Cambrios, as a leading manufacturer in the silver nanowire industry, the change of its shipment volume can certainly reflect the development trend of the industry, but what really makes Zhong Qin feel the future opportunities of the industry are two opportunities:
1. In the case that domestic manufacturers such as BOE and Huaxing Optoelectronic began to mass-produce 10.5 generation panels, the prices of large-size panels such as 65-inch and 86-inch panels continued to fall, and the electronic whiteboard markets such as education and business display gradually grew, and the nano-silver wire technology was widely used for business by virtue of its advantages;
2. The appearance of folding screen mobile phone products last year opened another huge application scene of nano-silver wire technology. The excellent folding performance of nano-silver wire naturally adapts to folding screen related electronic products.
In Xiao's view, the changes of the above two factors will support 20 19 to become the first year of real silver nanowire technology development.
Of course, nothing is absolute. Even if the opportunity is just around the corner, if nano-silver wires want to be commercialized in large quantities, they still have to face the competition from traditional ITO films and new power metal grids.
What is a nano silver wire?
The data show that nano-silver wire refers to a one-dimensional silver metal material with a length of micron and a diameter of nanometer, and its length-diameter ratio can reach more than 1000. Generally speaking, the longer the length, the smaller the diameter, the higher the transmittance and the smaller the resistance of silver nanowires.
Nano-silver wires have a good application prospect in optics (solar energy, etc.). ), conductive (LED, touch screen, etc. ), chemical engineering, thermal engineering and other application fields. At present, the most mature application is the transparent conductive film of nano-silver wire.
Transparent conductive film of nano-silver wire is a kind of conductive film made of countless nano-silver wires and suitable organic crosslinking agent on flexible substrate. Compared with the traditional transparent conductive film deposited on ITO and other hard materials, the transparent conductive film prepared on organic flexible substrate has better light transmittance, conductivity and flexibility.
From the industrial chain of nano-silver wire conductive film, the upstream is commonly used basic chemical raw materials such as silver nitrate, ethylene glycol and polyvinylpyrrolidone, the midstream is nano-silver wire paste/ink and nano-silver wire conductive film, and the downstream is touch screen, flexible organic light-emitting diode, solar cell and smart window film.
The core of the industrial chain lies in the preparation of nano-silver wire paste/ink and the production of nano-silver wire transparent conductive film. The former involves raw material formula and processing technology, while the latter involves equipment and technology.
When talking about the competition with ITO film, Zhong Qin believes that "the development of nano-silver wire technology is not to completely replace ITO film technology, and the two technologies may coexist for a long time. The touch screen application under nano-silver technology will gradually divide the market share of ITO film, just like the process in which ITO film products gradually occupy the LCD screen share."
In fact, compared with the traditional ITO film, the biggest competitor of nano-silver wire technology in the future may come from the metal grid that can also be applied to folding screen products.
In this regard, Xiao has a clear understanding. "In the past, when Cambrios evaluated the metal mesh, its folding times and stretching times were not as good as those of silver nanoparticles. However, with the development of technology, the progress of metal grid has also been rapid in recent years, and some folding screen products even consider adopting metal grid technology. "
However, competition makes progress!
Zhong Qin Jr. thinks that the competition between nano-silver wire and metal grid is not enough. More resources need to be invested in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain to give terminal manufacturers more choices, so it is possible to compete with metal grid in the field of folding screen.
Open cooperation promotes development.
However, it is not easy to twist the whole industrial chain into a rope and let it play a role in one place.
To this end, as a leading manufacturer in the industry, Cambrios is bound to do its part. In addition to holding regular technical exchange forums for the nano-silver wire industry, Zhong Qin Jr. said that he would also promote the rapid development of the industry from the following aspects.
First of all, it is to establish an industrial alliance of nano-silver wires. The alliance is composed of related enterprises in the upstream and downstream of nano-silver wire, which has formed great synergy and influence in this field, and established a communication channel for the industrial chain of nano-silver wire, which not only brings new customers, markets and information to member enterprises, but also helps enterprises to focus on the development of core business.
Second, open patent cooperation. For a long time, Cambrios has a large number of core invention patents in the field of nano-silver wires, which has raised the threshold for other manufacturers to enter this field to some extent and indirectly hindered the development of the industry.
Cambrios also recognized this problem, so two years ago, it began to license some patents to other manufacturers in the industry for product development. Zhong Qin Jr. said that in the future, Cambrios will also reasonably evaluate the licensing fees, continue to open patent licensing, further promote industrial development, and make participating manufacturers win-win.
Finally, it is to continue to improve the technical development of nano-silver wires. Although nano-silver wire technology has many advantages, it has not been generally accepted and adopted by the industry, and it is not without reason.
According to the introduction, the development of silver nano-wire technology has been plagued by problems such as thinner and thinner silver wire, silver ion migration and photooxidation, but in fact these problems have been solved with the efforts of technicians.
In fact, the biggest problem before is that downstream manufacturers need to replace production equipment and production lines if they use nano-silver wire technology to produce touch screens and other products, which is an increase in production costs for downstream manufacturers, so downstream customers are not active enough.
Therefore, Cambrios has developed the latest copper nano-silver membrane technology, which enables downstream customers to directly produce related products without changing equipment, which will greatly reduce customer costs, improve customer adoption rate and promote the popularization of nano-silver wire technology.
These are all measures to promote the technical development of nano-silver wire materials. In the future, there is still a long way to go for nano-silver wires to compete with ITO films and metal grids.
However, with the rapid development of industry and the continuous iteration of technology, nano-silver wires will surely set off a new round of material revolution.