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by http://www.business-mongolia.com
12/20/2011

LONDON – Scarcity of metals and minerals will become more severe in the next five years, with the automotive, chemicals and energy industries likely to be hit hardest, according to a global survey of company executives by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The survey of 69 executives across seven sectors, published on Wednesday, found that European companies were most concerned about a shortage, with 71% of respondents seeing scarcity as a risk, compared with 53% in Asia Pacific and 50% in the Americas.
“Put simply, many businesses now recognize that we are living beyond the planet’s means,” said Malcolm Preston, PwC’s global sustainability leader, in a statement.

Companies pinpointed growing demand for materials and political issues, such as China’s export restrictions on rare earth metals, as the main drivers of scarcity.
Those in the renewable energy, automotive, energy and utilities sectors said they currently faced supply instability, while
those in the aviation, high-tech and infrastructure sectors expected increasing disruption of supply by 2016.

The report suggested that some industries might use scarcity to their competitive advantage. Some 43% of respondents said scarcity offered an opportunity at present, while 59% said opportunities would increase in the next five years, with the automotive sector most positive.
“New business models will be fundamental to the ability to respond appropriately to the risks and opportunities posed by the scarcity of minerals and metals,” PwC’s Preston said.

Despite abundant material reserves in Asia, particularly in China, which produces about 97% of the world’s rare earth metals, Asian firms still expect substantial problems as explosive growth in emerging markets puts pressure on supplies.
PwC listed 14 materials as “critical”, including tantalum, which is used in computers and mobile telephones; fluorspar, found in cement, glass and iron; and lithium, used in wind turbines and batteries for hybrid cars.

Eighty-three percent of surveyed firms said their suppliers considered metal scarcity to be an important issue, but only 61% said they thought their customers were concerned about it.
In Europe, 96% of executives said their governments were aware of the problem, compared with 58% in Asia and 54% in the Americas.
Almost half of companies rated their preparedness for scarcity as ‘high’ to ‘very high’. The renewable energy sector had the highest percentage at 67% who were highly confident about their plans to combat a supply shortage, while just 33% of companies in the chemical and high-tech sectors rated their preparedness as “high” to “very high”.

www.newelectronics.co.uk
13 December 2011

Gallium nitride has long been known to have useful properties when it comes to electronic components. Even so, its application has largely been confined to more exotic areas of the industry, particularly rf transistors.
But GaN is beginning to find application in what could be considered the mainstream, with some of its proponents suggesting its arrival could mark the beginning of the end for the traditional power mosfet.

One of the first companies to bring GaN technology to the embedded power market was International Rectifier (IR), which launched the GaNpowIR platform. But IR is not alone in exploring the application of GaN in the mainstream; a number of companies are now targeting the opportunities, including Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), whose chief executive Alex Lidow held the same role with IR.

Lidow, an unabashed GaN enthusiast, sees the technology offering a 'huge benefit' over silicon. But he realises that, to start the ball rolling, the industry needs to make a 'leap of faith'. "Since we launched EPC, we have won 350 customers," he said. "But we've also seen third parties – Texas Instruments, for example – introducing parts which work with our devices. There is always scepticism of new technology, but we are working with bigger companies as time goes on."

But why should designers consider using GaN based parts? "It's fundamentally superior to silicon," Lidow asserted. "This is because of two very important properties. Firstly, it's critical electric field is 10 times more than that of silicon; terminals can be closer together and this means smaller devices. Secondly, electron mobility is much better than in silicon because different physics is involved."

In silicon, said Lidow, electrons hop from crystal to crystal. "In GaN, electrons are confined in a 2d gas defined by quantum mechanics. There is one probability function which allows them to move easily along the surface at high velocity. When you put these two things together, GaN should be 10,000 times more efficient than silicon."

For the moment, GaN devices aren't showing that level of improvement; EPC's first generation parts showed a five to tenfold boost, according to Lidow. Why has the theory not translated into practice? "When power mosfets were introduced in 1978," Lidow pointed out, "they were 2.5 orders of magnitude away from their theoretical performance. It took time to work out how to squeeze the performance out. It's the same for GaN, but we'll get there."

