Printed and flexible electronics market to reach $1bn

The printed and flexible electronics market will reach close to US$1bn by 2020, estimates Yole Développement.

Yole’s Flexible Applications Based on Printed Electronics Technologies 2013 report provides up-to-date market forecast 2013-2020, roadmaps and timelines for printed, flexible, and printed and flexible applications. Also, it analyses the function versus flexibility, current technical and economic challenges, manufacturing process and focuses on polytronics.

The team of analysts believe over the next several years, the number of applications using printing processes for flexible electronics will grow. “We estimate the printed and flexible electronics market will grow from $176m in 2013 to $950m in 2020 with a 27% CAGR in market value. Printed OLED displays for large size TVs are likely to become the largest market,” explains Dr Eric Mounier, Senior Analyst, MEMS Devices & Technologies, at Yole Développement.

For OLED lighting, Yole Développement believes it will grow but remain a niche market for automotive and/or office lighting. For PV, the market demand by 2020 will remain very low compared to the demand for rigid PV, largely below 1% of the global market demand by 2020. Sensor, smart system and polytronic applications will include sensors, touchless/touch screens, RFID applications.

In its report, Yole Développement has identified and tracked the five main functionalities of flexible and printed electronics: displaying, sensing, lighting, energy generating and substrates. The different degrees of freedom in flexibility that can be obtained can be divided into:

• Conformable substrate: the flexible substrate will be shaped in a definitive way after processing.
• Bendable substrate: they can be rolled and bent many times (even if we consider it will not be a key feature coming from customer needs).
• Unused flexibility: in the end, the flexibility is not an added value to the customer.

Yole Développement’s analysts believe some applications will be more likely than others to be successful - for example, bendable applications will undergo tough stress during use and technological challenges will be hard to overcome. Yole Développement does not make the distinction in its report between organic and inorganic substrates as semiconductors can also be used as flexible substrates.