While the snow begins to fly across parts of North America, the Converting Quarterly staff is putting the finishing touches on our 2012 Quarter 1 issue, which features a Market and Technical Focus on Thin-Film Photovoltaics and Thin-Film Batteries. We appreciate your enthusiastic response to our first full year of print and online publishing. With more than 18,000 print and digital-edition subscribers, Converting Quarterly has rapidly become a standard for the global web-processing and finishing industry.

Don’t miss these articles and more in the upcoming issue…

• Photovoltaics / Batteries Market Forecasts: With an astounding growth rate of 55 percent a year through 2015, thin-film photovoltaics will soon represent one-third of all solar-energy modules shipped worldwide. Likewise, the global market for thin-film batteries is projected to grow 46 percent annually, reaching sales of $900 million by 2016. These two breakthrough fields offer tremendous new opportunities to manufacture and sell high-value, converted materials to a broad range of end-user customers.
• Roll-to-Roll Thin-Film Battery Manufacturing: A series of technical articles will cover new processes to increase throughput, decrease complexity, improve performance or provide a combination of all three benefits in R2R thin-film battery converting. Applying multilayer-coating technologies in a cleanroom environment, for example, is ideally suited to such fuel-cell products as well as touchscreens, displays and flexible electronics.
• 2011 Matteucci Award Technical Papers: The winning topics include (Vacuum Web Coating) “Flexible Glass Substrates for Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing” by Sean Garner of Corning, Inc.; and (Web Coating) “Game-Changing Surface Pre-Treatment Technology” by Rory Wolf of Enercon Industries Corp.
• Web-Coating Technical Series: Along with a look at today’s custom microsphere adhesives and their new applications for packaging, labels and tapes, a second web-coating technical paper details innovations behind digital-inkjet applications for spot coating. And Dr. Edward Cohen wraps up his series on Web-Coating Defects with help in controlling dryer defects.
• Spring 2012 Event Previews: It’s going to be a busy couple of months. Get ready with our attendee checklist for the PLGA Global Operational Conference, Converters Expo, FFTA Forum & INFO*FLEX, NPE & ANTEC, CPP EXPO, 
SVC TechCon and drupa 2012.
• Five Technical Q&A Columns: Get the answers to questions on dealing with surface roughness in the vacuum-deposition process; the basics of coextrusion; options for multilayer-coated products; the effects of male knife-blade regrind; and the best cover hardness for a nipped roller.