n-tech Predicts that Revenues from Shape Memory Polymers will Exceed $1 billion in Revenues by 2021

GLEN ALLEN, Va., April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Industry analyst firm n-tech Research today announced the release of a new report titled "Markets for Shape Memory Polymers: 2016-2025."

According to the report the market for shape memory polymers (SMP) will exceed $1.0 billion by 2021, going on to reach $3.4 billion by 2025

Details about the report, including a downloadable excerpt are available at: http://ntechresearch.com/market_reports/shape-memory-polymers-2016-2025

An n-tech report on shape memory alloys will be published later in Q2 of this year.   

About the report:

This report provides a technology and market assessment of Shape Memory Polymers (SMPs).  The report focuses on four key markets for SMPs – aerospace, automotive, medicine and healthcare and construction – as well niche markets for SMPs in areas such as robotics, textiles, machine tools and and brand protection.  For each of these end user markets, the report includes detailed ten-year revenue forecasts with breakouts by product types with in each of these markets.

The report also provides a technical chapter in which we discuss the different kinds of plastics that exhibit shape memory effects and discuss which applications each is suited to.  This chapter includes a ten-year forecast breaking out the market by SMP material type, with breakouts by plastic type and activation type.  This chapter also includes an assessment of manufacturing technologies for SMPs, with a discussion of scalability and cost of the processes involved.

Companies profiled in this report include:  Aporo Biomedical, BASF, Cornerstone Research, Covestro, EndoShape, Evonik, Gemini Materials, MedShape, Mitsubishi, SMP Technologies, Spintech, Syzgy Memory Plastics and others. 

Highlights:    

By 2021, n-tech expects the revenue generated by medical/healthcare applications of SMPs to reach around $330 million.  This is an area where there are already many patents and early products covering coil release systems, intravenous syringes, stents, catheters, orthodontic implants, braces and splints, ophthalmic devices and sutures.  In the future, SMPs will find significant use in the neuronal probes and drug delivery systems.  While SMAs could be used in most of these applications, SMPs have much higher biocompatibility than SMAs, which confers considerable competitive advantages on SMP-enabled medical devices.

Medical and healthcare is the largest segment of the SMP market, closely followed by the automotive industry, which will purchase around $280 million in SMP devices in 2021.  SMP will primarily be used as a self-healing material for automobiles and trucks.  Among the products that SMPs are expected to enable here are SMP-based bumpers that will quickly recover from fender benders.  SMP/metal composites are also expected to provide similar self-healing capabilities in car bodies themselves.  Not all of the applications for SMP focus on self-healing capabilities; SMPs can also be used in airflow control devices and automatic chokes and tunable brackets.

Today's SMPs are mostly thermo-responsive, which makes them easy to restore with equipment as simple as a hair dryer.  Even, by 2021 n-tech expects almost half of the revenues in the SMP space to come from thermo-responsive SMPs.  However, by then there will also be sizable markets for photo-responsive SMPs and chemo-responsive SMPs as well as from SMP composites of various kinds.

About n-tech:  

n-tech Research is the rebrand of NanoMarkets.  Our firm is a recognized leader in industry analysis and forecasts in all of these areas.  Visit www.ntechresearch.com for a full listing of the firm's reports and other services.

SOURCE n-tech Research