Cognex acquires DVT
Cognex (Natick, MA), which supplies machine-vision systems, has acquired DVT (Duluth, GA), a privately held vision-sensor company. Cognex purchased all of the outstanding shares of DVT for approximately $115 million, consisting of a cash payment of $104 million made at the closing and a final payment of up to an additional $11 million in cash to be paid at the end of a one-year escrow period.
Cognex plans to maintain operations at DVT’s facility in Georgia, and to continue selling and supporting DVT’s vision products through DVT’s existing third-party distribution channel.
DVT provides low-cost, easy-to-use vision sensors, which it sells primarily to the fast-growing factory-floor segment of the machine-vision business.
Motorola debuts nano emissive display
Leveraging its expertise in carbon nanotube technology (CNT), Motorola Labs (Schaumburg, IL) has developed a 5-in. nano emissive display (NED) prototype that promises better performance features and lower manufacturing costs than competing technologies used in flat-panel displays.
Motorola has 160 U.S. patents and 15 years of experience in CNT and flat-panel-display technology, which the company says enabled researchers at Motorola Labs to develop a proprietary, scalable technique for growing CNTs directly on glass. Unlike existing methods of applying CNTs to the cathode using an organic paste, the Motorola method uses chemical-vapor deposition (CVD) with fewer processing steps, lower manufacturing costs, and better electron emission performance than CNT paste processes.
GE Global Research awarded second R&D contract from USDC
The United States Display Consortium (USDC; San Jose, CA) signed a $1.96 million R&D contract with GE Global Research (Niskayuna, NY). The purpose of the cost-shared project is to transfer GE’s graded barrier technology from a batch process to a roll-to-roll (R2R) process. The USDC (San Jose, CA) is a public/private partnership chartered with developing the flat-panel-display industry supply chain.
Under its first USDC contract, GE Global Research developed and evaluated a high-temperature LEXAN plastic substrate film and transparent coating system that provides a high-resistance permeation barrier to oxygen, moisture, and chemicals both in the manufacturing and during lifetime use of flexible organic light-emitting-diode (OLED) displays and backplane microelectronics.
This next phase of the GE R&D project will last approximately two years. Development of an effective, optically transparent, barrier coating in a R2R process will be accomplished by evaluating the compatibility of GE’s barrier technology with different polymer substrates and fabrication methods.
Dow Corning wins USDC OLED contract
A new United States Display Consortium (USDC; San Jose, CA) R&D contract awarded to Dow Corning (Midland, MI) will focus on developing novel hole injection materials (HIM) for production of higher-efficiency organic light-emitting-diode devices (OLED) suitable for high-definition displays. The USDC and Dow Corning will equally share the $2.39 million development cost.
Mediscience developing cancer-detection map
Mediscience Technology (Cherry Hill, NJ) is developing an adjunctive instrument called the Cancer Detection (CD) Map, to facilitate the acquisition of fluorescence images from surgical breast specimens (ex vivo) following lumpectomies and surgical procedures.
The CD-Map is a UV/visible fluorescence imaging system designed to gain image emission from native fluorophors in tissue. A tunable light source and movable filters permit the acquisition of images at multiple combinations of emission and excitation wavelengths.
Also in the news . . .
Former founding president of Kodak Display Products, Leslie G. Polgar, is the new CEO of CRLO Displays (Dalgety Bay, Scotland). CRLO Displays was formed in September 2004 with $19 million in new funding; its ferroelectric liquid-crystal-on silicon (FLCOS) technology is currently in use for advanced simulation and training systems. . . . Samsung SDI (Seoul, South Korea) signed an OLED patent license agreement with Universal Display (Ewing, NJ) that paves the way for Samsung SDI to integrate Universal Display’s proprietary OLED technologies into Samsung SDI’s active matrix OLED display products. . . . Dentrix Dental Systems (American Fork, UT) has placed a US$5.7 million (£3.0 million) dental CCD order with e2v technologies (Essex, England) for the continued supply of digital intra-oral dental X-ray sensors, delivery of which will commence in June 2005. . . . Cedip Infrared Systems (Croissy-Beaubourg, France), specialists in thermal-IR camera systems, has opened a new subsidiary company-Cedip Infrared Systems Ltd.-to increase support to and further develop its growing base of customers in the U.K.