Flexi display tech factory 'to boost RFID, e-paper'

A UK company has announced it will build a factory to produce flexible display technology components for use in commercially available e-paper products.

Cambridge-based company Plastic Logic has secured $100m worth of venture capital to build the factory in Dresden, in an area of Germany known as "Silicon Saxony".

The factory, due to begin production in 2008, will manufacture flexible active-matrix display modules for electronic reader products. An active-matrix is an array of pixel electrodes, where the voltage on each pixel is controlled by an active electronic component, usually a thin film transistor (TFT), and by the signals on an array of intersecting row and column electrodes.

Plastic Logic's organic TFTs are embedded within layers of conducting, semiconducting and insulating polymer materials. These materials can be deposited from a solution allowing the devices to be "printed". Polymer materials are also flexible, allowing the production of lightweight, portable displays.

Simon Jones, vice president of product development for Plastic Logic, said: "It's much more like printing than silicon production. Silicon is produced at high temperatures and in vacuums - this [organic polymer production] is a low-temperature process and minimises the use of vacuums."

Jones would not give exact details of how the Plastic Logic organic polymers work. "That's the clever bit - there's clearly some clever chemistry going on. It's a very proprietary technology that we've developed, and we're not going to divulge that to anyone," said Jones.

Jones sees two main applications for flexible plastics technologies - RFID tags and flexible displays. He claimed that displays are one of the key initiatives for the technology, as current displays are power-hungry and so eat into the battery life of mobile devices, and use heavy materials, limiting portability.

Plastic Logic was originally spun out of the prestigious Cambridge University Cavendish Labs and was founded by Sir Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus.

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK