August 13, 2012, Display Search Emerging Display Technology Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Waguih Ishak from the Corning West Technology Center described their efforts to improve the glass characteristics to enable the latest displays. Corning conducts a lot of R&D in materials and processing to improve their glass. As a glass manufacturer, Corning been in the business [...]
August 13, 2012, Display Search Emerging Display Technology Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Dan van Ostrand from UniPixel described another alternative to ITO for sensors. The conflicting requirements for transparency and high conductivity are addressed by using copper as the conductor. They make a metal mesh touch sensor that can be printed in a roll-to-roll production process [...]
August 13, 2012, Emerging Display Technologies Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Jennifer Colegrove from DisplaySearch reviewed the touch and interactive technologies markets. The markets and supply chains are growing in revenue as well as the number of vendors involved. Touch screen module revenue was $4.3billion in ’09, growing to $7.1B in ’10. This is expected to exceed [...]
August 13, 2012, Display Search Emerging Display Technology Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Mark Hamblin from Touch Revolution compared and contrasted touch on lens and in-cell technologies. The need for higher performance and lower costs are competing with increased manufacturing complexity in the target technologies. Capacitive touch interfaces need two layers of ITO to form the sensor [...]
August 13, 2012, Display Search Emerging Display Technology Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Doug Young from Neonode talked about the changing landscape for sensors, and the requirements for next-generation systems. Design and intellectual property as well as industrial design are becoming the drivers for new consumer products. As a part of the changes, the inclusion of multiple [...]
July 11, 2012, FlexTech Alliance, San Francisco—David Allee from the Flexible display Center at Arizona State University described the past and current efforts in flexible display research. As TFTs move from amorphous silicon to metal oxide as the base material, the challenges of higher levels of integration become clear. The InGaZnO materials are mostly settling [...]
June 14, 2012, Invensense Motion Interface Developers’ Conference, San Francisco—James Lim from Invensense detailed the requirements for embedding motion sensors into new applications. Starting with the basics, table 1 indicates the various categories of motion sensors and their primary characteristics. Table 1: Basic sensor characteristics Sensor Measurement Error Source Accuracy Gyroscope Angular Rate of [...]
June 14, 2012, Invensense Motion Interface Developers’ Conference, San Francisco—David Borison from Invensense talked about getting the most performance out of a sensor array. Even though gaming seems the most obvious application needing high-performance, many other apps are greatly improved when the developer extracts the most performance from the sensors. Gesture user interfaces are smoother, [...]
June 14, 2012, Invensense Motion Conference, San Francisco—Jérémie Bouchaud from iSuppli reviewed the motion sensing market and projected future growth for the industry. The industry seems to be in good shape and has potential for continued growth. Historically, sensors really took off when the Wii entered the market in ’06, followed by the first iPhone [...]
May 24, 2012, MEMS Business Forum, Santa Clara, CA—Marc Madou from UC, Irvine described his research in nano-materials. The range of applications for his processes spans batteries, battery sensors, and nano-wire sensors. Making a sensor from carbon nano-materials eliminates the machining needed for most MEMS. This enables the development of complex structures that are not [...]
