January 04, 2008
Braggone Funded To Boost Efficiency in Flat Displays, Chips, and Solar Cells
Braggone, an Oulu-based company that has come up with a way to improve the way light is handled in flat panel displays, solar cells, and LEDs, among other things, has received a "multi-million dollar" amount of funding from Tekes, a state-backed organization.
The funding is meant to boost commercialization of its flat panel display and chip-targeted products, but Braggone is also promoting its coatings tech as a boon to photovoltaic manufacturers and manufacturers of bright LEDs, typically used in lighting applications e.g. automobile headlights and traffic lights.
Since the coating can be used as an alternative to chemical vapour deposition (CVD), or as an additional product improving step in fabs that already have CVD installed, the company has a good position to attract revenues sooner rather than later.
We think that the company's BizDev man, Paul Williams, has a pretty good cleantech pitch (increasingly bright LEDs are seen as a clean or green technology):
“Essentially, we are minimizing the optical loss in solar cells and modules..... We are capturing as much light as possible in the cells by taming the physics. With the new materials from Braggone not only do we have the capability to reduce the optical loss in the cell or module, but we can also improve the efficiency of electrical conversion within the cell. This has the real benefit to our technology users of driving down their production cost per Mw output.”
Braggone Receives Multi-Million Dollar Funding to Commercialize Nano-Engineered Polymer Technology for Semiconductor, Solar Panel and Flat Panel Display Manufacturing
TEKES, the Same Funding Agency That Backed Nokia, Invests in Optoelectronics Company for Materials That Can Be “Custom Tuned” for Application Needs
OULU, Finland (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) January 3, 2008 -- Braggone, the optoelectronics materials company, has received multi-million dollar funding from TEKES (The National Technology Agency of Finland) to commercialize their polymer materials for worldwide commercialization. TEKES is the same funding agency behind Nokia’s dramatic success in the cell phone market.
We've had great success working in collaboration with chemical companies and equipment manufacturers to fine-tune and optimize the physical and application specific characteristics of these polymers
Semiconductor devices and flat panel displays are primary targets
Braggone’s proprietary material technology allows for custom tuning of the inorganic-organic polymer material properties to suit specific applications. These flexible yet stable materials coat or print onto substrates at greater efficiency, lower temperatures and higher yields. The company’s current materials products are applied in digital displays used in mobile phones and televisions, advanced semiconductors, digital cameras, photovoltaic panels, LEDs and memory for PCs and MP3 devices. The TEKES funding is specifically targeted for taking the materials production and sales from the lab to commercial scales. These materials are part of an intellectual property portfolio of 17 filed patents, four of which have already been granted.
The research for the semiconductor industry has resulted in a unique set of materials that are nano-engineered siloxane compounds for silicon containing anti-reflective coatings (ARCs).
“We’ve had great success working in collaboration with chemical companies and equipment manufacturers to fine-tune and optimize the physical and application specific characteristics of these polymers,” commented Dr. Yrjö Ojasaar, Braggone CEO. “Due to that collaboration and now with the additional funding from TEKES, we are on a rapid path to commercialization, as we can deliver PV manufacturers with increased performance and reduced costs all in one turnkey solution.”
Nano-engineered materials can also revolutionize solar cell and panel manufacturing
Out of this same polymer research, Braggone recently announced a new product line that greatly increases the efficiency of solar cells and allows manufacturing facilities to cost-effectively increase their capacity. The custom designed compounds can dramatically reduce reflection from glass and silicon, and therefore, deliver substantially more light to the active regions of the solar cell, resulting in higher efficiencies. Even when compared to materials such as silicon nitride, the Braggone materials can cut reflection by half and costs associated with deposition tools by even more than half. By incorporating Braggone’s unique materials into the manufacturing process, the costs of manufacturing solar cells can be dramatically reduced. Braggone tunes the optics of the cell by spray, slit, spin, or dip coating layers of molecularly tailored material, rather than having to use expensive chemical vapor deposition (CVD) tools.
Ojasaar added: “Our technology and materials for solar cells will make the dream of sub-one euro per peak watt manufacturing costs a reality. We can replace the CVD batch process, expensive capex, and expensive operating costs by simply spraying, slit or dip coating the anti-reflective and hydrogenation coatings in a rapid and cost-effective atmospheric in-line process.”
