Nature
News: Nanocrystals called quantum dots have promised to
revolutionize display technologies, solar power and biological
imaging for more than a decade. Yet the quantum-dot market has
remained small, with a handful of companies selling dots
directly to researchers, using the particles to develop their
own products or licensing their technologies to
partners."Quantum dots have been around for quite a while, but
they're taking a really long time to mature," says David Hwang
of the
market-analysis company
Lux Research in New York. A key barrier is price: quantum
dots can cost anywhere from US$3,000 to $10,000 per gram,
restricting their use to highly specialized applications.But
industry analysts are now predicting extremely rapid growth for
the market over the next few years, driven by demand for
energy-efficient displays and lighting, and enabled by cheaper,
more efficient manufacturing processes. In September 2008,
market-research company BCC Research of Wellesley,
Massachusetts,
predicted
that the market for products relying on quantum dots would
grow from $28.6 million in 2008 to $721 million by 2013, with
particularly rapid growth in the optoelectronics sector from
2010.