One of the attractions of GaN, in Lidow's view, is that power mosfet technology is essentially mature. "Since the turn of the Millennium," he continued, "there have only been incremental, expensive improvements. Why use power mosfets when you can get at least five times better performance 'out of the box' with GaN?"

From his previous experience with power mosfets, Lidow says there are four barriers which stand in the way of the mainstream adoption of GaN technology: will it enable new applications?; is it easy to use?; is it cost effective?; and is it reliable? "As you begin to satisfy these questions," he said, "you gain more customers."

What do disparate media tablet devices like the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle Fire, and the Barnes & Noble Nook have in common? They all depend on South Korea’s LG Display as the main supplier of their display panels—a coveted distinction that has made the company the world’s top supplier of media tablet screens, according IHS.

LG Display is the leader by a wide margin of the tablet display market, with a 51 percent share of global unit shipments in the second quarter of 2011. The company is well ahead of South Korean rival Samsung—which also supplies panels for the Apple iPad as well for its own Samsung Galaxy Tab—at a distant second with a 35 percent share. Third-place Chimei Innolux Corp. of Taiwan, another Apple supplier that also provides for the Chinese white-box market, controls a 9 percent share, as shown in the figure attached. The remaining 5 percent of the tablet display market is split among several smaller firms.

LG Display also enjoys a competitive advantage in terms of economy of scale, as it devotes more capacity than other manufacturers to making media tablet displays. Such generous capacity—as well as being Apple’s main supplier—has catapulted LG Display to a favorable position in the market.

Tablets reshape small/medium display business

From the time the iPad was introduced last year by Apple, tablet devices have becomeone of the main driving forces for growth in the market for small- and medium-sized displays, defined as screens smaller than 10 inches in the diagonal dimension.

Tablet shipments are expected to surge an astounding 273 percent this year compared to 2010. And at a time when sales of many consumer electronic items have stalled, media tablet shipments will maintain a robust compound annual growth rate of 45 percent from 2011 to 2015, showcasing the healthy prospects that lie ahead for the space.

Daunting specs

Companies hoping to enter the media tablet display space face a number of barriers. For one, displays hoping to merit consideration for inclusion in best-selling tablets must meet demanding specifications for size, pixel format, power consumption and response time.

The standard pixel format for 9.x-inch displays—the size category of the iPad, and the dominant dimension in the industry—is 1,024 by 768 at 132 pixels per inch.

Meanwhile, the standard pixel format for 7.x-inch displays—the size used by the new Kindle Fire and the Galaxy Tab—is at 1,024 by 600 at 170 pixels-per-inch. There is conjecture that Apple will implement its Retina display with resolutions of greater than 300 pixels per inch in the new iPad 3, which is expected to launch in 2012. If so, this will up the resolution trend in the media tablet PC space, challenging other tablet makers to follow suit.

Panel suppliers that cannot meet these exacting display standards or efficiently produce viable displays at such sizes and resolutions will find it very hard to compete in the market, IHS believes.

IPS competition

IPS LCD technology soon may encounter some stiff competition. Japan’s Sharp Corp. has introduced a new oxide material consisting of indium, gallium, and zinc called IGZO that supports high electron mobility—20 to 30 times faster than conventional amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology. Sharp plans to commercialize a TFT LCD using IGZO material by downsizing the transistor and increasing the light transmittance. This will make the display more power efficient and enable higher pixel densities.

IGZO production can be achieved on existing a-Si lines with little modification, making it cost competitive. Sharp plans to manufacture IGZO displays at its eighth-generation a-Si fab in Kameyama, Japan with production expected to start this year.

Another variant of the wide viewing angle technology very similar to IPS LCD is Fringe Field Sequential (FFS) LCD which continues to be used for tablet PC displays. The patent for FFS LCD resides with Taiwanese-based LCD supplier E Ink Corp. (Hydis). However, because of the lack of capacity at E Ink to manufacture larger-sized panels, E Ink licenses this technology to other LCD suppliers, including LG Display.

With the tablet wars ensuing in earnest, the technology that comes out ahead may well determine which display supplier shines brightest in the years to come.