About Braggone
With offices located in Oulu, Finland, London, UK, and Hong Kong, SAR China, Braggone is an innovative technology company focused on the manufacturing of advanced optoelectronic and information electronic materials and components. Braggone’s portfolio of materials and processes are utilized to improve performance and facilitate production for various component and system structures. Through fundamental materials development and advanced process applications, Braggone works closely with its clients to increase their products’ performance in flat panel displays, semiconductors, LEDs and solar cells. Additional information can be found at www.braggone.com.
Posted at 07:02 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 25, 2007
Dutch eBook Reader Maker iRex Gains More Funding
iRex has recently launched the 2nd version of its paperless book, magazine and newspaper reader called the Iliad. The reader sells for $699. It comes with automatic Wi-Fi connection finder and stylus calibration for better accuracy when drawing notes or editing certain types of PDF documents. French newspaper Les Echos has also recently launched an edition for iRex, although it will cost €365 ($506) per year so you'd better really, really like Les Echos and hate the print version.
The Iliad competes with Sony eBook Reader but many reviewers like the Iliad better
The Netherlands' iRex Technologies has held a €6M first close on a new VC funding round led by Main Capital Partners with return backer ABN Amro Capital.
View - site
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June 29, 2007
Finally A Phone Display You Can Read Outside
In daylight and outdoors, phone displays are virtually unreadable so we are almost thrilled with Qualcomm's announcement of a new MEMS display that promises to alleviate one of the most annoying things about using mobilephones and other gadgets in bright light.
We don't normally cover product announcements, let alone product announcements by multi-billion dollar US companies but this Qualcomm scratches an itch.
Instead of trying to stuff more applications and functionalities into devices, software applications, and web tools, it would be great to get some existing user issues solved first - as Niklas Zennstrom says - solve a problem find a business model.
Valleywag and Technofile have a whole lot more to say about what's annoying about consumer technologies, and more amusingly than us. The Valleywag post even manages to squeeze in some advice about carbon reduction ploys beyond the DotGreen glam trend.
Posted at 05:53 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 05, 2007
Polymer Vision Raises $21M - Rival For Plastic Logic?
The Netherlands-based Polymer Vision, a spinoff of the Philips, has raised $21M from a Luxembourg based investment company called Technology Capital SA.
Interesting timing for the announcement, coming as it does on the back of Plastic Logic's big VC round earlier in the week. So we asked Polymer’s chief marketing man, Thomas van der Zijden, if the two firms are rivals. He says no, pointing out that the products are targeted at different markets and have different properties, although both are depending on E-Ink's technology for the front plane.
Business-wise, the British company aims to manufacture its own displays in Germany, whereas the Dutch firm is going for the fabless model.
We also asked about the differences between the products, and what Polymer Vision intends to do with the new money, also we wanted to know who is behind Technology Capital, a brand new name for us. See Interview below.
a:c - What is the new capital for - is it to finance capex or hire more people?
PV:A combination of both with the primary focus to enable market launch in 2007.
The investors are unknown to us, who are they and why you decided to work this particular investor?
PV: Technology Capital SA in Luxemburg is a new investment company in Europe funded by private investors and Polymer Vision is their very first investment. The focus of Technology Capital will be on startup technology companies in Europe and we expect the firm to increase its public relations efforts in the coming months.Technology Capital shares Polymer Vision’s strategy and vision. It supports our ambition to lead the opportunities in the rollable display market. With Technology Capital as our solid investment partner and a first-rate team of people in Polymer Vision we can focus on capitalizing on this opportunity and further strengthening our lead position.
a:c- Is your business model a fabless model?
PV: Indeed we work together with partners to manufacture our products.
a:c - When will you be shipping first product?
PV: 2007
a:c - How is the Polymer Vision display different from that of Plastic Logic's?
PV: Polymer Vision's display is truly rollable allowing for integration in small handheld (pocketable) devices. For the first time in the world the display size can be larger than the device itself. When not in use the display can be simply rolled into the device. Visit our website to watch the video:
Posted at 08:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
December 09, 2006
Amadeus and GIMV Back Philips Display Innovator
Amadeus Capital Partners and GIMV led a €12M Series A round for display technology innovator Liquavista BV, a round that included New Venture Partners who spun the company out of Philips in April this year.
Liquavista's backers are bettting that its electro-wetting displays, which offer good viewing all kinds of lighting conditions - outdoors and indoors but do it with a low power budget, one-tenth, they say, of the power of similar sized LCD screens.
The displays are targeted at watches, mobile phones and digital cameras to ATM screens and large flat panels. The smallest type of screen is the one the firm aims to commercialize first.
