Three-Five and DuPont team up on OLEDs
Three-Five Systems (Tempe, AZ) has teamed up with DuPont Displays (San Jose, CA) to form Three-D OLED LLC, a joint venture that will design, assemble, and market organic-light-emitting-diode (OLED) display modules to original equipment manufacturers worldwide. The venture is focusing on glass-substrate, passive-matrix polymer OLED displays intended for use in handheld devices such as cell phones, pocket personal computers, and personal digital assistants. Headquartered in Tempe, AZ, Three-D OLED plans to use the glass-panel output of a new high-volume manufacturing plant in Taiwan. The OLED display modules will be assembled at Three-Five's facilities located in Beijing, China, and Manila, the Philippines. The microdisplay-based engine will be designed with Three-Five's microdisplay technology, optics built by Advanced Digital Optics (ADO; Westlake Village, CA), a color management system from ColorLink Inc. (Boulder, CO), and an illumination system from Cogent Light Technologies (Santa Clarita, CA).
Advanced Research Technologies gets $9.5 million toward imager
Advanced Research Technologies (Saint-Laurent, Canada), a developer of laser and thermal-imaging technologies in the medical and the electronics sectors, has announced that prominent US-based fund manager OppenheimerFunds will invest US $7.5 million in a private placement of common shares by the company. BioCapital Biotechnology and Healthcare Fund, a Canadian mutual funds company, has also committed to invest US $2 million in a private placement offering. The proceeds will be used as working capital to advance development of a breast-cancer laser-imaging device that may replace x-rays.
Scottish group attracts business interest, $1-million grant for organic display
The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) has awarded a US $966,839 (£694,000) grant to investigate light-emitting organic semiconductors to a group at the University of St. Andrews (Fife, Scotland). The award was made to the team at the university's Organic Semiconductor Interdisciplinary Research Facility. "Organic semiconductors are flexible, low-cost, versatile, plastic-like materials that are opening exciting new directions for electronics," says Ifor Samuel, the team's director. "In a few years it will be possible to make television screens that can be rolled up, and light-emitting clothing." The facility has attracted interest from Scottish businesses, as it is expected that the technology will benefit the Scottish economy. According to the SHEFC, this industry is expected to explode over the next five years and to be worth billions of dollars within a decade. Samuel anticipates that the materials could also be featured in solar-power applications and will have a major impact on the Scottish semiconductor and optoelectronics industries.
Presstek lays off employees at subsidiary
Presstek (Hudson, NH) has announced plans to streamline its Tucson, AZ-based LaserTel subsidiary due to the cancellation of a large diode order by an unnamed telecom customer. The move will involve layoffs in Arizona. Presstek created LaserTel in April 2000 to firm up its supply of laser diodes. The company develops digital laser-imaging and chemistry-free plate technologies for the printing and graphic arts industries.
Also in the news . . .
Mauna Kea Infrared LLC (Hilo, HI) has received a $4.18 million federal grant to build a coronographic camera to image extrasolar planetary systems. . . . IBM (Armonk, NY) introduced what it bills as the world's highest-resolution flat-panel monitor, with 200 pixels per inch and more than 9 million pixels total on its 22.2-inch screen . . . . Philips Components (Sunnyvale, CA), a division of Royal Philips Electronics (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) have signed a memorandum of understanding for the supply of low-temperature, poly-silicon, active-matrix liquid-crystal displays. . . . Hitachi Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) announced that its Digital Media Group has established a new company, Hitachi Fujian Digital Media Company Ltd., in China's Fujian Province in response to expanding demand for projection televisions in China.
John Wallace