Conductive Inks

The automotive industry has emerged as a significant market opportunity for suppliers of conductive pastes and similar materials. It has the potential to one day rival in significance the irreplaceable photovoltaic market. Almost every major paste supplier with a global profile is re-organising its team and its product portfolio to capture this rising trend.

Conductive inks are a wonderfully adaptive technology. This characteristic has enabled them to stay relevant and to rejuvenate themselves over the past several decades. This is because as old markets have struggled or declined the technology has managed to find and/or create new uses. Several years ago, a new frontier called in-mold electronics (or IME) started to emerge. This frontier, as reported in the IDTechEx Research report Conductive Ink Markets 2018-2028: Forecasts, Technologies, Players, is once again becoming commercial.

A major frontier in the conductive ink business is conformal coating on 3D-shaped objects. For the purposes of this article, we will divide this into two categories: aerosol-deposited 3D-shaped antennas and conformal on-chip EMI shielding.

CNTs have been making a quiet comeback and have now indeed entered a phase of volume growth, as analysed in the new IDTechEx report Graphene, 2D Materials and Carbon Nanotubes: Markets, Technologies and Opportunities 2018-2028.

In this article, we will review the latest developments on core existing as well as nascent emerging applications.

The new report by IDTechEx, Conductive Ink Markets 2018-2028, provides the most comprehensive and authoritative view of the conductive inks and paste market.

The Voltera V-One creates prototype circuit boards on your desk.

China has already once completely transformed the photovoltaic (PV) industry and maybe about to do so again.

This new report by IDTechEx 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.

IDTechEx Research has been closely following the ITO alternative market for the past five years. It forecasts that ITO alternative solutions will reach more than $250m by 2026. In this article, IDTechEx Research brings you an update on conductive ink-based metal mesh films.