smart windows materials markets 2015-2022

n-tech Research Report

Smart Windows Materials Markets

2015-2022

Issue date: July 2015

Report number: Nano-837

n-tech Research PO Box 3840 Glen Allen, VA 23058

Phone: 804-938-0030

Email: [email protected]


Phone: 804-938-0030 n-tech Research PO Box 3840 Glen Allen, VA 23058

Phone: 804-938-0030

Email: [email protected] Web: www.ntechresearch.com

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Smart Windows Materials Markets 2015-2022

Report Description

From the perspective of materials suppliers, n-tech believes that the smart windows

market continues to offer important opportunities. We are seeing older technologies—such as photochromics—become more competitive with the dominant

SPD and electrochromic materials and there are also entirely new materials such as hydrogels and versioned display materials that are beginning to play in the smart windows space. We are also impressed with the recent willingness of deep pocket

investors and other well-known firms to get involved in the smart windows space.

With these developments in mind, this report identifies and quantifies the opportunities in the smart windows materials space. It contains a granular eight-

year forecast in both volume and value terms as well as an assessment of the strategies being deployed in this market by notable firms. The

technologies/materials covered in this report include electrochromic, photochromic, hydrogel, thermochromic. PDLC, SPD, hydrogels, pixel-based technologies and microblinds.

The forecasts and analysis cover not only the active smart materials used in these

technologies, but also the substrate materials; both plastic and glass. We also examine changing manufacturing patterns within the smart windows sector. In

addition, this report analyzes a number of different business models being used in the smart windows sector and shows how materials play into the total smart windows value chain.

Under the name of NanoMarkets, n-tech has been covering the smart glass business for almost seven years and has therefore acquired a deep understanding of the dynamics of the smart windows sector and of materials selection within that

sector.



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Table of Contents

Executive Summary

E.1 Changes in Markets and Technologies Since Our Previous Report

E.1.1 New Technologies: Pixels and Hydrogels

E.1.2 Smarter Windows: Smart Windows Respond to Heat and Interface with Smart

Lighting

E.1.3 Improvements in Established Smart Windows Materials Platforms

E.1.4 Will Electrochromic Materials Win?

E.2 Opportunities for Technology/Materials Providers

E.3 Opportunities for Glass Companies?

E.4 Can Display Firms Make Money in Smart Windows?

E.5 Expectations for Investment in the Smart Windows Materials Space?

E.6 Eight Firms to Watch in the Smart Windows Materials Space

E.7 Summary of Eight-Year Forecasts for Smart Windows Materials

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Background to This Report

1.2 Objective and Scope of This Report

1.3 Methodology of this Report

1.3.1 Sources of Information

1.3.2 Forecasting Methodology

1.4 Plan of this Report

Chapter Two: Electrochromic Smart Windows

2.1 Evolution and Performance of Electrochromic Smart Windows

2.1.1 From the Labs: The Latest Developments in EC Glass and Film

2.2 Advantages of Electrochromic Glass and Film

2.2.1 Switching Speeds and How They Influence Materials Choice

2.3 Manufacturing Developments

2.4 Electrochromic Materials for Smart Windows

2.4.1 Transition Metal Oxides (TMOs)

2.4.2 Polymers

2.4.3 Reflective Hydride

2.4.4 Nanocrystals

2.4.5 Transparent Conductors

2.4.6 Glass versus Film Options

2.5 Products and Suppliers

2.5.1 Chromogenics

2.5.2 EControl-Glas

2.5.3 E-Chromic Technologies (United States)

2.5.4 Gentex

2.5.5 Gesimat



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2.5.6 Merck

2.5.7 Sage

2.5.8 US e-Chromic

2.5.9 View

2.6 Eight-Year Forecasts of Electrochromic Materials in Smart Windows

2.7 Key Points in this Chapter

Chapter Three: Photochromic and Hybrid Photochromic/ Electrochromic Smart Windows

3.1 Smart Photochromic Windows

3.1.1 Ability of Photochromic Materials to Provide a Platform for Smart Windows

3.2 Recent Developments in Photochromic Smart Windows R&D

3.3 The role of SWITCH Materials

3.3.1 Funding

3.3.2 Test Installations

3.4 Photochromic Films for the Automotive Aftermarket and Building Retrofit

3.5 Eight-Year Forecasts of Photochromic Materials in Smart Windows

3.5.1 Pure Photochromic Films

3.5.2 Photochromic/Electrochromic Hybrids

3.6 Key Points Made in this Chapter

Chapter Four: Thermochromic Materials for Smart Windows

4.1 Thermochromic Windows Technology: Current and Future

4.2 Main Materials Trends for Thermochromic Smart Windows

4.2.1 Suntek and Cloud Gel

4.2.2 Pleotint’s Materials Platform

4.2.3 RavenWindow Materials Platform

4.2.4 New R&D Trends: Nanotechnology and Other Improvements in Thermochromic

Windows

4.3 Eight-Year Forecasts of Thermochromic Materials in Smart Windows


Chapter Five: Suspended Particle Devices (SPD)