STAFF EDITOR
info@evertiq.com

Read more: http://evertiq.com/news/21055

Steven J. E. Pleging
DECEMBER 2011
http://www.onlinetes.com

Our future energy requirements depend on reaching the Holy Grail of electricity generation – a cost competitive alternative to coal and natural gas. Despite the environmental impact and waning supply of fossil fuels, the market continues to drive their widespread use as our overwhelming choice in generating more than 70% of our global electricity. The availability of an alternative energy source would also contribute significantly to energy self-sufficiency in North America.

Every hour more energy from the sun hits the earth than the world's entire population consumes in a single year. Given this abundance, solar energy is our world's most obvious energy choice. However, 2010 data indicated only 1% of our global electricity supply came from solar energy. The number is small, but the PV market has grown from a mere 1.75GW of installation in 2006 to an industry projection of 100GW in 2013 (EPIA Global Market Outlook for 2015). The continued reality of the imbalance between solar electric, coal and natural gas is pure economics.

In 2010, The National Academy of Sciences reported the real cost of using fossil fuels (pollution and greenhouse gas emissions) added another $120 billion to market cost, not to mention the long-term costs to our environment, some irreversible. However, in a market-driven economy, future impact is not the driving force, but rather the reality that the wholesale cost of electricity from natural gas and coal is substantially lower than solar energy today.


Primary Barriers
Despite the huge growth of solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in 2010 – with 129% growth, the global market reached16.6GW – the market continues to experience limitations involving either efficiency or expense. These limitations have prevented solar power from competing effectively with fossil fuels. Additionally, many of the cutting-edge thin-film technologies require rare elements that are a finite resource already in short supply. There simply is not enough material on the planet to make these devices for worldwide consumption.

"The biggest barrier to solar energy becoming the dominant source of electricity globally is expense," says Dr. Andras G. Pattantyus-Abraham, chief technology officer, Quantum Solar Power Corp. "The obvious lesson learned from the bankruptcy of Solyndra and Evergreen is the industry is focused on price. Currently, the most cost-competitive solutions are the thin-film PV technologies, CdTe and CIGS, but in the long term, given the short supply of indium and tellurium, an alternative solution will need to be developed within thin-film manufacturing in order to remain cost competitive."

In order for solar energy to meet current economic demands, it must solve three key issues that have previously limited its acceptance – efficiency, price, and the removal of rare elements used in production. Current solar PV technologies generate electrical power by converting solar radiation into an electric current using semiconductor layers made from either crystalline silicon or what is called a thin-film layer of exotic materials. Silicon PV technologies have been the standard approach since the 1950s, currently offering the highest efficiencies. Although silicon ingot prices have dropped in recent years, silicon PV remains more expensive than thin-film modules. While novel crossover approaches, such as amorphous silicon, have gained ground by applying silicon semiconductors at a thin-film level, the least expensive PV module is a cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film product. Despite thin-film's cost advantage and increasing efficiencies, it remains 3% to 7% less efficient than the leading silicon PV. The elephant in the thin-film room is, however, materials.


Strangling Solars Reach
The leading thin-film products primarily use rare elements to create their semiconductor layers at a very small scale (1µm to 8µm). Elements such as gallium arsenide, tellurium, and indium, have limited global supplies that are controlled by only a few countries. In the case of tellurium, used in the leading thin-film First Solar (CdTe), there is only two known high concentration deposits – located in China and Mexico. Tellurium is the second scarcest byproduct metal, next to gold, and is mainly a byproduct of copper ore production. With consumption steadily climbing, and only a little over 125MT being produced annually, tellurium prices have more than doubled since 2007. In fact, looking at First Solar's projections for reducing their $/watt manufacturing costs, materials are not mentioned as an area in which they see potential reductions. If thin-film is to emerge as a viable alternative, and is indeed the Holy Grail photovoltaic solution, it must overcome this rare element restriction.

