Cenamps on YouTube: Stimulating Innovation and New Ventures

Microsoft has visions of bringing the Internet straight to your Wallpaper

Whilst Google has visions of bringing a network smart billboards to a shopping centre near you, Microsoft has visions of bringing wide-screen displays that integrate into our everyday lives just like wallpaper.

As digital technologies shapes and flattens the 21st century economy and consumers increasingly embrace the Internet and smarter products, only the high cost of installing unobtrusive displays technology is stopping this from happening today.

Whilst there are greater choices today in emerging display technology, each technology has a drawback. For example, front projection displays have the problem of shadows cast. Rear projection displays take up floor space—one of our most precious resources. LCDs, although a mature technology, require expensive manufacturing processes.

Microsoft believe that whilst some of these problems have been addressed in the lab, the costs of manufacturing displays for the consumer market has yet to be solved. Microsoft are hence exploring ways to build low-cost miniature display cubes that could be tilted together to form any size display. The technology behind this is called MicroElectoMechanical Systems, or MEMS.

Although most of Microsoft's developments are in software, Microsoft Research has indicated that its hardware devices group is currently building micro-devices using MEMS in an effort to build cheaper flat-panel displays with high resolution. "We want displays to become as unobtrusive as wallpaper" the research team says on their Web site.

The group is set to demo their research this week at TechFest 2007.

Just imagine an array of tiny machines, each the size of a human hair or even smaller, spread across the walls of your Smart Home. They could be tilted to display say an image or movie of your choice or tilted to form a computer screen of any seize on your wall - bring a new dimension to home entertainment.

MEMS technology is currently picking up steam for use in of entertainment products, including Nintendo's immensely popular Wii gaming console.

Flexible organic displays offer yet another alternative low cost technology. This is an areas Cenamps is driving with the build of the Polymer Electronic Technology Centre (PETeC) planned to start shortly in Netpark, County Durham.

• To read more about PETeC, click here
  

Shak Gohir

Shell innovating the next generation of solar energy solutions

Shell is one of the global giant oil companies investing in renewable energy sources including solar energy. Solar energy is still regarded by many as still too expensive to be a viable widespread electricity source.

Shell appears to have put research focus on one major goal: driving down cost. Shell has pioneered CIS (copper indium diselenide), a new generation of solar technology.

Copper, indium and selenium particles are coated onto a glass sheet in layers 20 times thinner than a human hair, and are heated to form a compound that converts the power of the sun into electricity for consumers. CIS solar modules use 100 times less raw material in the electricity producing layer than their crystalline silicon counterparts.

Shell claims a lower material and manufacturing costs mean the CIS modules promises to be cheaper in high-volume production. They glass panels have a smooth black exterior, which makes them suitable for integration into walls and roofs of buildings.

The biggest European application to date is in Wales, a striking 85-kilowatt installation that forms an entire side of an innovation and business centre.

Shell and leading glass-maker Saint Gobain have formed a joint venture for largescale production and commercialisation of CIS solar technology.


Shak Gohir