17 Jun 2002
Cambridge University's first spin-off company is pursuing every possible angle to help push flat-panel polymer displays into the consumer electronics market-place. Vanessa Spedding checks out Cambridge Display Technology's survival strategy.
From Opto & Laser Europe March 2002
The companies with the best chances of riding out unpredictable times are the ones that can adapt effortlessly. And few things metamorphose more easily than ideas. This is why a good intellectual property portfolio is important - and businesses like Cambridge Displays Technology (CDT) in the UK are looking good.
CDT is well known for the light-emitting-polymer (LEP) technology patented by its founders more than a decade ago. Also known as polymeric organic light-emitting diodes (polyOLEDs), these polyfluorene-based molecules that emit light in response to an electric potential catalysed Cambridge University's first spin-off in 1992. CDT was set up to commercialize applications within the displays market and has since grown to a firm of more than 100 people with a robust (although undisclosed) turnover.
CDT might now appear to be at the point where many
companies consolidate and relax, but nothing could be further from its
plans. True, some of its first licensing deals are about to come to fruition,
bringing healthy royalties-based revenue streams from
Netherlands-based Philips and Germany's Osram. True, it is cash rich.
Even aside from investments from venture capitalists and more recently
DuPont in the US, CDT is in the black. However, its primary patent
expires in 2010 and others will follow in 2014. CDT must continue to
innovate or the industry will circumvent it. The realization that
CDT's LEPs could be ink-jet printed is what inspired the alliance
between CDT and Seiko-Epson, Japan, last year. Between them the
companies worked out a practical way of implementing the process
(Seiko-Epson now has a licence to produce displays). Ink-jet printing
gives LEPs an enormous manufacturing advantage over competing
materials, such as the small-molecule organic LEDs pioneered by
Kodak. The latter are not easily fabricated into display devices. They
must be deposited from a vapour onto a hot substrate under vacuum,
which requires accurate positioning of the substrate and
masks. LEPs, however, dissolve in organic solvents. This means
that they are amenable to room-temperature, liquid-based processes
such as spin-coating and ink-jet printing. The latter brings the potential
of full-colour pixelation, high resolution and a flexible pixel shape and
size. It's clear that CDT has come on since its
university lab days. Its new, business-like determination came with the
investment from two venture capitalists in 1999, explains Fyfe, admitting
that they took the organization from being "an R&D shop to a
commercially orientated business". The management team's approach
to making money revolves around an ambition to grow the entire
polyOLED-displays industry. This means investing in the
development and optimization of all aspects of the technology to enable
licensees to pick it up and run with it. Hence CDT's $25m investment in
new pilot-line facilities, in Godmanchester, near Cambridge in the
UK. "We have already made displays on this line," said Stewart
Hough, vice-president of business development (referring to the
spin-coating method). "We're now engaging in the next phase of the
plan - to provide process-development services as part of joint
development agreements with our licensees." Ink-jet facilities will be
online by the second half of the year and prototype full-colour displays
will ensue. "The potential impact of
these polymers is great," said Hough. "If it were left to one or two
companies then dissemination would be impeded. The key position for
CDT is to offer an open solution - our business opportunity lies in
whatever it takes to speed our licensees' time to
manufacture." In any case CDT seems to relish a challenge.
Future plans include exploring the reverse behaviour of its LEPs -
putting light in to get electricity out. There are deals afoot geared
towards future exploitation of the material's photovoltaic potential and
the project has just secured initial-phase funding from the UK
government. Watch out for the metamorphosis of CDT.
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