In the fall of 2008, 4D LABS and a team of scientists began work at Simon Fraser University (SFU), a Canadian public research university in British Columbia, Canada.
Lastly, with China now a major producer of crystalline silicon PV, it is likely they will more strictly control exports of tellurium in the future as they move into thin-film markets. Hanergy, a Chinese solar PV company recently announced a $626 million investment in new 1.5GW thin-film production, research, and development facilities. Other Chinese manufacturers have hinted at moving in the direction of thin-film as well, and some already are. Seven out of the top 10 solar PV manufacturers are currently Chinese companies. The estimated 2011 production capacity of the top 10 manufacturers is more than 19GW. The Chinese represent 13GW of this amount. Therefore, as these companies begin to move in the direction of thin-film production, the issue of rare element supply becomes more serious.


Comparing Technologies
Quantum Solar Power Corp. is developing a solar PV device that will address all three critical success factors – high efficiency, low cost, and high scalability, with an abundance of non-toxic materials. Our approach focuses on eliminating the costly and sometimes exotic semiconductor absorbers used in the vast majority of PV. Utilizing widely available materials, the Quantum device aims at cutting thin-film material costs in half. If material costs represent 45% or more of PV manufacturing, a 50% reduction would be a monumental step toward solar becoming the obvious economic choice.

Leading silicon efficiencies in the industry are currently at 20% to 22% power conversion efficiency (PCE) for crystalline silicon PV and 15% to 17% for thin-film. Quantum engineer modeling demonstrates a potential to achieve efficiencies PCEs of more than 20%, thereby fulfilling another of the critical competitive factors related to the PV industry. Although cost is driving the PV market currently, long-term success is dependent on maintaining high levels of efficiency in order to maximize electrical capacity.

Quantum engineers evaluated the leading solar technologies and determined the limitations on solar were related to the methods used for absorbing energy. The device currently in development is expressly focused on this component of solar PV, with the goal of delivering a PV device that matches or exceeds the highest efficiencies currently available, while fitting into a thin-film manufacturing model that eliminates rare elements, and in turn, drastically cutting module costs.


Game-Changing Technology
In the fall of 2008, Dr. Gary Leach, lead scientist, Quantum, and director, Photonic Systems, 4D LABS, and a team of scientists began work at Simon Fraser University (SFU), a Canadian public research university in British Columbia. SFU was identified early on in the formation of Quantum Solar Power as a key resource, given their newly built, state-of-the-art research and fabrication facilities. 4D Labs opened in 2007 as a cutting-edge facility for optics and nanoscience research, and has edge tools and a 4,000ft2 cleanroom.

After a careful analysis of the limitations to PV technologies at that time, in concert with novel ideas of their own, the team hypothesized a completely new approach to solar cell design. In October 2008, they embarked on a proof of concept design for a new device. By March 2009, it became apparent to Leach and his team that their proof of concept was indeed viable. Dr. Andras G. Pattantyus-Abraham met Leach at a nanotechnology presentation at SFU in the summer of 2009. Pattantyus-Abraham was engaged in semiconductor nanoparticle research at the Sargent Group at the University of Toronto at the time. Convinced that Quantum's approach promised a true Holy Grail solution, he joined Quantum in late 2009 as CTO.

Since early 2010, Quantum's lab in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, with its team of 14 leading experts in nanotechnology, physical chemistry, optics, and physics, has been fine-tuning a prototype PV device. In June 2011, Quantum researchers entered their second phase of research, ramping up the device's output results. Future research and development will focus on key partnerships in research and manufacturing, as well as National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) certification.


Solar Power's Role
It is important for our geopolitical future that we create a clean energy economy along with a strong energy policy. A sunny future for our children demands that we continue to create green sector jobs, replacing our dependency on fossil fuels with renewable energy through wind turbines, hydro-electric power, and solar PV technologies that make solar energy a globally-deployable, environmentally-smart energy source.

If the barriers to cost, efficiency, and scalability can be met with technology as promising as the developments at Quantum Solar, the solar industry could shift dramatically from making a marginal contribution on our energy supply to becoming the dominant force in coming years.

Any solar cell technology that can achieve matching or superior efficiencies to leading technologies, at a lower cost while remaining free of rare materials, is unquestionably a disruptive technology, and will significantly contribute to making solar PV the dominant electricity resource for our planet.

