January 2012

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CIGS’ Achilles Heel: Lifetimes and Encapsulation

Lifetime and encapsulation are two factors that have slowed adoption of CIGS. These issues are now largely closed from a technology perspective, but remain open from a cost perspective

Is CIGS Ready for High Volume Manufacturing?

It is beginning to look like CIGS really is ready for high volume manufacturing.  Global Solar now has a 40 MW capacity plant operating in Tucson Arizona and a 35 MW capacity plant coming on line in Berlin Germany.  The Berlin plant has moved from one to two shifts per day and is planning to move to three shifts soon.  The flexible BIPV roofing modules made by Global Solar are both International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) certified.  Global Solar has recently announced multi-year, multi-megawatt agreements with ENERGYKA, ISCOM SPA, BA energy in Europe and Beachside Solar, Pfister Energy and Inovateus Solar in the US.

CIGS in a World of Reduced Subsidies and Economic Uncertainty

The value proposition of thin-film PV is clear.  If it can be executed at a price point that is competitive with coal and natural gas, it provides a competitive more environmentally friendly though variable source of electricity. While the current PV landscape is dominated by an oversupply of crystalline PV cells (crystalline PV module prices have fallen by 50% over the past eighteen months), the longer-term outlook for thin-film PV, and CIGS in particular, provides a compelling argument for this technology to be a significant factor in the PV landscape.

December 2011

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What Does the Decline of Plasma Displays and Rise of Flexible Displays and OLEDs Mean for Silver?

The market for silver inks and pastes in one important sector – plasma display panels (PDPs) – is almost certainly in a period of slow and steady decline.  We do not anticipate that this market will completely disappear, but it is facing serious challenges. The latest LCDs rival the performance of PDPs in almost every characteristic important to the consumer, and this means that PDPs are now competing primarily on price.

Will the Nanosilver Ink Revolution Ever Happen?

Will nanosilver ever become a major factor in the printed circuitry market? It has long been touted as having a big future in (currently nonexistent) novel “printed electronics” applications, but this has yet to be proven. The market pull for printed electronics has just never materialized in a meaningful way. Nanosilver ink makers have had a hard time of it as they have chased after new markets that do not really exist yet.

Printable nanosilver makers claim other seemingly compelling advantages over conventional silver inks and pastes, too. These include lower temperature processing and less usage precious silver. But nanosilver-based inks and pastes have been around for nearly a decade now, and they have yet to take off in the conventional printed silver markets.  What is behind the lack of progress?

November 2011

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OLED Lighting Material Trends

While OLED lighting is still in the early stages of commercialization with small-quantity production on pilot lines. But panel shipments for OLED lighting applications are expected to really ramp up starting around the 2014 – 2015 timeframe.  Observers of the OLED lighting industry, including NanoMarkets, have been projecting growth for a while now, but some recent developments are making those projections look more certain than ever:

Stable Niche Electronics Markets for Molybdenum Remain

The list of things that could go wrong in the emerging markets for molybdenum is sobering and becomes more so when one adds them to the list of products such as vacuum tubes and other products that used to use a lot of molybdenum but are no longer viable markets.  There are, however, a number of markets for molybdenum that fall within the general area of electronics that are stable and where modest growth can be expected.

Molybdenum as a Green Electronics Material?  Plenty of Work Left Still to Do

The sanguine view of the future of molybdenum as a green electronics material is attractive, not just as an underpinning for a serious marketing plan for molybdenum, but also as part of an image or business development plan for this metal.  However, it is important to consider the fact that there are many uncertainties in the assertions made above that produce considerable business risks for molybdenum suppliers of various kinds:

Molybdenum as a Basis for Green Electronics:  PV, Lighting and Smart Grids

One area where we see an important niche market evolving for molybdenum is in the solar panel market.  Molybdenum is already the material of choice for the back electrodes in CIGS solar panels and we see this use spreading to the CdTe-based photovoltaics sector if this sector begins to experiment with new cell architectures.  There are several reasons why molybdenum has been chosen in this sector; one is its strong ability to adhere to substrates and active layers.

October 2011

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Is Flexible BIPV a Market Opportunity for Flexible Glass?

The one area of the PV industry where suppliers and (hopefully) customers seem to care about flexibility is BIPV.  Flexible BIPV occupies just a very small share of the overall PV market at the present time, but appears to offer value propositions—and opportunities—that derive from its light weight, ease of installation, and conformability with building fabrics.

Also, as  with other BIPV products where there is a high level of integration between the PV functionality and the building product functionality, flexible PV provides more controlled aesthetics and the ability to allocate costs between categories of PV power production and architectural materials with considerable discretion.  This latter point is especially important, because, by spreading costs in this way, BIPV could exhibit much better economics than regular PV.  In the current business climate for the PV industry in which subsidies for PV are being challenged, this could be valuable.

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