Cryocooler Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

Market Overview

The Cryocooler market was valued at USD 2.73 billion in 2020 and expected to reach USD 4.11 billion by 2026 and grow at a CAGR of 7.12% over the forecast period (2021 - 2026). There are primarily five types of common cryocoolers, each with different operating principles, but they all rely on compression and expansion of gas to bring about temperature changes.

• Cryocoolers are used extensively in defense applications, majorly for the cooling of infrared focal planes. Quite specifically, cryocoolers are typically used to cool intrinsic semiconductor type focal planes for mid-wave infrared (nominally 3-5-micron wavelength) and longwave infrared (nominally 9-12 micron) sensors.
• A significant number of improvements to cryocoolers have occurred in the past two decades, which, in turn, have allowed many more applications of cryogenics to flourish and find their way into the marketplace.
• Cooling of infrared and visible cameras continue to provide opportunities for small cryocoolers. While the recent years have witnessed a shift from cooled to un-cooled IR cameras, a market remains for high-performance infrared imagers cooled by small Stirling cycle cryocoolers.
• One of the significant developments in cryocooler design is the use of rare-earth materials as regenerator matrix materials. These materials exhibit large peaks in specific heat in the 4K to 20K range and result in good regenerator performance at these temperatures.

Scope of the Report

The cryocooler is a device that provides active cooling of something down to cryogenic temperatures. As per the Cryogenic Society of America Inc., a cryogenic cooler or a cryocooler is designed to allow active cooling at temperatures of about -150 degrees Celsius or colder. They use the flow of gas inside closed tubes, which absorbs the temperature and radiates it outside. The device generally uses helium, hydrogen, or a mixture of gases of this purpose. 

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Key Market Trends

Healthcare is Expected to Hold a Significant Share

• In the healthcare sector, increasing demand for cryocoolers is attributed to its extensive utilization in proton therapy, MRI systems, cryosurgery, and liquefaction of oxygen in hospitals. Proton therapy is a kind of particle therapy that directs proton beams at cancer cells with precision. Many high-powered magnets used in proton therapy are superconducting magnets and need to be cooled to liquid helium temperatures, using cryocoolers.
• Cancer is one of the deadly diseases claiming lives across the world. For instance, as per the National Cancer Institute, in 2018, an estimated 1,735,350 new cancer cases were diagnosed in the United States and 609,640 people died from the disease. Many cancer treatment centers and hospitals are investing in, or consider investing in this life-saving technology. This, in turn, is expected to impact the market demand over the forecast period.
• The Union Finance Minister of India announced various measures to boost the healthcare sector as a part of the first full-term budget of the second term of the Government presented in the Parliament. With an objective to enhance healthcare infrastructure, the government allocated INR 690 billion (Union Budget 2020-2021) for the healthcare sector.
• Another emerging commercial use of cryocoolers is in cooling high-temperature superconducting filters for cellular telephone base stations. Presently, four companies in the United States offer such systems (Conductus, Superconducting Technologies Inc., Spectral Solutions Inc., and Illinois Superconductor). These superconducting receivers use thin-film or thick-film High-Temperature Superconducting (HTS) filters to provide very narrow band-reject filters or bandpass filters with very steep skirts. Combined with cryogenically cooled low-noise amplifiers, these receivers allow a base station to either handle more calls, hear a handset further away, improve call quality, or a combination of these.

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