'Silicon Revolution' Market To Reach $2.5 Billion

Silicon nanocrystals and printed forms of silicon will transform electronics over the next decade with new memory, logic, photovoltaic and optoelectronic products, according to a new report from research firm NanoMarkets. The market is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2015. This "silicon revolution" will bring the semiconductor industry's experience with manufacturing silicon devices to bear on flexible and large electronics for the first time, posing a challenge to the current silicon alternative — organic materials. It will also provide new ways to scale semiconductor products made from traditional materials that are less effective beyond the 45nm node. The new silicon technologies will have an impact on RFID, display chips, memory chips, and solar panels, among other technologies. Printed silicon is expected to bring new levels of functionality and performance to printed RFID and display backplanes. Sales of printed silicon thin film transistor products are expected to reach $1.9 billion by 2015. The market for inks and other nanocrystalline materials to print these electronics is estimated to reach $529 million by that time. Memory devices made with nanocrystalline silicon floating gates will be half the size of conventional flash memories, use less power and cost less, creating a market of $260 million by 2015, according to the report. Silicon nanocrystals could also be used in a new generation of optical memories that could enable faster next-generation optical networks. NanoMarkets also expects that solar panels created using nanocrystalline silicon will be more efficient than current photovoltaic cells, raking in revenues of about $245 million.