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Flexible Displays 2007 February 6 – 8, 2007 This conference is under the USDC (US Display Consortium) and it is the 6th annual event with an attendance of 340. There is a small exhibition, poster papers, invited papers and no keynote. The paper quality is excellent and the sessions have good time discipline. The audience is well informed on the topics, which makes for excellent questions and dialog. Flexible electronics is a hot topic in an emerging market. This is the best event we have seen to cover the many aspects of the market and technology. Display Search Perspective on Displays Barry Young, SVP of DisplaySearch, gave the opening presentation. Consistent with the DisplaySearch presentations it was laden with numbers and an assessment of the market. Barry opened on an introspective note that we are at the end of history of the display industry. The end of 2006 marked a shift where the high growth rates have changed to declining growth and a cyclic buying pattern consistent with consumer electronics. At the same time prices should be stabilizing. Barry cited the following:
The First Rollable Display Product Here at this event and at 3GSM, Polymervision announced a mobile device which has a roll out display. The presentation was given by Karl McGoldrick, CEO, Polymervision, a spinout from Philips. The key points made include.
E Ink Rolls As one of the few flexible electronics companies which can claim market success, E Ink is riding on rising unit shipments. In spite of the fact that their products are monochrome, with limited gray scale, the advantage of very low power and flexibility are two key attributes. Michael McCreary, VP Research and Advanced Development described the many projects which E Ink is involved.
It was further stated that plastic substrate AM TFT displays will be in volume production n 2007. Motorola Focuses on Printable Electronics Daniel Gamota, Motorola, outlined the Motorola efforts in printed electronics. Key points made included.
USDC Launches Major Effort to Put the US In the Race for Flexible Electronics Michael Ciesinski, President of USDC, announced an effort called the FPO (Flexible, Printed and Organic) initiative. This is to support R&D, manufacturing and the intellectual infrastructure in FPO. Europe has already begun research in 5 projects at over $63m and more projects are expected. Michael stated this is a transformational technology with many benefits to society. Plastic Logic Bets on e-books Plastic Logic has gotten significant news coverage about closing a $100m round of investment that will be used to fund the building of a fabrication facility for flexible displays. It then becomes the first company to go into production. The facility will be built in Dresden, Germany with full production on line in mid-2008. Given the investment the company has made the decision to focus on e books. In the presentation it was claimed that the traditional view of what consumers want on e books is incorrect. Based on research done by Plastic Logic and its partners the value proposition for consumers does not look like e books as we typically see them today. The company would not provide more details. To support its belief that e books is the market to initially focus on it showed market research that there would be 40m units sold by 2010. The display technology being used is again e ink. Dupont Claims Significant Performance in Organic Transistors with Carbon Nanotubes Graciela Blanchet described the research being done at Dupont in support of electronics printing. The first area included the types of printing technologies required to support R2R printing at 1 – 5 micro line width. Dupont has investigated metallic inks for the creation of RFID tags, They have created a concept called “pick-up stick transistor” which combines an organic transistor with carbon nanotubes. It was claimed this improved the electron mobility by a factor of 100. Semprius Uses Single Crystal Silicon in Flexible Electronics Semprius has taken a different approach to flexibility by advocating the use of single crystal silicon which is thin enough that it can be flexed. The key to its technology is the development of transfer printing. It has worked with Si, GaAs, GaN and InP semiconductors. WAVE Comments The WAVE attended one earlier conference on flexible circuits and displays. It was immediately obvious that this technology is likely to create a major inflection point. This conference drove that assessment all the more. Seldom does one have the chance to watch a major change in technology as it emerges – typically we see the products which are usually years removed from the major event. Certainly the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs comes to mind and the first product which the public could experience it was the Sony transistor radio. The essence of this technology is the ability to create electronics on a mass scale not yet seen. There is much discussion of roll-to-roll (R2R) printing of circuits but how this is accomplished is not the issue. Electronics can be literally everywhere at very low cost. One of the applications is in RFID tags on everything which cost only 1 cent. The 6th Annual Flexible Displays & Microelectronics Conference was superb in that it brought the major players together and who gave excellent presentations. It was a sample of the difficult task which lies ahead but also the promise.
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