Lyon, France-- A new report entitled Infrared Detector Market, Applications & Technology Trends from Yole Developpement says the overall infrared (IR) detector market will grow from $152 million dollars in 2010 to $286 million by 2016. New MEMS-based thermopile players and applications are the main trends boosting IR detector market growth identified by Yole Developpement's technology & market analyst, Yann de Charentenay.
Infrared detectors are used as motion detectors since decades in our daily life for lighting controls and alarms. This business is very important in terms of volume with 150 million units sold in 2010, but the price of the detectors is very low (less than $1). "Even if this motion detector business is mature, it will continue to grow at a significant rate (CAGR 2010-2016 in value: + 9 %) driven by the concern for energy savings," says Charentenay. In the coming years it will be increasingly used to automatically switch off and on lighting and home appliances such as HVAC and TVs.
Another common use of IR detectors is for non-contact temperature measurement for applications like human ear thermometer, or industrial pyrometers. Infrared detectors can also be used to detect gas, fire or to analyze materials. For those applications, the detector price can vary very much from single dollar to tens of dollars each. Here also, the business is driven by interest in IR detection: very robust non-contact measurement with a long lifetime. The technology behind those applications is quite mature and use small detectors from one to 4 IR sensitive elements that can be made with two technologies: pyroelectric sensors or thermopile sensors.
Large detectors (from 16 x 16 to 64 x 64 pixels) are developed to obtain advanced person detection functionalities meaning it is possible to locate the position of a person precisely in a space, to identify immobile persons (not possible with motion sensors) or to monitor large areas. The end markets will be for home automation, healthcare, or security businesses.
In this "large detector" market, several technologies will compete: pyroelectric, thermopile and microbolometers. Pyroelectric and thermopiles are well advanced thanks to their position on small detectors, but need still to increase their detector size. Microbolometer technology is leading the infrared imager business where image resolution is higher than 10,000 pixels and prices of several hundred dollars. Microbolometer players (Ulis, Flir, NEC, DRS) have started to develop or investigate large detector applications, but the low cost target will be a big challenge for those players. "Next year will be crucial to determine which technology will be the most adopted," says Wenbin Ding, technology & market analyst, MEMS Devices & Technology.
SOURCE: Yole Developpement; www.yole.fr/2012_press_releases.aspx
IMAGE: A new report from Yole Developpement says that the IR detector market will nearly double in the next five years. (Courtesy Yole Developpement)
