There is huge market space for OCA optical adhesive and my country’s high-end competitiveness needs to be improved

OCA optical adhesive is a special adhesive with the advantages of colorless transparency, high light transmittance, high bonding strength, room temperature curing, small curing shrinkage, weather resistance, water resistance, high temperature resistance, UV resistance, and resistance to yellowing. OCA optical adhesives mainly include resistive and capacitive products, which are mainly used in the field of bonding transparent optical components. The middle is OCA optical adhesive, and the upper and lower layers are optical release films. It can produce a solid-state optical double-sided tape with a transparency of more than 90%, which is called OCA optical adhesive film.

OCA optical adhesive can be widely used in the manufacturing of electronic paper, display panels, touch screens, projection screens, optical lenses, etc. It can be used not only in the field of consumer electronics, but also in the fields of aerospace and military equipment. Panels are an important downstream market for OCA optical adhesives, especially in touch screen manufacturing. They are the best-performing adhesives and are indispensable. Applied in the field of panels, OCA optical adhesive can reduce glare and light loss, improve transmittance, brightness and contrast, reduce energy consumption, and can realize borderless panels and expand the visible area of ​​the panel.

Benefiting from the continuous expansion of the scale of global electronic product production, the variety of electronic products equipped with screens continues to increase, and global display panel production continues to grow. In 2021, global display panel production will reach 254 million square meters. The camera functions of global smartphones continue to improve, coupled with the demand in smart cars, wearable smart devices, security monitoring and other fields, the optical lens market continues to expand. In 2021, the global optical lens market will reach US$7.5 billion. Against this background, the global OCA optical adhesive market is developing well.

According to the “China OCA Optical Adhesive Industry Application Market Demand and Development Opportunities Research Report 2022-2027” released by the Industrial Research Center, In 2021, the global OCA optical adhesive market size will be approximately US$1.37 billion, with an average annual compound growth rate of 7.6% from 2016 to 2021. China is the world’s largest producer of electronic products, with huge output of smartphones, computers, etc., rapid growth in output of wearable devices, smart homes, etc., combined with the development of intelligent automobiles and demand for security monitoring, the domestic production capacity of display panels and optical lenses continues to expand. It is beneficial to the development of OCA optical adhesive industry.

Globally, the leading manufacturers of OCA optical adhesives are mainly concentrated in the United States and Japan. 3M of the United States and Mitsubishi of Japan have a large market share, followed by South Korea, with Samsung being the representative company. In comparison, my country’s OCA optical adhesive industry has weak core competitiveness, mainly produces mid-to-low-end products, and has a small share of the global market. Taking the OCA optical adhesive market for panels as an example, the global market is occupied by foreign companies, with a total market share of more than 80%. In particular, foreign companies in the high-end market have a monopoly.

Industry analysts said that at this stage, my country’s main OCA optical adhesive manufacturers include Fanset, Sticky, Nanjing Huixin, Fuyin Group, Jiayun New Materials, Anjie Technology, etc. In the early days, my country’s demand for OCA optical adhesives relied on imports. With the development of the panel industry, especially the growth of the touch screen industry, in order to avoid key materials being stuck, my country’s independent research and development of OCA optical adhesives has accelerated, and is gradually replacing imported products in some application fields. In the future, the focus of the development of my country’s OCA optical adhesive industry will be to enhance the competitiveness of the high-end market.