The world has no substitute material for pricey indium and demand will continue to grow despite spot prices at or above $550/kilogram (for 99.99% pure ingot) due to rising global consumption for electronics products, according to Morikazu Ohno, a general manager in the electronics materials business unit of Nippon Mining in Tokyo.

He tells the Platt's Metals Week newsletter that he sees no threat of substitution for indium tin oxide (ITO), which is used for the production of flat panel displays mounted on flat-screen television, computers, and electronic gadgets. Films made of ITO are coated on glass substrates to allow transmission of light.

"There are laboratories that are looking into a new material to substitute ITO," Ohno says, "but there is no other material that can have the same clarity, the same electronics property as ITO." Ohno says that zinc oxide, talked of in the market as a potential substitute material for indium tin oxide, is likely to have limited appeal.

The major disadvantage of zinc oxide is its lower transmission efficiency compared with ITO. "When you sputter the material on the substrate, it takes longer due to its inferior transmission property," he says, "so there are efforts to improve it, like by combining aluminum with zinc oxide" but these are costly processes.

Japanese market research firm DisplaySearch is projecting a 48% year-on-year growth for display panels for flat televisions this year. Global shipments of flat panels in 2007 are forecast at 81.2 million units, up 48% year on year.