news archive
Novaled
Secures €5.75 Million in First-round Financing
Dresden,
Germany, May 14 - Novaled GmbH, which recently spun off from
the Technical University of Dresden and the Fraunhofer
Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) to develop
second-generation organic-light-emitting-diode (OLED)
technology, announced today that it has secured €5.75
million in first-round financing from a consortium of
international investors led by venture capital firms
TechnoStart and TechFund Capital Europe. Additional
investors include Dresden Fonds, tbg, and Thomson, the media
services and equipment group. Proceeds from the investment
will be used to develop and bring to the market the next
generation of OLED display technologies based on
small-molecule organic materials.
The vision of
Novaled is to realize second-generation OLED displays, whose
key features are extremely low operating voltage and high
power efficiency resulting from the incorporation of doped
charge-carrier transport layers and efficient in-line
manufacturing. The low operating voltage opens up new
possibilities for low-power driving circuitry and OLED
layout, and the doping technology allows the actual OLED
structure to become almost independent of substrate
properties. It is therefore possible to incorporate
high-efficiency, long-lifetime OLEDs on nearly any
substrate, including glass and printed circuit boards.
Novaled is
offering licenses to its customers licenses together with
the know-how for developing their existing OLED technology
into the next generation, a company announcement said, and
Novaled also offers customized display structures for uses
from pure display applications to lighting and signs. Jan
Blochwitz-Nimoth, founding CEO of Novaled, said, "Our
technology and expertise, covering the fields of both base
technology and process, could further enable the setting up
of production capabilities for very flat displays in Europe,
and especially the Dresden area. In that respect we got the
support from the State of Saxony, which contributes to the
dynamism of a region that already hosts production units
from companies like Infineon or AMD."
Information: www.novaled.com.
Barco to
Supply Flat Touch-screen Displays for Airbus A380 Test
Flight Program
Kortrijk,
Belgium, May 14 - Airbus has awarded Barco a contract for
the delivery of 18-inch MRFD246 Modular Rugged Flat Displays
with SAW touch screen and 20.1-inch RFD251/II Rugged Flat
Panel Displays to be used in the A380 test flight program.
The displays will be integrated into testing consoles to
visualize vital test data aboard the A380, the largest
commercial airliner in the world.
The MRFD246
is an 18-inch, 1280x1024, Modular Rugged Flat Display (MRFD),
combining a display module with a display-control module
connected by a single cable. The MRFD's modular concept
ensures a low-risk COTS management solution with special
attention for obsolescence issues. The display incorporates
a front-bonded LCD panel for inherent ruggedization and
superior optical performance.
The RFD
251/II is a 20.1-inch Rugged Flat Display with a resolution
of 1280x1024 that offers superior operational and optical
performance in harsh environments, the company said. The
display incorporates front bonding and automatic phase, has
a shop-replaceable backlight tray, and can be remotely
controlled via a serial link.
Airbus opted
for Barco's MRFD and RFD visualization solutions because of
their ptimum performance and reliability in highly demanding
airborne applications, the company said. The displays will
be integrated into the aircraft's fuselage to visualize
vital system data, primary flight parameters, cockpit
activity, and system settings for onboard test engineers.
Airbus will
begin receiving deliveries in the second quarter of this
year with final shipments to be delivered in the second
quarter of 2004.
Information: www.barco.com.
Osram
Introduces Pictiva™ Brand Name For OLED Products
San Jose,
California, May 13 - Osram Opto Semiconductors today
announced the brand name for its organic
light-emitting-diode (OLED) products and technology. The
brand, Pictivaä, was chosen to symbolize visual expression
through pictures.
The
advantages of OLED technology - including video
capabilities, a wide viewing angle, and a thin profile -
"will assist engineers in expanding their offerings
into new markets while breathing new life into existing
applications," said Joseph Carr, OLED business unit
head, Osram Opto Semiconductors.
Osram holds a
license from Cambridge Display Technology to manufacture and
sell polymer light emitting displays. Osram currently
manufactures OLED displays in evaluation quantities at its
Penang, Malaysia facility; volume production is expected to
commence in the second half of 2003.
Information: www.pictiva.com,
www.osram-os.com.
Kodak to
Acquire Applied Science Fiction™ Technologies and Roll Out
Digital/Film Photo Kiosks
Rochester,
New York, May 12 - Eastman Kodak Company today announced a
definitive agreement to acquire Applied Science Fiction's
proprietary rapid film processing technology, Digital PIC™,
and other key assets. Terms of the agreement were not
disclosed.
Applied
Science Fiction is the creator of the award-winning Digital
ICE™ and Digital ICE3™ photo-restoration technologies,
as well as the inventor of the digital dry film-processing
system Digital PIC. Digital PIC rapidly develops standard
color negative film without chemical mixing or plumbing. The
process simultaneously renders a digital image file that can
be used to print photographs and write images on a CD.
