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

Google Hints at Smart Billboards & Digital Display Networks for Advertising in Malls, Hotels, ATMs, Shopping Centres and Outdoors

Google may start appearing on digital billboards and displays in a shopping centre near you. The company recently filed a patent application for technology that will allow local stores to connect their stock control systems to a Google-powered network of electronic displays.

The patent, filed December 21, 2006 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, covers systems and methods for allocating advertising space in a “network of electronic display devices.”

• To check out the patent, just click here.

"Advertisers may upload advertisement messages to a server specifying information such as budget, price per impression, preferred billboards and other constraints. One or more keywords or other descriptors are specified for each advertisement message,” according to the filing.

Google's system would then generate an advertising campaign specifying where on the display devices the advertisement message will appear. “The output may consist of various forms, including video, audio, printed incentive, interactive data transfers and/or combinations of these,” the company mentioned in its filing.

If the filing is a sign of things to come from Google, kiosk billboards, ATM machines and other digital displays in shopping centres and hotel lobbies could start promoting products and services directly from a nearby retailer’s inventory and/or service offering. Presently, advertising via similar screens is limited to looped, poster-type advertisements, in Google’s vision, the ads could be pulled directly from a retailer’s stock control system.

In the filed patent application, Google explained that its technology could remove the burden of manually loading looped ads, instead enable retailers to create campaigns from available goods. The adverts can be displayed in rotation and stopped automatically once the product has sold out. Once the product is back in stock, the advertisement can be re-added to the display cycle.

Shak Gohir

Salmon DNA improves OLED performance

Incorporating salmon DNA into the structure of a conventional OLED makes it ten times more efficient and thirty times brighter, say researchers in the US.

Salmon DNA could hold the key to more efficient and brighter OLEDs, according to researchers in the US. By incorporating a thin layer of DNA into the OLED structure, the team says its "BioLEDs" are as much as ten times more efficient and thirty times brighter than their conventional counterparts.

The team's idea involves using the DNA as an electron-blocking layer. This improves the probability of electrons and holes recombining and emitting photons, which in turn enhances the device's luminance. "It turns out that DNA has nearly ideal energy levels that allow hole transport to proceed unimpeded while it prevents electrons being transported too quickly," says Andrew Steckl from the University of Cincinnati.

The team tested a green- and blue-emitting BioLED against conventional OLEDs and found that the DNA electron blocking layer improved the luminance in both cases. For a current density of 200 mA/cm2, the green BioLED achieved 15000 cd/m2, whereas the baseline device reached just 4500 cd/m2. On the other hand, the blue BioLED had a luminance of 1500 cd/m2 at 200 mA/cm2, while the corresponding baseline device reached around 800 cd/m2.

Conventional OLEDs are renowned for having lifetime issues but Steckl and colleagues believe the DNA could also play a role here. "Our preliminary results show that the lifetime of the BioLEDs are significantly longer than that of equivalent OLEDs without the DNA layer," said Steckl. "We are working on understanding the difference in degradation mechanisms."

Shak Gohir

Double-sided LCD screen breakthrough claimed

Samsung Electronics claims to have created the first LCD panel that can produce independent images on both sides of a single small LCD display.

Samsung comments,"...our new double-sided mobile display underscores Samsung's commitment to equip our customers with advanced display technology that accelerates the trend toward slimmer mobile products,"said Yun Jin-hyuk, executive vice president of the Samsung Electronics LCD Business mobile display division, in a statement. "We anticipate high demand when we commence mass production in the first half of 2007."

Flexible display technology using organic polymers is also an emerging market, with Plastic Logic announcing on Wednesday that it will open a factory to make e-paper components in Dresden in 2008. Read More ...

Shak Gohir

Plastic Logic Receives $100 Million in Funding

Plastic Logic, announced that it has secured $100 million worth of venture capital, one of the largest deals in European venture capital history.

The funding was co-led by Oak Investment Partners of Palo Alto and Tudor Investment of Greenwich. Plastic Logic intends to use the venture funds to build a manufacturing facility. This is a strategic shift in its business model away from a licensing strategy to manufacturing its own products. The company expects to begin manufacturing standalone flexible active-matrix display units that include connectivity hardware by 2009.

Mr Hauser, Director of Plastic Logic, believes they could achieve $1bn in annual sales within 5-10 years. The company's first products are to be a series of light, tough and flexible display screens the thickness of a credit card. Plastic Logic, based in Cambridge, is to build the factory by the end of next year in Dresden, Germany.

Plastic Logic, which was formed in 2000 previously received $50m investment rounds.

More information on Plastic Logic's website - click here

You can also view Plastic Logic's videos on YouTube - click here


Shak Gohir
Cenamps, Business & Programme Manager

University Researchers Announce Breakthrough in Flexible Electronics

At Cenamps we are leading and managing the establisment of a national polymer electronic facility, PETeC, in the North East of England. The facility is to be built at NetPark in County Durham.

So its interesting for us to note that Jennifer Rocha reports in Nano World News ...."this month that a team of university researchers reported that organic single crystals can be patterned over a large area, paving the way for manufacturing of truly flexible electronics.

“We have eliminated the handpicking process of fabricating single-crystal transistors," explains Alejandro Briseno, lead author of the study, and now a doctoral student at the University of Washington. Up to this point, organic transistors have not had the full performance or capacity of being mass-produced. The research team has not only developed a new technology of patterning single-crystal transistors, but has made the manufacturing of them possible--“in certain cases, we demonstrated that in as fast as 5 minutes in an area the size of a human fingernail," notes Briseno.

Mr. Briseno tells NWN, “We were motivated to investigate deeper into single-crystal transistors because their performance is much more superior than that of polycrsytalline films or polymers. But there was a major drawback; it was difficult to mass-produce transistors and very time-consuming as well. In addition, single-crystal transistors were mainly used for fundamental studies and for exploring basic charge-transport in single crystals. There was rarely any other application for them. So for the last couple of years Professor Bao [of Stanford University] and I have been committed in transforming single-crystal transistors to mainstream practical applications.” Briseno began his research collaboration with Dr. Bao several years ago, when she was at Bell Labs and he was an intern. The team for this research paper included researchers from UCLA (where Briseno received his master’s degree) and Stanford University (where Dr. Bao is a Professor). What are the potential applications of this novel technology and its use in flexible electronics? “The possible applications of our discovery include flexible electronics in general,” Briseno tells NWN. “But specifically, our transistors could enable low-cost sensors on product packaging and ‘electronic paper’ displays and even electronic rollable newspaper.” While it may be a while before the technology’s promise is fulfilled, Briseno believes discovery of patterned transistors promises a host of applications never before thought possible.” ..."

Shak Gohir