12.16.09
IDTechEx Publishes Studies on Batteries, PE
IDTechEx has published “Batteries, Supercapacitors, Alternative Storage for Portable Devices 2009-2019,” a new report on the energy storage for portable devices that will be needed for a huge number of existing and new applications. Forecasts are given for both small batteries (single use vs. rechargeable) as well as for small supercapacitors for 2009-2019, in terms of both numbers and value. The many technologies are explained and compared and a technological roadmap is given for the next 10 years.
New Uses and Technologies to Serve Them
As the recession ends, IDTechEx sees rapid growth in sales of both small single-use batteries and rechargeable ones, and also for supercapacitors for small devices.
That results in a forecast of total demand for these devices of $95 billion in 2019, but is far from being an extrapolation of the past. The dominant market drivers will change. From 2014 onwards, there will be increasing demand from e-labels, e-packaging, e-posters, medical e-disposables such as diagnostics and drug delivery, e-apparel and use in energy harvesting devices and wireless sensor networks (WSN).
Such new products call for different forms of energy storage, such as wide area printed devices and biocompatible ones. Then there are single-use batteries that need to last for more than 20 years, and the increasing application of supercapacitors on batteries to compensate for their limitations. That leads to supercabatteries that combine the two constructions in one electrochemical cell.
IDTechEx has also recently released a study, “Business Applications for Printed Electronics.” According to the study’s author, Dr. Peter Harrop, chairman of IDTechEx, the commercialization of printed electronics (PE) has progressed from conductive patterns to batteries, displays, sensors, resistors, solar cells, lighting and transistor circuits, increasingly in combination.
Power Paper is making 12 million skin patches yearly that electrically deliver cosmetics through the skin. They consist of a printed battery and electrodes. Membrane keyboards for personal electronics have long been made in the hundreds of millions using printed silver, as have the RFID antennas of Checkpoint Systems and others. Fully printed electronics has appeared in the billions of battery testers made by Avery Dennison and sold on Duracell batteries. They employ printed resistors and conductors.
More recently, printed electrophoretic displays have sold in the form of e-books, and they were also used a few months ago in the 75th anniversary edition of Esquire magazine, but these applications involve conventional components as well. Now Plastic Logic has demonstrated such displays in e-books where even the transistor drive circuits are printed.
Eight companies print ac electroluminescent displays and lighting on flexible plastic film, some being several meters across. Kovio has trialed printed transistor circuits in train tickets. G24 innovations has recently made first deliveries from its UK reel to reel production of so-called dye sensitized solar cells and Nanosolar is building a factory in Berlin to print a different type of photovoltaics called CIGS. Promotional inserts made by Toppan Printing in Japan have partly printed electronics – they record and play back yet they are paper thin.Most of these devices employ inorganic electronic inks but some use organic ones; so many leading chemical companies are involved.
Because this is a potential market of hundreds of millions of dollars, major electronics, printing and packaging companies are preparing the devices. In 2009, several leading consumer goods companies have set up teams to explore how these new technologies can enhance brands in many ways. Packaging and promotional material that employs such moving images, sound and electronic enclosures as rewards and so on will make today’s versions look very tired indeed.
Consequently, venture capital continues to be available for this sector despite the recession, with companies like Somark Innovations (printed RFID), PolyPhotonix, Polymertronics and Novaled (all organic light emitting diode displays (OLEDs) all raising multi-million dollar sums this year.
For more information on these studies, contact Dr. Harrop through e-mail: p.harrop@IDTechEx.com; or the web: www.idetechex.com.