Hague Corp., a solar technology and quantum dot manufacturing company, today commented on recently released forecast for the Quantum Dot ("Solterra") market where it competes.
A quantum dot is a semiconductor whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. As a result, they have properties that are between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules.
Current and future applications of QDs impact a broad range of industrial markets. These include, for example, biology and biomedicine; computing and memory; electronics and displays; optoelectronic devices such as LEDs, lighting, and lasers; optical components used in telecommunications; and security applications such as covert identification tagging or biowarfare detection sensors.
According to a new report available at Electronics.ca Publications, the global market for QDs, which in 2008 is estimated to generate $28.6 million in revenues, is projected to grow over the next 5 years at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 90.7%, reaching over $700 million by 2013. Following the initially modest revenues generated by standalone colloidal QDs - primarily serving the life sciences, academic, and other industrial research and development (R&D) communities - within the next 2 years several product launches with colloidal or in situ QD underpinning will bolster market revenue considerably.
"We are beginning to see comparisons to the early semiconductor industry in terms of growth prospect," said Stephen B. Squires, CEO and President of Solterra Renewable Technologies, Inc. Squires continued, "With the advances our scientists have made with this technology we are well positioned to dominate this industry over the next decade and take significant market share. While we are extremely encouraged by the latest market forecasts, we do believe this study underestimates the true size of the market."
Solterra has concluded the worldwide exclusive license with William Marsh Rice University for intellectual property which includes the "Synthesis of Uniform Nanoparticle Shapes with High Selectivity." The licensing agreement field of use covers the manufacture and sale of photovoltaic cells and the manufacture and sales of quantum dots for electronic and medical applications.
Rice University's breakthrough discovery has been the highlight of numerous scientific journal articles and also gained the attention of mainstream news media. This new chemical method for making low cost, four-legged cadmium selenide quantum dots, which previous research has shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical energy, knocks down a major barrier in developing quantum-dot-based photovoltaics as an alternative to the conventional, more expensive silicon-based solar cells.
Solterra is scheduled to begin scale up of this technology in December 2008 with commercial production anticipated to begin in the second half of 2009.