The U.S. Department of Energy has released its second Product Development funding opportunity as part of its Solid-State Lighting (SSL) program. The National Energy Technology Laboratory (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technologies Program) is soliciting applications in support of this SSL program area. SSL Product Development focuses on using the knowledge gained from basic or applied research to develop or improve commercially viable materials, devices, or systems. The defined areas of interest in this funding opportunity are:
1. LED Materials Issues – Device Materials
2. LED Device Issues – Optical
3. OLED Efficient Materials Development
4. OLED Architectures that Improve Device Robustness, Lifetime, and Efficiency

Researchers from Meijo University, Japan, claim that they have doubled the efficiency of white LEDs, according to the Japanese web-site Nikkei.net. The report says that the device, which delivers a 130 lm/W output, uses a purple-emitting LED combined with a “structured” SiC substrate that converts this emission into white light. This approach contrasts that taken by many LED manufacturers, which use blue-emitting devices and color-converting yellow phosphors. The Japanese researchers have submitted patent applications for the structure of the SiC substrate, and team-member Satoshi Kamiyama is intending to launch a company in January to market these LEDs, according to the Nikkei.net. With investment of 40 million yen ($ 330,000), the start-up plans to ship samples such as a 800 lumen light source.

Plastic Logic, the UK-based developer of plastic electronics using nano-particulate metal systems, said it has developed the world's largest flexible organic active matrix display. The display consists of a flexible, high resolution, printed active-matrix backplane driving an electronic paper frontplane from US-based E Ink Corporation. The displays are 10” diagonal SVGA (600 x 800) with 100ppi resolution and 4 levels of greyscale. The thickness of the display when laminated with E Ink Imaging Film™ is less than 0.4mm. The backplane substrate is made from low temperature PET supplied by DuPont Teijin Films which is more flexible and easier to handle than alternatives such as thin glass or steel foil, said Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic added it will partner with manufacturers to bring the process to mass production.

A non-volatile memory technology which is denser, faster and more cost-effective than conventional flash memory technology is closer to production, due to the efforts of Freescale Semiconductor to optimize the properties of silicon nanocrystals...

CEVP has developed a fabrication tool to commercialise the revolutionary low temperature carbon nanotube growth process developed by the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute (ATI)...

The Nanophotonics group at COM-DTU (Technical University of Denmark) will participate as partner in NewTon, a FP6 European project to be initiated in January, 2006. The project will investigate fabrication of 3-D photonic crystal structures with embedded optical functional elements. Other partners are Laser Zentrum Hannover (Germany), Thales Aerospace Division, BASF Aktiengesellschaft (Germany), Photon Design Ltd (UK), and Ecole Nationale Superieur des Telecommunications des Bretagne (France). The manufacturing of the 3-D photonic crystals will be based on templates of nano-scale colloids of polymer materials. The optical confinement will be defined by defects that will be inscribed in the material with nanometer resolution by laser processing. The photonic crystals are realised by infiltration and inversion techniques. The aim is to fabricate devices which include basic optical functions like waveguides, splitters, and filters for telecom applications. On the long term this technology is expected to enable volume fabrication of compact optical integrated circuits. An important part of the project is devoted to development of simulation and design tools for photonic crystal structures which are adapted to the manufacturing technology for a fast realisation of the devices and for better understanding of influencing factors in the manufacturing process. COM will be the task leader of a work-package on simulation tools, and receive an EU funding of €273K.

A research group at COM-DTU (Department of Communications, Optics & Material, Technical University of Denmark) has reduced light velocity by a factor of 200, using a silicon nanophotonic integrated chip fabricated in the DTU ‘DANCHIP’ clean rooms. The chip makes use of a so-called photonic crystal waveguide. Theoretically, there is no lower limit for the speed of the light, said the team. The key is to design the photonic crystal waveguide such that it facilitates the desired control and manipulation of the light. The technology offers new opportunities within optical systems in telecom, data communication, and compact optical sensors, they added. By exploitation of slow light, optical components such as switches, modulators, detectors, and sensors may be miniaturised. By reducing the light speed by a factor of 10-100, the size of the optical component can typically also be reduced by a factor 10-100. .

Researchers from IBM, US, and Duke University, US, have generated extra-bright beams of infrared light from single-walled carbon nanotubes. Suspending a portion of the nanotube and applying unipolar signals caused light emission at the junction between the suspended and supported parts of the tube. Avouris of IBM and colleagues laid down nanotubes with a diameter of 2-3 nm by chemical vapour deposition. The nanotubes spanned trenches in a silica coating on a silicon substrate. The researchers added palladium source and drain electrodes. Under unipolar transport conditions, i.e. a gate voltage of less than -3.1 V for hole transport or a gate voltage of more than -2.1 V for electron transport, the nanotube emitted infrared light at the supported/suspended carbon nanotube interface. "A 3 microA current in our device generates about 107 photons nm-2 s-1, 105 times more photon flux than large area LEDs," said Jia Chen of IBM. The scientists believe the location of the emission was due to band-bending at the interface between the suspended and supported regions. This accelerated carriers, which then created excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) that recombined to emit light. According to the researchers, this excitation mechanism is around 1000 times more efficient than recombination of independently injected electrons and holes.

