The market for conductive polymers is expected to grow by almost 11% a year until 2017, reaching a market of $1.6 billion, according to a market research company.
The growing demand for high-performance, lightweight, and inexpensive products is driving the growth and potential for conductive polymers, reports Virtual-Strategy Magazine. Their dimensional stability, flexibility, and high temperature and chemical resistance and strength are in growing demand by manufacturers.
A member of the plastics materials family, conductive polymers are pliable, lightweight, and inexpensive plastics that conduct electricity. They are a type of shape-changing plastics that protrude, shrink, and bend when stimulated by electricity, the magazine says.
Conductive polymers could, in the long-term, be an alternative to silicon. Opportunities exist in display materials, chip packaging, plastic transistors, sensors, and ultracapacitors, says the report from Global Industry Analysts.
Increased use of radio-frequency ID tags is especially expected to grow in the medium term because a growing number of chipless tags are moving away from silicon-based microchips to conductive polymer chips. In the longer term, the photovoltaic industry will be a potentially lucrative market as performance and efficiencies are moving polymer solar cells closer to commercialization.
The telecommunications industry is expected to generate substantial demand for organic light-emitting diode (OLEDs) displays over the next few years. Conductive polymers, such as polypyrrole, polythiophene, and polyaniline, are increasingly preferred over conventional electrical conductive additives in making OLEDs, the report says.
Source: “The US Conductive Polymers Market to Reach US$1.6 Billion by 2017, According to a New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.,” PRWeb via Virtual-Strategy Magazine, 4/12/12
Image by meharris, used under its Creative Commons license.
Dale McGeehon has been a journalist and editor for more than 25 years, covering chemical regulation and testing for Pesticides and Toxic Chemical News and innovations in material sciences for the National Technology Transfer Center. His writing credits include Omni and College Park magazines and The New York Times.
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