5.1 SPD: Advantages and Disadvantages

5.2 Role of Research Frontiers

5.2.1 Recent Business Developments at RFI

5.2.2 Manufacturing, R&D and SPD Products Offered

5.3 Market Development for SPD

5.4 Eight-Year Forecasts of SPD Materials in Smart Windows


Chapter Six: PDLC

6.1 Trends in PDLC R&D: Future Improvements



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6.1.1 The Privacy Glass Market and Beyond: PDLC’s Achilles Heel

6.1.2 Future Evolution of PDLC Technology

6.2 Scienstry and NPD-LCD

6.3 PDLC at Toray

6.4 Other Suppliers of PDLC Technology

6.5 Eight-Year Forecasts of PDLC Materials in Smart Windows


Chapter Seven: Emerging Materials Platforms for Smart Windows

7.1 Hydrogels for Smart Windows?

7.2 The Prospects for Electrophoretic Smart Windows?

7.2.1 A Savior for the e-Paper Industry

7.3 Micro-Blinds

7.3.1 Micro-Blinds: Concept, Materials and Technologies

7.3.2 The Commercial Future of Micro-Blinds


Chapter Eight: Summary of Eight-Year Forecasts of Smart Windows Materials

8.1 Summary of Eight-Year Market Forecast by Type of Smart Windows

Technology/Materials

8.2 Eight-Year Forecast by Substrate Technology

8.3 Eight-year Forecast of Smart Materials by Coating/Printing Technology

Related Reports

Smart Windows Markets: 2014-2021

Smart Windows Materials Markets: 2014-2021

Electrochromic Glass and Film Markets – 2014-2021

Smart Coatings Markets 2015-2022

http://ntechresearch.com/market_reports/smart-windows-markets-2014-2021

http://ntechresearch.com/market_reports/smart_windows_materials_markets_2014_2021

http://ntechresearch.com/market_reports/electrochromic-glass-and-film-markets-2014-2021

http://ntechresearch.com/market_reports/smart-coatings-markets-2015-2022



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Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Background to This Report

1.1.1 Feeling Comfortable with Smart Windows: The Market Begins

Until recently smart windows had all the signs of being a technology in search of a

market. It could be found in a few iconic products: high-end Mercedes cars, the Boeing

Dreamliner, and a few hundred prestige buildings around the world.

While several vendors have been in the smart windows business for well over a decade,

few if any have been able to boast significant revenues. Nonetheless, “A List”

companies, such as Corning, GE, Saint-Gobain and Bayer, have all invested in the

smart windows space and we are seeing the beginning of a smart windows take off. A

key supplier of smart windows, View, doubled the number of buildings in which its

windows were installed.

Changes in direction: n-tech’s research into this sector suggests there are two

reasons for changes in the fortunes of smart windows. One is that smart windows

technologies have started to iron out early technical difficulties, so the vendors can now

turn their attention and devote resources to selling. This refocusing of efforts and

resources more or less guarantees that more smart windows will be sold.

But more importantly, n-tech also believes that the market messaging for smart

windows is changing in way that will expand addressable markets. More specifically, n-

tech believes that the smart windows vendors now see themselves increasingly in the

“comfort” business not in the “green” business.

Smart windows may have begun with a message of energy efficiency, but they will

increasingly be about making buildings more pleasant to live and work in. We see the

“comfort market” as a much bigger one than smart windows have attempted to reach

before and one that also requires a broader range of functionality.

As n-tech sees things, this change in strategic direction will redefine the opportunities in

the smart windows materials space.

1.1.2 Materials at Core: The Comfort Imperative

In the final analysis, smart windows are a materials play. Every smart windows firm has

its own unique materials platform which is at the core of its windows products and of its

competitive strategy.



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n-tech believes that the new marketing focus for smart windows that we described

above will translate into demands on core materials platforms for smart windows to fit

the marketplace better.

This would have happened anyway as smart windows firms moved from being

consumed by technical matters to paying attention to end-user needs. However, if smart

windows are no longer entirely about energy efficiency but rather about a broad range

of consumer tastes, matching core material functionality with market needs for

consumer comfort will be especially important for vendors’ success.

