Carl Zeiss strengthens microimaging portfolio
Biomedical microscopic imaging deep inside living tissue with unprecedented clarity could become routine and widely available with the signing of technology-transfer and collaborative-research agreements by Carl Zeiss (Jena, Germany) and CCTEC, the technology, enterprise, and commercialization arm of Cornell University (Ithaca, NY).
The license for two-photon laser microscopy (also known as multiphoton microscopy and protected by patents dating back to 1991) has been transferred from Bio-Rad Laboratories (Hercules, CA) to Carl Zeiss. Bio-Rad sold its confocal microscopy business to Carl Zeiss effective June 1. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Additionally, Carl Zeiss has signed collaboration and development agreements with Cornell and with multiphoton microscopy co-inventor Watt Webb, director of the National Institutes of Health–funded Developmental Resource for Biophysical Imaging and Opto-electronics. Co-inventor Winfied Denk is a director of Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Biomedical Optics.
UDC wins mobile-display contract for flexible OLEDs
Universal Display (UDC; Ewing, NJ), a developer of organic light-emitting-device (OLED) technologies for flat-panel displays, lighting, and other optoelectronic applications, announced that it has been awarded an initial subcontract from L-3 Communications Display Systems (L-3 Display Systems; Alpharetta, GA), a supplier of display systems for military uses, to develop advanced mobile communications technology with enhanced video capabilities enabled by UDC's low-power-consumption, flexible-OLED technology for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Universal Display received an $825,000 subcontract from L-3 Display Systems to further develop aspects of its flexible-OLED-display technology.
During this initial program, UDC will develop and demonstrate a full-color, active-matrix flexible-OLED-display prototype built on metal foil. The use of metal-foil substrate can lead to a rollable, retractable, and rugged display with a small and lightweight form factor for use in portable communication devices. L-3 Display Systems will develop and deliver a demonstration communications prototype integrating its advanced communications components with UDC's full-color FOLED display prototype.
Polatechno and Moxtek plan capacity expansion
Polatechno (Niigata, Japan) and Moxtek (Orem, UT) have announced the first phase of their capacity-expansion plans for one of their products—polarizers and polarizing beamsplitters for liquid-crystal projection displays. Polatechno acquired Moxtek earlier this year. This first phase of expansion will take place in the existing Moxtek facility and will enable Moxtek to triple current capacity for its projection-display components by the second quarter of 2005. Startup for the additional capacity is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2004. Moxtek's polarizers and beamsplitters are used in liquid-crystal projection displays of two types: high-temperature polysilicon (HTPS) and liquid-crystal on silicon (LCOS).
Collaboration to roll out electronic paper
SiPix (Fremont, CA), developer and manufacturer of a fully scalable electronic paper compatible with all display types has entered into an agreement with Polymer Vision, a venture in the Technology Incubator of Philips Electronics (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). SiPix will be working with Polymer Vision to jointly develop a rollable, flexible electronic display consisting of SiPix's Microcup Electrophoretic Film (EPF) and Philips' extremely thin and flexible TFT backplane. The goal is to create the thinnest, most flexible, durable and rollable display demonstrated to date, to store a large screen within a small device.
Also in the news . . .
Sumitomo (Tokyo, Japan) has agreed to purchase $160 million of LED products from Cree (Durham, NC) during Cree's fiscal year ending June 2005. As part of the agreement, Cree and Sumitomo also announced the extension of the current distributorship relationship through Cree's fiscal year ending June 2007. . . . Olumpus Europe (Hamburg, Germany) acquired Soft Imaging system (Munster, Germany) and its subsidiaries. Soft Imaging is a provider of software and hardware solutions for digital imaging that has worked with Olympus for many years in the light-optical microscopy market. . . . Universal Display (UDC; Ewing, NJ), announced the achievement of record-breaking power efficiencies in a white OLED using its phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) technology. In a joint paper with Toyota Industries delivered at the 2004 Society for Information Display Conference in Seattle, WA, in May, UDC reported a white PHOLED device with a luminous efficiency of 38 cd/A and a power efficiency of 18.4 lm/W at 1000 cd/m2.