IBM today announced its researchers have used photonic crystal technology to "slow light," a process that could lead to the use of light instead of electricity in the connection of electronic components and optical communications circuits, which scientists say could make those components work vastly better.

Chemists have an important role to play in the emerging fields of nanophotonics and biophotonics and the learning curve to enter them is not as high as is generally believed, according to Paras N. Prasad, Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences.

Chains of 1 million magnetic nanoparticles have been assembled and disassembled in a solution of suspended particles in a controlled way, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report.

A research group at COM-DTU (Department of Communications, Optics&Material, Technical University of Denmark) has reduced the light velocity by a factor of 200, using a silicon nanophotonic integrated chip fabricated in the DTU ‘DANCHIP’ clean rooms. The chip makes use of a so-called photonic crystal waveguide. Theoretically, there is no lower limit for the speed of the light, said the team. The key is to design the photonic crystal waveguide such that it facilitates the desired control and manipulation of the light. The technology offers new opportunities within optical systems in telecom, data communication, and compact optical sensors, they added. By exploitation of slow light, optical components such as switches, modulators, detectors, and sensors may be miniaturised. By reducing the light speed by a factor of 10-100, the size of the optical component can typically also be reduced by a factor 10-100. This will make it possible to integrate a high number of optical functions on the same chip. And integration of photonic and electronic signal processing on the same chip could be just around the corner, emphasized the team. But there are still challenges to overcome. E.g., the optical propagation loss must be further reduced. And the researchers need to increase the span of wavelengths over which the slow light can be utilised. The penalty for exploiting slow light at several wavelengths simultaneously is to make use of a design that provides only moderately slow light. But even so, highly miniaturised components can still be realised, underlined the scientists.

Nanosys, Inc. announced that it has entered into a multi-year development agreement with Sharp Corporation of Osaka, Japan to develop display technologies incorporating Nanosys' proprietary nanotechnology. Under the terms of this development agreement, Sharp will collaborate and support efforts at both Nanosys and Sharp. No other details were disclosed. This is the second major collaboration agreement announced between Nanosys and Sharp over the past 12 months; the first agreement focused on developing a new fuel cell technology for portable electronics.

Lighting pioneer Royal Philips Electronics is to buy Agilent Technologies’ 47% share in the LED manufacturer Lumileds for €765 million ($948 million) in cash. The deal, which will mean that Philips owns 96.5% of Lumileds, is part of Agilent’s wider plan to sell off its entire semiconductor business unit, which also includes GaAs IC, fiber-optic component and low-brightness LED manufacturing facilities. Private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners are expected to take control of the remaining semiconductor business in a deal worth about $2.6 billion in total, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal online.

Dow Corning Corp. said that it was expanding its focus on the optoelectronics market. It announced that its Photonics Solutions business development program will become part of the company's mainstream electronics business.

Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), an independent administrative institution, has developed two new manufacturing processes for flexible micro-fabrication of silica glass based on its proprietary laser-induced backside wet etching (LIBWE) technology. AIST’s LIBWE technology is a one-step method for micro-fabrication of silica glass plate by using a nanosecond-pulsed ultraviolet (UV) laser.

Applied Nanotech Inc., (ANI), a subsidiary of Nano-Proprietary Inc., today announced that in conjunction with its consortium of six prominent Japanese display component manufacturers, it has completed its proof of concept of a high resolution, full color, 25-inch diagonal carbon nanotube (CNT) television with a resolution of 280 x 200 color lines or pixels. The proof of concept has a 25-inch diagonal glass substrate with a 22-inch diagonal viewing area and operates at a voltage that is fully compatible with low cost Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) drivers. The distance between subpixels, which is a little larger than 0.5 mm, was selected so that the printing techniques utilized are compatible with the 60-inch diagonal Advanced TV (ATV) format and the 80-inch diagonal High Definition TV (HDTV) format..

EV Group (EVG, Austria) has installed an EVG640NIL precision alignment system tooled for nanoimprint lithography at Heptagon, Finnish-Swiss specialist of replicated refractive and diffractive micro-optical elements and subsystems. The EVG640NIL tool has been installed at Heptagon's new clean room at the production site in Rüschlikon, near Zurich in Switzerland. The EV Group equipment will be used for the fabrication and replication of micro optic devices. Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) NIL is a next-generation lithography method that utilizes a low-cost, high-resolution and large-area patterning process.

NanoEurope 2005 in St Gallen was a unique combination of trade fair, conferences, and the public area, and was well received by its visitors.