Beyond passive windows: In fact, the direction of smart windows materials platforms

can already be seen as a transition towards ever greater consumer comfort. Thus if we

go back to the 1960s and 1970s, windows were sometimes covered in a simple retrofit

film. This kept the sun out during the day, but obscured vision during the night. In other

words, a compromise had to be struck between comfort in the day and lack of it during

the night.

Retrofit film laminated onto window glass could not really be said to produce a smart

window. By contrast however, passive smart windows technology competes directly

with traditional retrofit windows films; for a small premium.

Greater comfort is achieved because windows become less transparent when the

sunlight is bright. By contrast traditional retrofit window films maintain the same tint no

matter how bright the sunlight is. Active smart windows—notably electrochromic (EC)

windows—take this “comfort competition” to the next stage, because they enable a user

to seize direct control of the tinting effect, enhancing comfort to an even greater degree.

1.1.3 The Search for the Perfect Smart Window

In fact, EC windows have been emerging as the “standard” smart window materials

platform, but they are not the perfect smart window. Most notably, switching speeds for

EC windows can be quite slow and EC windows may never become completely opaque.

We think that even though EC windows will be where much of the smart windows

revenue will come from in the near future, n-tech also believes that the growing

popularity of smart windows will set off a search for windows that are better than EC

windows in some sense. Here, the potential opportunities are considerable, but may be

considered as falling into four classes.

Variations on a theme: Where smart windows platforms are not proprietary, there are

opportunities to improve in an evolutionary way on existing technologies. Essentially,

this is what the several firms that are already competing in the EC windows business

are doing now.



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New kinds of materials: This strategy envisions that existing materials platforms for

smart windows will be replaced by something quite different.

Several options have already emerged in this regard including hydrogels,

electrophoretic materials and microblinds, the first two materials are quite new

innovations and are a long way from generating revenues. It would be no surprise if

any or all of these new platforms simply fade away. Conversely, it would also be no

surprise if entirely smart windows materials platforms appeared in the next few years—

there are various classes of phase-change materials that could serve in this regard.

It should be noted that in this case “new” may actually indicate re-purposed. The

introduction of electrophoretic material partly reflects firms re-purposing materials

originally intended for e-paper displays.

Niche marketing: A different strategic direction entirely for smart windows materials

platforms is to aim at capturing a niche that another—fairly dominant platform cannot

capture.

Thus as we have noted, EC windows do not offer especially good switching speeds and

cannot reach a totally opaque state. (Note: not everyone agrees with these assertions,

but for the purposes of this analysis let us assume that they are true.)

The opportunity here is to pick the niches where (in this case) EC windows are

intrinsically unable to serve well. Interestingly, comfort may yet again be the key factor:

The relatively slow switching speed of EC platforms tends to make it unsuitable for car windows and windshields, because if these do not respond quickly to changes in sunlight passenger contentment and driver safety can be impaired. Mercedes has chosen SPD technology for its smart windows for these reasons

Opaqueness matters in the case of privacy glass—the kind of glass that becomes dark in order to provide privacy for passengers and conference participants. Obviously, if the glass is not fully opaque it is not doing its job adequately. PDLC technology has been positioned as smart privacy glass, while EC glass is seldom (if ever) sold into the privacy glass market.

Moving beyond the core materials platform—another kind of intelligence:

The tacit assumption so far has been that smart windows have smart materials at their

core. However, active smart windows need some kind of power source, which could be

from the grid, but could also be solar.



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This enables a level of control of the system that cannot be provided through smart

materials. With the addition of wireless control technology, yet another level of comfort

can be achieved; smart windows can be controlled from smartphones, for example, or

integrated with a home automation system or smart lighting.

Elsewhere, n-tech has argued that smart materials can gain a marketing advantage by

identifying themselves with the current hype about the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and other

forms of electronic intelligence.

In this application, smart materials—in this case, the core materials of smart windows—

actually become part of the IoT.

1.2 Objective and Scope of This Report

The objective of this report is to identify and quantify opportunities that will emerge for

smart windows materials platforms over the next eight years. The materials discussed in

this context are: electrochromic, photochromic, hydrogel, thermochromic. PDLC, SPD,

hydrogels, pixel-based technologies (electrophoretic and electro wetting) and

microblinds.

The scope of our analysis also includes not only the active materials for smart windows,

but also the (1) electrode materials used for EC windows and (2) the substrate materials

for smart windows: both film and glass. While we cover both active and passive

materials, our focus is on active smart windows platforms, because we think these are

the ones with the most commercial potential over the next decade.

