Display company powers up prospects
Published: 25 Jul 2002 08:28 BST
Cambridge Display Technology will use a grant to brighten the prospects for solar cells as well as flat-panel monitors.
CDT announced on Wednesday that it has been awarded a grant from the UK government's Department of Trade and Industry for plastic solar cell research and development. The grant will help the privately held company develop efficient and commercially viable solar cells using its light-emitting polymer (LEP) screen technology. Company representatives would not disclose the amount of the grant.
"The grant is not enough to do the entire commercialisation of solar cells using LEP," said Stewart Hough, CDT's vice president of business development. "It's mainly just research seed money, but it comes at the most critical time for any emerging technology -- the early stages."
The most significant implication in the use of CDT's technology is lowering the cost of solar cells. The cost of materials and the manufacturing of current solar cells can be up to four times more expensive than the solar cells that CDT is aiming to create. The goal for CDT is to make the cells less expensive, boosting the commercial availability of solar cells.
Lowering the cost of manufacturing is the goal for the Cambridge, England-based company, which was founded in 1992 and employs about 130 workers. CDT's main business is not manufacturing displays, although it has the capacity to do so on a small scale; the company licenses its LEP technology to manufacturers such as Philips, Seiko Epson and DuPont.
CDT's display technology helps manufacturers lower production costs by making the process less complex. The polymers, which are the main components in LEP display, can be sprayed or printed onto a substrate, or base.
The polymers consist of materials that emit light so LEP displays don't require a backlight, allowing them to be thinner and lighter than liquid crystal displays (LCD) and potentially consuming less power than LCDs. Additionally, the polymers can be applied to a flexible substrate, such as plastic, which expands the number of places that screens can be used.
While analysts believe that LEP technology will be a challenger to LCD for the screen market, it will likely be about 10 years before it is widely available in large sizes for use in notebooks and flat panel monitors. However, LED technology is picking up steam and is being used in cell phones. Dow Chemical announced Tuesday that it is expanding a facility that produces polymers for use in LEP displays, giving makers more access to one of the key materials used in LEP displays.
The polymer solar cells have a similar design as CDT's polymer light-emitting displays, but instead of emitting light, researchers have been able to reverse the process so that the displays can generate electricity when light shines on a solar cell. Hough said that the company could be demonstrating prototypes within the next few years. CDT is also looking into a screen that can display information as well as act as a solar cell, but the company does not have prototypes of this sort of screen yet.
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