Buy Silver…Now!

Published December 9, 2011 | By Swiss Metal Assets

Precious Metal - Silver
Silver is an amazing metal…which is why it’s likely to soar over the coming years…

You see, silver has more than 10,000 uses. It’s one of the world’s best conductors of heat and electricity. Inventors filed more patents on silver uses than any other precious metal in the world. And when silver is used for most industrial and technological purposes, it is used up forever… It simply costs too much to try to recycle the tiny bit of silver from every cell phone or casino chip.

I’m not saying industry is going to use up all the world’s silver. That simply can’t happen. But scarcity is a real issue.

Our rapid consumption of silver leaves very little to meet any uptick in demand from investors. A spike in interest will send prices spiraling higher…

Here’s a breakdown of the silver market. The table below shows the percentage of the total amount of silver consumed by each category over the past four years…

As you can see from the table above, only 12% of the silver supplied to the market made it to bullion in 2010. That means only a little more than 100 million ounces of silver became bullion for the entire investing world.

That’s a tiny fraction to sop up all the investment interest in the world.

Of that silver, about 43 million ounces went to exchange-traded funds like the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV).

That means you could buy all the extra silver bullion for about $2 billion. We could buy all the surplus silver bullion from the last four years for about $10 billion.

That’s the same as the market value of the iShares Silver Trust today. If you wanted to build another silver fund, you couldn’t. There just isn’t enough silver bullion out there to fill the order.

Even trying to amass that much physical silver would send the silver price soaring. It’s a simple market fact… When there is more demand than supply, it drives the price up.

And the economic problems confronting Europe and the United States have increased interest in precious metals… Silver gained a colossal 174% from August 2010 to April 2011.

In May 2011, however, the price collapsed 31% in just four weeks. The bull market simply ran up too far, too fast… and the decline wiped out many highly leveraged silver traders.

The big money is tiptoeing back into silver.

Last month, commodity trading advisors, pool operators, and hedge funds — the “big money” — weren’t interested in silver AT ALL…

But as they move back into the market, silver prices could soar. Let me show you what I’m talking about…

Jason Goepfert created SentimenTrader, a service that tracks investor sentiment toward various asset classes. According to Jason, silver just bounced off its most pessimistic reading in four years.

The so-called “commitment of non-commercial traders” hit 10,352. That’s incredibly low. The last time sentiment numbers were that low was in August 2007. Six months later, the price of silver was 59% higher. It rose from $12 per ounce to $19 per ounce.

I went all the way back to 2002 and found that silver sentiment bottomed near 10,000 six times… On average, the price of silver rose 33% in the next six months and 54% over the next year. This chart shows the last four times it bottomed…

Here’s how the silver price performed after each of the last four times silver sentiment bottomed out…

The best return came after Bottom No. 2, which coincided with the US banking/credit crisis. Silver soared an eye-popping 405%, including its parabolic rise in 2010.

As those numbers indicate, silver is one of the most volatile assets in the world. Over the last year, silver has seen massive price swings, including an 81% rally and two 30% drops. That forced many traders to liquidate their silver holdings in order to meet emergency short-term requirements. (Plus, the debacle at commodity broker MF Global has scared many folks out of the market.)

But the long-term drivers of gold and silver’s uptrends are still in place. Enormous and growing Asian economies like China and India are getting richer…and they have deep cultural affinities for precious metals. Plus, the Western world has lived way beyond its means for a long time…the debts and liabilities it has taken on can only be paid back with devalued, debased money. This is bullish for “real money” assets like gold and silver.

With sentiment so negative toward silver (and just beginning to turn back up), it’s a great time to take a position in this long-term bull market.

If gold and silver prices are nearly certain to rise over the next few years (and probably rise dramatically), the simplest way to play that trend is to buy bullion…real, hold-in-your-hand silver coins.

And I recommend everyone do just that… Buy some silver and store it away.

Regards,

Matt Badiali ,
for The Daily Reckoning

Buy Silver…Now! originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning provides over 400,000 readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.