The core deliverable of this report are eight-year forecasts of the markets in value ($

millions) and volume (000s of square meters) terms. As part of these forecasts, we also

consider a realistic scenario for the future of smart windows as a whole. This forecast

has to balance the great expectations that exist for smart windows, while at the same

time acknowledging that these systems are only just beginning to take off.

In the process of achieving this goal, the report also examines (1) the materials

strategies of leading firms marketing smart windows and (2) significant smart windows

materials R&D at universities and research institutes around the world. With regard to

(1) this report also analyzes the business models and other strategies of prominent

firms and show how novel materials play into the total smart windows value chain.

For the first time in n-tech’s series of reports about smart windows, we have also started

to take into consideration some of the recent research being carried out in the smart

windows space where it has a specific relationship to smart materials. We feel that this

brings a greater depth to our analysis and will provide more information about new

directions that smart windows materials may take in the future.



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1.3 Methodology of this Report

1.3.1 Data Collection

n-tech has been covering the smart windows market for almost seven years and has

conducted numerous interviews in this space as part of our ongoing study of the area.

These interviews have been conducted with executives deeply embedded in the smart

glass space including representatives of glass firms, specialist smart windows firms,

and related specialty chemical firms.

In this report we have also made extensive use of secondary sources, many of these

came from the World Wide Web. These include trade press and technical articles as

well as government documents and the publicly available financials of leading public

companies in the smart windows space. In some cases we have made use of in-depth

journalistic accounts of manufacturing and marketing activities by leading firms,

1.3.2 Forecasting Methodology

Over the years that n-tech has been following the smart glass/windows sector we have

acquired a deep understanding of the dynamics of the smart windows sector and of

materials selection within that sector.

The forecasts presented in this report are based on this long experience embodied in n-

tech’s evolving forecasting model for the smart materials market of which smart

windows are an important part. This model, in turn, is based on an established

methodology in which we assess the size of the available market and then use some

plausible assumptions about penetrations and prices to come up with volume and value

forecasts.

We have assumed throughout our forecasts a middle-of-the-road scenario in which

smart windows remains a “minority taste,” but are still to be found in thousands or even

tens of thousands of buildings and in many higher-end—but not necessarily super

luxury—automobiles.

Put another way, even with the advantages that it now has we do not see smart

windows becoming a mass market until (at the very earliest) the end of the forecasting

period considered here.

Pricing: The pricing used in this report is intended to reflect the cost of the materials

used in smart materials platforms at the manufacturing level.



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However, there is a huge range of prices quoted for smart windows in the commercial

literature and at Internet stores. These prices reflect differences in performance,

quality, volumes, supplier origins, etc.

For the purposes of this report it is impossible to make such distinctions in our

forecasts; the prices used in these forecasts are intended to be averages that are in

some sense plausible, although we accept that the deviations from such averages may

be quite large.

Economic assumptions: The forecasts presented in this report do not depend on

economic conditions directly. That is to say, our forecasting model does not contain

GDP or some other important macroeconomic time series as a variable.

Nonetheless, it is obviously important to any assessment of smart windows and smart

glass what the underlying economic conditions look like. In very poor economic

conditions, the construction and automotive industries would most likely be experiencing

a downturn and this in turn would hurt all the markets considered in this report. The

converse is also true.

With all this in mind, we have assumed only modest growth in the developed world,

where most smart windows will be sold. “Modest” in this sense means well below

historical norms, but with no major recession in the cards.

The reader should note that if the economies of the major countries that purchase smart

windows do much better or worse than most people expect, the forecasts included in

this report may turn out to be inaccurate. And it is not hard to find storm clouds in the

economic news.

We also note that the forecasts here are worldwide projections—we have discussed the

particularities of individual countries and regions where this seems appropriate.

1.4 Plan of this Report

This report consists of eight chapters plus an Executive Summary. The Executive

Summary is intended to capture and profile the opportunities that we identify in most of

the rest of the report.

Of the eight main chapters, five of them cover the main smart windows technologies

from a specifically materials-related aspect. That is to say, each chapter discusses

what materials are used to create a specific smart windows technology and how the

performance and capabilities of these materials fit with the market needs for smart

materials. Chapter Seven does more or less the same thing, but examines several

emerging materials platforms.



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The remaining two chapters are this one—Chapter One—and Chapter Eight. This

chapter provides an introductory essay and explains what the purpose of the report is

and the way it was compiled. In the final chapter—Chapter Eight—we summarize all

the projections created earlier in the report.

smart windows materials markets 2015-2022

Documents

smart windows sector

smart windows space

smart windows materials

smart windows market

smart windows respond

smart windows materialschapter

active smart materials

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