NASA selects Kopin for solar-cell development
Kopin (Taunton, MA) was selected for a $600,000 solar-cell development contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Washington, DC), the second phase of a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program to develop indium nitride (InN)-based quantum-dot solar-cell technology. Kopin’s partners on the project include groups at Virginia Tech and Magnolia Optical Technologies. “The advanced patent-pending solar-cell structure incorporating InN-based nanostructures can harness a very large fraction of the solar spectrum while minimizing the effects of high temperatures and high-energy radiation,” said Roger Welser, Kopin’s director of technology and new product development. “This technology will enable photovoltaic power systems of future NASA space exploration missions to operate in extreme environments with high temperature and radiation exposures.”
Production begins on organic photovoltaics
NexTech Solutions and FAS Holdings Group, doing business as “NexTechFAS” (Houston, TX) announced that a leading organic photovoltaic (OPV) materials and process development company ordered an Advantage Extrusion Coating system for integration into a pilot production line. This technology will be used for the development of solar panels in an industry that is predicted to grow to over $71 billion by 2012, according to Lux Research. NexTechFAS’s Advantage Series coating systems, used in the manufacturing of flat-panel displays, can precisely coat complex OPV materials, even at submicron thicknesses.
e2v wins satellite image-sensor contract
Imaging company e2v (Chelmsford, England) won a contract to supply imaging sensors to the Space Application Centre (SAC), part of the Indian Space Research Organisation, for its new satellites. The SAC will develop two satellites using e2v’s charge-coupled devices (CCDs). “These devices will be designed and manufactured in Grenoble, highlighting the synergies of the Grenoble facility with our traditional Chelmsford-based space imaging expertise and expanding the type of products e2v can supply to space agencies,” said Brian McAllister, general manager of Space and Scientific Imaging at e2v.
SID announces annual awards
The Society for Information Display (San Jose, CA) announced the winners of its 13th annual Display of the Year Awards:
Display Component of the Year
Gold Award: Luminus Devices PhlatLight LED backlight unit
Silver Award: Fujifilm WV-EA film
Display Device of the Year
Gold Award: Sony XEL-1 OLED TV
Silver Award: Samsung SDI 2.2-inch QVGA AMOLED display
Display Application of the Year
Gold Award: Apple iPhone
Silver Award: RealD stereoscopic 3-D cinema technology
Coop program focuses on flexible displays
The U.S. Display Consortium (USDC; San Jose, CA), a public/private partnership to develop the flexible electronics and displays industry supply chain, completed a cooperative R&D program with GE Global Research (Niskayuna, NY) to accelerate commercialization of flexible organic light-emitting-diode (OLED) displays. “GE demonstrated this new [thin-film encapsulation] technology in partnership with USDC member companies developing OLED displays and lighting,” said Mark Hartney, USDC’s CTO. “They have demonstrated equivalent performance to glass substrate barriers, as well as the capability of the barrier to withstand extreme flexing conditions. This will greatly enhance the industry’s knowledge base for encapsulating OLEDs on flexible substrates.”
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Also in the news . . .Also in the news . . .
Thanks to an international development with Chi Mei Optoelectronics (Taiwan) that enabled a low-cost display (one of the major cost drivers in any notebook personal computer), the One Laptop Per Child (www.laptop.org) project announced that its second-generation XO-2 laptop will be available in 2010 and will cost about $75. . . . Spectrum Detector (Lake Oswego, OR) president Don Dooley and John Lehman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder, CO) received a 2008 FLC Technology Transfer Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC; www.federallabs.org) for their efforts to commercialize optical TRAP detector technology. . . . LG Electronics, VIZIO, Luminus Devices, and Global Lighting Technologies (GLT) joined the liquid-crystal display LCD TV Association (Beaverton, OR), a global, not-for-profit marketing trade association chartered to inform, promote, improve and connect the entire LCD TV supply chain. . . . iSuppli (El Segundo, CA) forecasts that the global market for large-size liquid-crystal-display panels for monitor, notebook PC, and television panels will increase 17.7% in unit shipments in 2008.