Optics

High-refractive-index materials company Pixelligent closes $7.6M funding round

April 19, 2018

The funding will drive commercialization of its OLED and HD display enabling technology.

Pixelligent Technologies (Baltimore, MD), a high-index materials manufacturer for OLED and display markets, announced $7.6M in new funding to help further drive product commercialization and accelerate global customer adoption.

This round of funding includes strategic investments from two new strategic partners, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, a Japanese advanced materials manufacturer, and Kateeva, a leading provider of inkjet deposition equipment for the rapidly growing OLED and HD display markets. This latest investment was led by The Abell Foundation, with strong support from other Baltimore-based investors, including participation from TCP Venture Propel I and Propel II venture funds.

"The partnership with TOK will provide Pixelligent access to TOK's vast and highly respected formulation expertise, helping us to accelerate product development and customer adoptions on a global basis. As our leading display customers are also requesting that our materials are compatible with inkjet manufacturing equipment, the partnership with Kateeva is a critical step in accessing the expertise and knowledge required to meet this requirement," said Craig Bandes, president & CEO Pixelligent Technologies.

"We have been working with Pixelligent for a significant period of time now and feel confident that they have the best and most compatible high refractive index nanodispersions for improving the efficiency and performance for some very important optical device applications. Combining Pixelligent's PixClear materials with TOK’s world-class high-value added formulations will enable us to address many demanding applications in fast growing markets. These new materials will be formulated to enable application by a variety of methods--nanoimprint, photolithography and inkjet, to name a few--and will enable us to deliver the expanded functionality and performance to all of our customers demanding ultra-high refractive index coatings," said Katsumi Ohmori of TOK.

"Kateeva has been working with Pixelligent for the past 18 months as our OLED Display customers are actively looking for ways to improve the efficiency and performance of their displays. Incorporating Pixelligent's PixClear [trademark] nanoadditives to increase the refractive index of numerous layers inside the OLED display stack has the potential to deliver significant increases in light extraction and improve the overall performance of our customers' display products," said Alain Harrus, Kateeva's Chairman and CEO.

This latest financing builds on the momentum of the past twelve months, where the company dramatically increased its product development efforts in the rapidly growing OLED display, HD Display, and AR/VR markets, was named the 2017 Manufacturer of the Year by Frost & Sullivan, and increased it manufacturing yields by over 100%. Collectively the OLED Display, HD Display, AR/VR, and Solid State Lighting target markets represent an estimated $11 billion advanced materials sales in 2018 growing to nearly $18 billion by 2023.

SOURCE: Pixelligent; http://www.pixelligent.com/press-release/pixelligent-technologies-closes-7-6m-round-including-investment-from-industry-leaders-tokyo-ohka-kogyo-co-ltd-tok-and-kateeva-inc/

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.