This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop efficient manufacturing of nanostructured flexible transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) with low resistivity and high durability. Flexible nanostructured TCEs will be produced by using the proprietary surface-embedding technology in flexible transparent polymers. It is anticipated to demonstrate superior flexibility, conductivity, and comparable transparency to the current technologies.
The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to provide a highly conductive and highly transparent conducting electrode that is flexible, durable, and inexpensive for applications in flexible thin-film photovoltaics (TFPVs). Existing TCEs, including other transparent conducting oxides, either are relatively inflexible and brittle, or if flexible, do not offer high conductivity and transparency, which has limited the adoption of many flexible TFPV technologies. Advances made through this project will have a significant long-term commercial impact by enabling the widespread adoption of flexible TFPVs.
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project by Innova Dynamics has been focusing on optimizing Innlay™-enabled high performance transparent conducting electrodes. Transparent conductors are materials that enable the simultaneous passage of light as well as electricity through them, and are thereby crucial materials in a variety of products such as displays, touchscreens, solar cells, and solar control glass. The current SBIR is qualifying Innlay™ transparent conductors as a superior replacement to Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) in liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Transparent conductors in LCDs are comprised of ITO, which suffers from a number of disadvantages, the largest being cost. Innlay™-enabled transparent conductors has shown high conductivity and transparency, high production throughput, compatibility with preexisting industrial coating processes, improved ruggedness, and completely tunable properties, all being a mere fraction of the cost of conventional materials. These novel transparent conductors are being incorporated into functional LCDs to investigate benefits, including higher brightness, faster response time, and enhanced size scalability of displays. Transparent conductors used in flat panel displays represent a $3 billion addressable market opportunity, projected to double in size by 2018. Today the material and processing costs of ITO represent a growing portion of the bill of materials for an overall display as downward price pressure forces manufacturers to cut costs as the price of ITO continues to rise. While this NSF SBIR focuses on meeting requirements set forth by LCD customers, the same lower-cost, higher performance, and higher production throughput benefits of Innlay™ enabled materials extend to broader applications, such as touchscreens, OLEDs, e-paper, flexible displays, thin film photovoltaics, low-emissivity architectural glass, and smart windows.
