May 6 2005
According to a new report from NanoMarkets LC, a market research and consulting firm based here, the unique electrical, thermal and physical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) will create $3.6 billion in new business for the electronics and semiconductor sectors by 2009. NanoMarkets' research indicates that carbon nanotubes are already becoming a key enabling technology that electronics firms should not dismiss as being a long way off.
The report, "Carbon Nanotube Electronics, A Technology Analysis and Eight-Year Market Forecast," says that the biggest near-term opportunities for "nanotube electronics" will come from the sensor, display and memory sectors. Each of these markets will include more than $200 million in CNT-based products by 2007:
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Nanotubes are already being used to produce tiny sensors, potentially capable of distinguishing a single molecule. This could make nanotubes the material of choice for the highly sensitive sensors required for medical and homeland security applications. The low power consumption of nanotube sensors also makes them ideal choice for battery-powered sensor networks.
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Nanotube-based field emission displays combine the high-quality video of CRTs with the flatness of LCD and plasma displays, but without the burn-in and poor viewing angles associated with today's flat-panel displays. Samsung will release its CNT-driven television in 2006. Other large electronics firms that are developing such displays include Hitachi, Sony, Mitsubishi and Toshiba.
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Nanotube-based memories will combine the speed of SRAM with the non- volatility of Flash, which should allow them to quickly penetrate the laptop, mobile phone and PDA markets. NanoMarkets believes this market could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
NanoMarkets also notes that CNT-based interconnects and thermal management could help provide CMOS with a much needed enabling technology as it moves to 45-nm and 22-nm nodes. Nanotube-based logic, processors, interconnects and thermal management solutions are already the subject of intense research by IBM, Intel and NEC which believe that their work in this field will help CMOS scale to smaller feature sizes.
This report provides eight-year growth projections broken out by product type and application. These projections are based on market surveys as well as NanoMarkets' forecasting model for the emerging nanoelectronics sector. The report is designed to provide critical information for firms involved in the electronics industry and their materials and device suppliers.
Members of the accredited technical press may request an executive summary by emailing to [email protected]. The report is available in both hard copy and electronic versions with site licenses available.
http://www.nanomarkets.net/
6th May 20005