Market for organic electronics materials is growing

Printable organic electronics will not supplant silicon, but its success in many niche applications will drive a burgeoning materials market, according to suppliers

Discuss the opportunities for organic electronics at ICIS connect

Clay Boswell/New York

ORGANIC electronics may not have taken off as quickly as early proponents had hoped. But their primary appeal – low-cost, high-volume production – continues to beckon. Germany’s BASF, Merck KGaA and H.C. Starck Swiss-headquartered Ciba Specialty Chemicals Plextronics and DuPont, both US Japan’s Mitsui and Sumitomo, Belgium-based Solvay and other chemical companies are actively positioning to supply a materials market that is growing rapidly into one worth billions of dollars.

For now, that market is a niche. Sales last year totaled just under $500m (€319m), according to Organic Harvest: Opportunities in Organic Electronic Materials Markets, a recent study by Nanomarkets. The Virginia, US-based market research firm expects consumption to rise steeply, however, to $1bn in 2010 and soaring to $16bn in 2015.

Displays based on organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) currently account for the greatest share of sales. Nanomarkets expects the 25-30 companies manufacturing them to consume $309m in organic electronic materials this year, and the volume will increase with consumer demand for OLED displays, which could be worth $2.5bn by 2015.

The dominance of displays will not last, though. Nanomarkets sees demand for OLED lighting, now a small market worth under $50m, blossoming in the years ahead to reach $6.4bn in 2015. Demand for materials will rise accordingly and, altogether, OLED displays and lighting are expected to consume $4.4bn in materials that year.

Other applications, including organic thin film transistors, sensors and photovoltaics, will also make a growing contribution to the market for organic electronic materials.

THE PROMISE OF PRINTING

Printability is the property chiefly responsible for the excitement surrounding organic electronics.

Silicon-based electronics are typically produced by photolithography, a complex, costly process that entails repeated cycles of deposition, removal and etching to gradually build layer upon layer of microcircuitry onto rigid wafers of polysilicon. The manufacturing equipment is expensive, and fabrication facilities cost billions of dollars to build.

Organic electronics, on the other hand, are based on polymers and small molecules that can – theoretically – be formulated as inks and printed on virtually any substrate, including flexible materials such as plastics and even paper. Masking, essential to silicon photolithography, is non-existent or inexpensive, throughput is high, and printing technology is well understood and widely available.

Just about any kind of printing can be – and has been – employed, the most important being the screen, ink-jet and flexographic types.

Unfortunately, the potential of printability has barely been tapped. For example, 90% of OLEDs, by far the most important application of organic electronics at the moment, are produced by vapor deposition of small molecules.

“There is a need for new and better inks that will support organic electronics within the context of functional printing, or at least for useful coating processes, such as spin coating,” states Nanomarkets.

Two other issues – performance and environmental stability – also need to be addressed, says the research firm.

Compared to silicon, the performance of organic electronics is mediocre. The industry needs materials, designs and fabrication technologies that yield better mobilities, switching speeds, and other key performance characteristics.

Additionally, the materials used in organic electronics are sensitive to water exposure and high temperature. Encapsulation and other barrier treatments exist to deal with the problem, but they need improvement.

According to Nanomarkets, only a small number of conductive materials have been used in practical organic electronics – mainly pentacene, poly(3-alkylthiophene), poly(3-hexylthiophene), polyaniline and poly(ethylenedioxythiophene – PEDOT).

An emergent technology with strong prospects but important shortcomings, organic electronics presents an attractive opportunity for innovative, technology-driven developers of materials.

WORKING TOGETHER

Finding solutions for the organic electronics market tends to be a collaborative effort.

“We strongly believe in cooperative development with our customers, as know-how from all parties will be required to overcome the challenges still faced by the industry,” says Karl Hahn, senior vice president and spokesman for organic electronics at BASF.

