering the pipeline deep and robust.
Despite all these, there are many challenges. There is a lack of standards or even clearly defined product requirements. The supply chain is immature although efficiency is improving with co-located manufacturing. Critically, most works are in small volumes, which allows the small firms or project teams to survive. However, there are still only few consistent success stories demonstrating volume manufacturing. These challenges are not however showstoppers.
The technology options for conductivity in e-textile are multiple, but stretchable conductive inks are beginning to find their space. They can be added post-production, thus requiring little change to the manufacturing process. The device shape and properties can also be better controlled than with fibre-based solutions. Furthermore, the inks can also offer more stretchability than many alternative solutions.
The ink performance has improved over years with the elongation-induced conductivity changes becoming much more supressed and predictable. The relationship between substrate/encapsulant properties and the inks are better known and optimized. A range of formulations now exist to address varying needs. The washability figures however also improved although this is largely dictated by the encapsulant.
Overall, the supplier numbers mushroomed around 2015/2017. These supplies have been seeding the market, exploring the applications, and painstakingly findings case where there is a business case and ruling out the rest. As such, the business is likely to grow, although sustaining the growth is not easy because one requires a robust and continuous application pipeline since consumption per part is low.
ConductiveUS$ 5,995