Joint venture closes in on LEP displays

A Cambridge Display Technology product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jun 18, 2002

Seiko Epson Corp and Cambridge Display Technology are to form a joint venture company to offer technologies and services using ink-jet deposition for manufacturing light emitting polymer displays.

Seiko Epson Corp and Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) are to form a joint venture company to offer technologies and services using ink-jet deposition for manufacturing light emitting polymer (LEP) displays.

LEPs, which are easily soluble in solvents, can be laid down in arrays forming red, green, blue (RGB) pixels by ink-jet printing.

The drop sizes used to create pixels are extremely low volume, which has necessitated major development of printer head technology and ink jet formulations to match these heads.

This ink-jet printing method provides a high efficiency in usage of the polymer materials, yields efficient devices, and holds the promise of low-cost manufacturing of LEP displays.

Seiko Epson and CDT have worked jointly on these issues for several years, utilising Seiko Epson's ink-jet printing technologies and CDT's ink formulation technologies, and have reached the stage at which commercialisation can take place.

The two companies are moving into this commercialisation to provide an ink-jet printing machine with Epson's print head and inks whose formulations have been specified by CDT especially for these heads.

Seiko Epson and others have already demonstrated ink-jet printing as a route to high-resolution full colour LEP displays.

The new company, named Polyink, will be jointly established to offer a "total solution package" to, in particular, display makers making high-resolution active-matrix displays.

"Seiko Epson is clearly a world leader in the development and commercialisation of ink jet technology", said David Fyfe, CEO of CDT.

"Our companies have been collaborating in this field for a number of years to apply its potential for lower cost, higher throughput manufacturing of LEP displays.

The Polyink venture is the natural culmination of this substantial investment by our companies.

We have put together a venture whose strategy fits well both with Seiko Epson's business model as well as with CDT's plan to provide open commercial solutions and critical technologies to our licensees".

(This was Electronicstalk's Top Story on 17 June 2002).