The German chemical giant is working on OLEDs with industry partners such as Philips of the Netherlands and Osram of Germany, and on organic photovoltaics (OPVs) with Bosch, also German. BASF and Bosch have both invested in a Dresden-based start-up, Heliatek, which is working on a “highly efficient” technology to build large-scale OPV modules on cheap, flexible substrates using a roll-to-roll printing process.

BASF also has cooperation agreements for developing advanced materials with Rieke Metals and Polyera, both US.

“One of our core competencies is the development of organic colorants providing an excellent base for the development of electro-optical active organic semiconducting materials, which can be employed in OLEDs and OPVs,” says Hahn.

BASF’s printed electronics activities include supplying both p and n-type semiconductors, as well as dielectric materials. The portfolio includes both small molecules and polymers.

“Our material set is unique in its applicability for complementary transistor logic, and hence we put some focus on transistor applications,” says Hahn. The materials are also used in the OPV and sensor areas.

In OLEDs, BASF is developing active organic materials to enhance efficiency and prolong service life. For example, the company is working on phosphorescent emitter materials, particularly blue, including tailored complementary materials such as host charge transporters and blocker materials.

Ciba Specialty Chemicals is building its position on historical expertise in photoinitiators and light management. The company recently introduced XYMARA Electra, a range of conductive inks for radio frequency identification antennas, packaging and graphic arts applications.

“Ciba’s conductive inks allow circuits to be put onto any surface they can be printed on, greatly improving process design and flexibility,” says Werner Kaufmann, head of research, Ciba Coating Effects, Nafta. The inks can be applied at high speeds and with superior line definition and resolution.

“The first generation of inks has been designed for rotary screen and flat bed screen printing inks for other printing methods are in preparation,” he adds.

Ciba is collaborating with German-based Novaled on the development of phosphorescent emitters, transport layers and host materials for OLEDs. And last month, the company announced a medium to long-term cooperation agreement in printed electronics with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

“The agreement accelerates Ciba’s and VTT’s research collaboration in printed organic electronics, and expands it to new printable functionalities in high-volume packaging and diagnostics applications,” says Kaufmann. “The cooperation involves product development, mutual IPR [intellectual property rights] licensing, and other joint technology commercialization efforts.”

H.C. Starck, which German chemical giant Bayer divested in 2006 for €1.2bn ($1.9bn), is one of the pioneers of organic electronics, having invented PEDOT:PSS, a widely used dispersion of PEDOT and poly(styrenesulfonate), in the 1980s.

Formerly sold as Baytron, H.C. Starck’s range of PEDOT-related materials now go under the name Clevios, which is used in capacitors, printed wiring boards and silk-screen-printed transparent electrodes. OLEDs and OPVs are other applications.

A growing opportunity for the material is the replacement of indium tin oxide in transparent and flexible displays, says Ron Lubianez, manager, sales and marketing at H.C. Starck. The cost of indium has been on the rise, he explains.

Clevios is also competitive as an organic semiconductor in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), or as a conductive polymer in OFETs based on pentacene.

“Growth in the market is strong, and we’re very well positioned to take advantage of it,” says Lubianez.

Jim Dietz, vice president of business development at Plextronics, strikes a similar note.

“It’s fair to say that the industry is emerging from its incubation stage as more and more entrants appear across the supply chain,” says Dietz. “This increase in investment will help drive new breakthroughs in materials and process improvements.”

Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Plextronics was founded six years ago to commercialize discoveries made at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. The company supplies organic semiconductive and conductive polymers, as well as inks formulated from them, targeting OPVs, OLEDs and OFETs.

“Our most recent product launch offers an ink system of such polymers to provide the highest level of reproducible efficiencies for organic photovoltaic cells,” says Dietz.

The company has partnered with Solvay, and it also has a joint venture in Korea with Korea Parts & Fasteners.

The market for organic electronics materials is on the verge of “explosive growth,” Dietz observes.

“There are many fundamental materials challenges to be solved related to driving device performance,” he adds. “It’s not too early to define the standards for quality control that allow the industry to ramp up with good, high yield.”

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