MicroEmissive Displays, the polymer on silicon microdisplay company based in Edinburgh, will launch a second version of its display next year when its facility in Dresden is ready to supply the device in volume quantities.
Ian Underwood, co-founder and director of strategic marketing at the company, told Electronics Weekly that volume shipments will be available in Q2 next year from the facility that is being shared with part of Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute. “Our manufacturing operation is not labour intensive so the pull of low cost labour in places such as China was not an issue,” he said.
The firm’s improved product will be capable of 10,000 hours use at 80cd/m2, a lifetime that Underwood said will allow commercial products, such as video glasses to come into being. He claims the response from potential customers is very strong. “They are biting our hand off, they want it now, people are trying to order it now,” he said.
Customer interest was so high that it created the need for the facility in Dresden. “Our limit was how much we could manufacture and ship now we are addressing that bottleneck,” said Underwood.
Underwood added that the firm would have set up its facility in the UK if there had been any assistance or grants available to do so.
The Dresden site will sandwich the CMOS-based wafer and the glass layer, a process Underwood describes as where the firm’s IP sits. The sandwiched wafers are currently sent off to Asia to be cut up and packaged by a subcontractor.
MED is also looking to offer a range of products in the future and develop a wireless capability that would suit video glasses and match the emergence of mobile TV. "Not all people will want to watch mobile TV on a handset or video glasses but enough of a percentage will. It doesn't have to be a high percentage to be a large market," said Underwood.
The firm has already started feasibility studies to take the device wireless and looking at what standards there are out there. "We are looking to partner and come up with demonstrators with firms in the vanguard of the wireless chipset market," said Underwood. Other longer term developments at the firm is taking the display to a widescreen version.