The smart coatings market will grow from around $610 million in 2015 to $5.8 billion in 2020. Self-healing, self-assembling and self-cleaning coatings are reportedly about to reach lifetimes and performance levels never seen before. As a result, the next generation of these materials will serve much larger markets. The market for self-healing coatings to reach $530 million by 2020.

Analysis is also seeing important R&D programs in the smart coatings space coming to fruition that will lead to new smart coatings products and product classes. Multilayer coatings are seen as the simplest way to develop multifunctional coatings. In the future, a smart coating might provide photovoltaic energy generation with inherent self-repair and self-cleaning capabilities.

The commercial potential for smart coatings in the electronics sector has grown in the past year because of the Internet of Things. A smart coating that is also a sensor would likely be a more cost-effective way to create a wide-area sensing panel than a large array of sensing devices. Revenues from sales of smart coatings into the electronics sector are expected to reach $225 million in 2020.

In this new environment, smart coatings firms will have to tell different marketing stories, such as repositioning self-dimming coatings for windows so that they become about aesthetics and mood lighting, not energy saving.

The analysis provides forecasts on various market sectors for smart coatings as for instance, medical, naval and military applications. The experts expect the sectors will be generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and will therefore be well worth a look by a variety of firms looking for new opportunities in the materials space. At the present time, applications fall primarily into the medical and construction/architecture sector.