Uni-Pixel execs discuss the company's progress at SID Display Week 2009
Top executives from Uni-Pixel (The Woodlands, TX), the developer of a color display technology called time-multiplexed optical shutter (TMOS), will share details of the company's recent progress at The Society of Information Displays' Display Week Symposium, Seminar, and Exhibition (May 31 to June 5, 2009; San Antonio, TX). James Tassone, Uni-Pixel's CFO, will participate in an executive roundtable during the SID Business Conference on Monday, June 1, and Reed Killion, the company's president and CEO, will speak at the SID Investment Conference on Tuesday, June 2.
Rather than the usual spatial additive color (adjacent red, green, and blue pixels) produced by liquid-crystal displays, organic-LED displays, and plasma displays (not to mention the old cathode-ray tubes), TMOS displays rely on temporal additive color, where each pixel flashes sequentially and repeatedly in red, blue, and green. Each red-green-blue cycle occurs quickly enough that the eye sees a single color, with the color and intensity adjusted by tailoring the length of each flash. Full color and intensity gamuts can be displayed.
The technology behind the display is quite different from any other. Sequentially colored light is channeled from sources at the edge of the display to the pixels via waveguides through total internal reflection. A membrane above each pixel can be moved, via Coulomb attraction within a variable-capacitor structure, into or out of contact with the waveguide. When the membrane contacts the waveguide, light escapes through frustrated total internal reflection. The process is rapid and free of any mechanical wear.
In addition, Uni-Pixel has created a finger-print-resistant film (Opcuity FPR), which is now ready to enter the market, says Killion. In February of this year, Uni-Pixel entered into a TMOS joint-development agreement with Samsung Electronics of Korea.
"We have also developed a unique conductor patterning capability using an inkjet process that has a wide range of applications," says Killion. "We look forward to sharing the progress we've made in the past year in further detail during SID."
Tassone will participate in the "Competing with TFT LCD: OLED, MEMS and Other Alternatives" session Monday, June 1 from 1:50 p.m. to 2:35 p.m. Joining representatives from OLED and MEMS-based display developers, this roundtable will discuss the challenges and opportunities of "innovating around" TFT-LCD, by developing display technologies with the promise of some combination of lower manufacturing cost and higher performance.
Killion will present "UniPixel Update on TMOS and Opcuity Performance Engineered Films" on Tuesday, June 2 at 12:20 p.m. during the Investor Conference. During his presentation he will discuss the advantages of TMOS display technology and the utilization of existing LCD panel manufacturing infrastructure to produce and commercialize TMOS displays. He will also provide an overview on the multiple sources of revenue and products the TMOS development effort has produced with the Opcuity performance-engineered-film platform that has been developed in the pursuit of TMOS, including Opcuity FPR (which is sampling now and expected to start volume production beginning early third quarter 2009).

John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.