E-paper display maker goes into volume production

E-paper display maker goes into volume production
By David Manners
Electronic News
http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6436042

Nemoptic, an e-paper display company, is moving into high volume production following an agreement reached with Seiko Instruments (SII).

“The availability of a reliable high volume source will bring about a radical change in the marketplace for e-paper displays,” said Jacques Noels, CEO of Nemoptic. “SII is the world leading producer of CSTN-LCD displays and it combines excellent technological expertise with a cost-competitive capability.”

Under the deal, Nemoptic gives SII its display technology in return for SII giving Nemoptic manufacturing capacity.

Asked by Electronics Weekly, how much capacity he’d be getting, Nemoptic’s CEO, Jacques Noels, replied: “Whatever we need.”

Noels is expecting very high demand. “There is no other bistable technology capable of supplying the electronic shelf, and no one else can achieve full compatibility with STN manufacturing,” claimed Noels.

SII will make the displays in its existing, full depreciated, STN factory which will make manufacturing costs very low.

“It is a very generic technology,” said Noels, “capable of 32 grey levels, 32,000 colors, transmissive or reflective, with passive or active addressing, and on plastic.”

He added that it is suitable for both a bendable or a rollable display, but Nemoptic was only currently working on the bendable option which he thought was a couple of years away from commercialization.

Noels, formerly CEO of Thomson Semiconductors, before it merged with SGS-Ates of Italy to become STMicroelectronics, joined Nemoptics two years ago when the company had been developing the technology for five years.

For the last two years he has been getting the technology up to the point where it can be manufactured in volume.