Abstract
DESCRIPTION
Polymer, Glass or Silicon: What fits my application best?
Material/market combination
Microfluidics is on its way to becoming a main stream enabling technology for
medical diagnostics, life science research, as well as drug delivery and
synthesis. The market of microfluidic devices (first level packaged devices,
without biological content) is expected to grow at more than 20% in the next
five years and exceed $5B in 2016.
Today, no real standard in terms of materials have been defined, but the
economic drivers create a partitioning of the market with on one hand, low
cost single point disposable devices, and on the other hand high density and
high accuracy chips.
The future perspectives for polymer, glass or silicon made microfluidic chips
are thus strongly dependent on the targeted applications. The report answers
the following questions:
- From the OEM perspective: Which material best fits my application?
- From the material and manufacturing service providers perspective: What is
the potential of my technology in the microfluidics market?
- What is the link between applications, functions needed and materials
Microfluidic supply and value chain by material
By material, the supply chain and value chains are described. The report
provides an analysis of the microfluidic device value chain, which includes
bill of materials, manufacturing, IP, packaging and quality control. This
analysis helps understand the real value of the materials and how climbing in
the value chain potentially increases the company revenues. For example,
silicon material represents a very small fraction of total value but can add a
significant value through integrated sensors and actuators.
Over 200 companies worldwide manufacture microfluidic devices. Competition is
increasing between traditional microfluidic players well suited for design and
prototyping, and large MEMS and semiconductor players looking for a new market
for their manufacturing know-how and capacities. Although such players can
offer more than only manufacturing services and use it as key selling point,
the challenge for them remains to learn about microfluidics and biology.
What is the best manufacturing process?
The choice of material implies as well the choice of an appropriate
manufacturing process. This selection is not trivial because an optimum has to
be found between the performance parameters such as structure size, precision,
aspect ratio, and economic aspects such as manufacturing costs, throughput and
scalability. In this process, understanding both the cost structure of the
manufacturing processes and the applications needs in terms of design and
production volumes is crucial.
The report gives an overview of the main materials used for microfluidics and
manufacturing processes. We compare reshaping, subtractive, additive, bonding
and sealing processes characteristics such as feature sizes, aspect ratio,
throughput...
For a given design, we defined a number of scenario' s in terms of materials
and manufacturing processes, and estimated the manufacturing costs for
production volumes ranging from prototyping to large scale.
Company Index
3M, Abbott, ABI, Advanced liquidlogic, Applied MST, Arburg, Array IT,
Battenfeld, BD, Bertin Technology, Billion, Biocept, BioMerieux, Biorad,
Biosite, Boehringer Ingelheim MicroParts, Caliper LS, Cambridge Consultants,
Capital Bio, Cepheid, Chempaq, Chemtrix, Chemunex, Clondiag, Corning,
Cyclofluidics, Danaher, Debiotech, Digital Bio, Dolomite, Dow Corning, Dupont,
Eastman Chemicals, Ehrfeld BTS, Eksigent, Epocal, EVG, Fluidigm, Genewave,
Gyros, IBM, Ikerlan, Illumina, IMT, Invetech, Ion Torrent, Konica Minolta
Opto, Life Technology,Lionix, Little things Factory, llumina, Lonza,
Micralyne, MicroChem Inc/Nippon Kayaku, Microfluidic ChipShop, MicroLiquid,
Micronics, Micronit Microfluidics, Microsens, Minifab, Mobidiag, Norchip,
Ocusense, Olivetti, Pacific Bioscience, Pall Genesystems, Silicon Biosystem,
Sony DADC, Sophion, STM, SVTC, ThinXXS, Translume, Ulvac, Veredus, Weidmann...
BENEFITS
Who should buy this report?
- Chip & Material suppliers
- Assess the TAM - total accessible market of your company' s related
products in the microfluidic areas
- Identify technology trends, challenges and precise requirements for the
different market applications
- Diagnostic companies and OEM
- Understand the microfluidic manufacturing processes & key issues, to
optimize your material and process selection
Key features of the report
- 2010-2016 Microfluidic device forecasts by materials with a unique
market segmentation of the different applications, and showing the evolution
of material needs per segment
- Detailed supply and value chain analysis putting in evidence the
value of material and structuring in the complete value chain.
- A cost analysis comparing the manufacturing costs depending on the
processes (etching, injection molding, NIL...), the material (Glass, SI, COC)
and the production volume
- An overview of the main microfluidic materials and manufacturing
processes including key economic and technical data, such as process
description and process flow, feature sizes, aspect ratio, throughput...
- Description of the supply chain for diagnostics applications
showing the market access strategy and some examples of existing collaboration
Table of Contents
1 - Executive summary
2 - Introduction
3 - Microfluidic Market
- Microfluidic devices market forecasts
- Microfluidic component market in $M
- Microfluidic component market in Munits
- Microfluidic players world
- Microfluidic Fab geographical distribution
- Microfluidic device market, data by materials
- Material value share
- Material share by application
- Microfluidic value chain
- Polymer microfluidic devices market
- Glass microfluidic devices market
- Silicon microfluidic devices market
- Metals and ceramics microfluidic devices market
- Summary and conclusions
4 - Cost Analysis
- Introduction abd Chip design
- Scenario 1: Glass chip
- Scenario 2: Silicon + glass chip
- Scenario 3: Polymer chip injection molded
- Scenario 4: NIL polymer chip
- Cost simulation analysis
5 - Microfluidic Materials
- Material overview
- Glass substrates
- Polymer materials
- Main material suppliers
- Summary
6 - Manufacturing techniques
- Introduction and objectives
- Processes classification
- Process flow comparison
- Manufacturing processes applications
- Reshaping processes
- Subtractive processes
- Additive processes
- Sealing and bonding
- Main equipment suppliers
- Summary and conclusions
7 - Supply chain for diagnostics applications
- The IVD supply chain
- Top 15 IVD companies
- Examples of collaborations
8 - Conclusions
Appendix