Applied Science Fiction, based in Austin, Texas, has
external trade tests of this innovative technology underway
in the U.S. and Europe.
"Our
goal is to give consumers greater flexibility, capability
and access to their pictures taken with photographic film or
digital cameras," said Dan Palumbo, president, consumer
imaging products and services, and senior vice president,
Kodak. "It's a fact that virtually every picture taken
can be improved for color, brightness, and composition. We
are putting all of that power, including innovative film
processing, in the hands of consumers. All of our research
tells us that's exactly what consumers want. For this
reason, Kodak is pleased to acquire Applied Science
Fiction's assets, especially its intellectual property
portfolio including the innovative Digital PIC technology,
and combine it with Kodak's own world-class expertise in
kiosks. As result, Kodak's will be the first and only kiosks
capable of taking any input, including film, and giving the
consumer exactly the prints they want, in minutes, not hours
or days."
Kodak sees a
generation of Picture Maker kiosks that function much like
automatic picture machines, available everywhere and
providing processing and printing for either film or digital
camera users. Since these machines will accept film or
digital camera input, as well as prints, consumers will be
able to preview and select, edit and print their pictures in
a matter of minutes. Kodak believes these kiosks will appeal
both to existing photo retailers and to the expanding
channels for picture-taking activities such as vacation and
entertainment venues. "Preview and select is a concept
that has proven to offer strong consumer benefits,"
Palumbo said. "By linking it to kiosks, we take the
benefit to a whole new dimension in terms of accessibility
and ease of use."
Kodak will
maintain operations in Austin, Texas, but will integrate
Applied Science Fiction's technologies and key personnel
into its Consumer Imaging business. Specific details about
product plans are currently under development and will be
disclosed at a later date. Closing of the transaction is
subject to customary reviews and approvals.
Information: www.asf.com,
www.kodak.com.
Ocuity
Announces Switchable Enhanced Brightness for TFT-LCDs; Will
Demonstrate at SID 2003
Oxford UK,
May 12 - Ocuity Ltd today announced its switchable Enhanced
Brightness Display technology for mobile displays. This
technology adds the company's proprietary Polarisation
Activated Microlens optical components to the front of an
off-the-shelf transflective TFT-LCD and produces a two-times
image brightness enhancement for a typical color phone
display with insignificant additional power consumption, the
company said. The technology is based on micro-optical
arrays that have different optical properties depending on
which polarisation of light is passed through them.
Graham
Woodgate, co-founder of Ocuity, said, "Added to a
standard mobile display, Enhanced Brightness Displays can
give users increased brightness, increased battery operating
time, and increased display lifetime without sacrificing
display quality." He added that Polarisation Activated
Microlens technology is also at the heart of the company's
reconfigurable 2D/3D displays. "We are already talking
to manufacturers about licensing production," Woodgate
said. The company first publicly showed its Polarisation
Activated Microlens technology applied to a reconfigurable
2D/3D display in a mobile phone on TTPCom's stand at the
3GSM conference, held in Cannes in February.
Ocuity
founders Graham Woodgate and Jonathan Harrold will present a
paper describing Polarisation Activated Microlens technology
at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference,
being held in Baltimore, Maryland, May 18-23. Demonstrators
of the applications on mobile phone and PDA platforms will
be available at the author interviews.
Ocuity also
announced the closing of a financing round that includes
investments from TTP Ventures and BTG plc. Harrold said the
funding "enables us to focus on our technology
licensing program and the continued strengthening of our IP
portfolio."
Information: www.ocuity.co.uk.
European
Conoscopy Patent Ruled Invalid in Germany
Karlsruhe,
Germany, May 5 - On April 29, the Tenth Senate of the German
Federal Court reversed an earlier (28th April, 1999)
decision of the Second Senate of the Federal Court of
Patents and ruled that European patent EP 0286 529 is
invalid in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany,
and that the costs of the suit were to be borne by the
defendant.
The patent,
for a measurement system called conoscopy that is widely
used to measure display characteristics, is held by the
Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique in Paris and has been
exclusively licensed to Eldim S.A. of Herouville St. Clair,
France. The plaintiff in the suit was autronic-Melchers GmbH
of Karlsruhe. Both Eldim and autronic-Melchers have made and
sold conoscopic measurement systems for LCDs and other
displays.
Conoscopic
measurement systems image light leaving a display at
different angles onto different locations on a focal plane.
If a device such as a CCD array is located at the focal
plane, a complete report of luminance, for instance, as a
function of viewing angle can be created within minutes or
even seconds, eliminating the need to move a detector
through many angles and take many individual readings, which
is a time-consuming process.
Information: http://www.autronic-melchers.com/main/,
http://www.eldim.fr/ezcontrast/.
