Lithography system targets LCoS displays
S.E.T. Smart Equipment Technology (Saint Jeoire, France), a supplier of die-to-die, die-to-wafer bonding and nanoimprint lithography solutions, installed a Kadett High Accuracy Placement and Bonding system at Cambridge University (Cambridge, England), department of Engineering, thanks to a grant from Cambridge Integrated Knowledge Centre for various R&D applications and for the assembly of liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCoS) devices using UV-cured adhesive. An alternative technology to liquid-crystal displays or plasma for projection television, LCoS is a reflective microdisplay using a silicon backplane. It is less pixilated because the circuitry is behind the pixel and enables much higher-resolution images at a lower cost.
Flexible displays to reach $2.8 billion by 2013
Due to the arrival of several pocketsize e-readers and other flexible display products, iSuppli (El Segundo, CA) forecasts that the total flexible display market will reach $2.8 billion by 2013, a 35× increase from about $80 million in 2007. Rising shipments of flexible displays are being enabled by the establishment of several batch and roll-to-roll manufacturing facilities. “Flexible displays are intuitively appealing to end users and product designers because of their ruggedness, thinness, light weight, and novelty,” said Jennifer Colegrove, senior analyst for emerging displays at iSuppli.
Navigation displays to double by 2010
According to iSuppli, unit shipments of small/medium liquid-crystal device (LCD) displays for portable navigation devices (PNDs; GPS-enabled handheld devices that are used for vehicle navigation) are expected to double from 2007 to 2010, thanks to declining prices, rising demand, and expanding production capacity. The market for small/medium LCDs for PNDs will grow to 60.2 million units in 2010, nearly double the 30.6 million units in 2007. By 2012, PND LCD shipments will rise to 68 million units, expanding at a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% from 2007. iSuppli defines small/medium displays as those having a diagonal dimension of less than 10 in.
Nextreme partners for SWIR development
Thermal- and power-management products provider Nextreme Thermal Solutions (Durham, NC) and Princeton Lightwave (Cranbury, NJ), developer of short-wave-infrared (SWIR) sensors and lasers for the defense industry, entered into an agreement to jointly develop a SWIR focal-plane sensor using extremely efficient thermoelectric cooling. The solution is based on Nextreme’s unique thermal bump technology and Princeton Lightwave’s indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) focal-plane arrays, and should dramatically reduce power consumption and weight, and improve overall performance toward large-scale deployment of SWIR sensors for night-vision systems.
Prism Solar to produce holographic film
At Intersolar 2008 in Munich, Germany, Prism Solar Technologies (Lake Katrine, NY) announced that it would be receiving the first equipment for its 60 MW holographic film production line. The equipment will undergo testing and tuning at its Tucson, AZ, facility before it goes into production in New York later this year. “This is the day we’ve been waiting for,” said Rick Lewandowski, Prism Solar’s CEO. “Our optics will be a fulcrum for the industry.” In addition to its R&D facility in Tucson, Prism recently opened offices in Lake Katrine, NY, and expects to begin manufacturing and shipping its holographic planar concentrator film by the end of this year.
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Also in the news . . .
Electrophysics (Fairfield, NJ) entered into an agreement with Opgal Optronics Industries (Karmiel, Israel) to distribute Opgal’s line of infrared (IR) imaging products. . . . The U.S. Display Consortium (USDC; San Jose, CA), chartered with developing the flexible electronics and displays industry supply chain, in a joint-development project with printed organic electronics company Plextronics (Pittsburgh, PA), produced a new hole-injection-layer (HIL) technology to enable commercialization of high-performance, low-cost, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays. . . . SPIE installed a new solar-electric system on the roof of its Bellingham, WA, headquarters. . . . Just after the May earthquake in Sichuan, China, a Leica Geosystems’ (Heerbrugg, Switzerland) airborne digital sensor was dispatched by Chinese officials and it detected an SOS signal on a rooftop, enabling aid to be sent to 700 stranded villagers. . . . Nikon Instruments (Melville, NY) and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine (Chicago, IL) opened a collaborative core microscopy imaging center called The Northwestern Nikon Imaging Center for ongoing biomedical research. . . . The Swiss-based Paul Scherrer Institute successfully tested Zecotek Photonics’ (Vancouver, BC, Canada) proprietary micropixel avalanche photodiodes in trials for its next-generation positron emission tomography medical-imaging program.