Posted at 10:22 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 28, 2006
Whiskey-brand Has Scottish Startup's Display Tech On Tap
We picked up the news today that Glasgow-based Design LED Products has won its first commercial rollout with Scottish whiskey-maker The Famous Grouse, which will be installing point-of-sale displays in pubs in the UK exploiting the firm's innovative display technology.
We're reporting it because that kind of news usually presages a first round of financing.
One Display Has Many Ways To Animate That Logo
So far, the very-early-stage investor Braveheart Investment has been backing Design LED, which has patented the technology to make displays that enable mobilephone designers, indoor advertising display-makers, and even TV set manufacturers to add additional screen real estate to their hardware. It fits curved and 3D surfaces, something enabled by its getting rid of the rigid printed circuit board typically found in displays.
It also has a "secret-until-lit" feature that lets viewers see only parts of the display, which is nice for animated logos, but really interesting when developing user interfaces for appliances or other types of consumer electronics, enabling icons only being backlit when appropriate to the programming sequence
Back in July, Braveheart invested about $400K in Design LED. It was a second tranche of capital for the almost two year old firm, according to an article in The Scotsman. Braveheart, which has nice digs in Perth, (image right) has a good track record in backing early stage electronics sector firms: it backed Wolfson MicroElectronics (one of the 10X venture capital exits in the European market since the bubble burst) as well as AIM listed MicroEmissive Displays.
Read - Lighting up the Grouse brand at the point of sale (press rel.)
Read - Design LED is Braveheart's Alpha investment (The Scotsman)
Posted at 07:58 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 08, 2006
Scottish ForthDD To Raise New Capital For HDTV Market Entry
The European TechTour is going to Scotland this December, as we posted yesterday, and one of the companies that will probably be there is Forth Dimension Displays (ForthDD).
The startup, formerly known as CRLO Displays, is going to be raising its second round of financing soon, in order to to back the launch of its all-digital microchip imagers into two high potentional consumer markets, namely high-definition TVs and miniature digital projectors.
The company, located on shores of the River Forth near Edinburgh, has been successful in getting its technology into military markets where it’s used in head-displays for simulation and training, as well as in medical diagnostics and surgical applications. Its California operations help reach these market niches.
But now its time to go large. The firm's CEO Leslie Polgar, who came on board shortly after the VC round, gave us an email interview recently. He said the firm had some encouraging interest from potential customers at a recent trade show where he demonstrated a 43” Rear Projection HDTV using his firm's technology.
“Our Time Domain Imaging (TDITM) technology is the best and fastest route for TV makers to market a HDTV at less than $1000 street price. The image quality we demonstrated was well-received by the many TV makers and industry analysts and experts who saw it in June.”
At the same exhibition (the SID Business Conference), one of ForthDD’s customers successfully demonstrated a full-color pocket projector using the TDI technology. He didn't mention it in the interview, but the "customer" he is talking about is Light Blue Optics, which is backed by 3i. We've covered it here earlier this year (See link below).
ForthDD raised an “A” round of financing in September 2004 from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and Amadeus Partners. They invested $19M.
Polger said:
“The past twelve months have witnessed significant progress on all fronts: product development, manufacturing, market penetration as well as in people and infrastructure. So we are looking forward to raising our B Round of financing. In May, we were named a Red Herring Euro 100 Company winner in recognition of this success and of our prospects for the future. We expect to be a $100 Million revenue business by Year 2010."The company lays claim to 60 patents mainly on its single-chip liquid crystal on silicon technology The firm says it uses “the world’s fastest switching liquid crystal to achieve a 100% digital imaging solution” and has an advanced pilot-scale manufacturing operation at its Scotland location.
If Polgar is successful in leading his company to reach nine digit sales that would make a second success story for an Edinburgh area high tech in recent times, that is, since the tech speculation bubble burst.
The other is Wolfson Microelectronics, which supplies Apple and Sony with chips, had sales of about £100 last year, a market cap of £598M, and employs 300. It delivered its early backer Scottish Equity Partners a 70 times return on its investment. The chart shows a post-ipo performance that is looking good. Chart Source: DigitalLook.com
Read - Forth Dimension Looks For Big TV Share (ft)
Read - Light Blue Optics (a:c euro)
Posted at 05:17 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 31, 2006
ZBD Raising VC For E-shelf Displays
On the back of completing successful customer trials in the UK market, ZBD Displays has raised £2.86M, according to an announcement we received from Esprit Capital Partners
Co-investors include QinetiQ Ventures, The Dow Chemical Company and TTP.
The use of electronic displays in public places for advertising and among retailers is replacing paper at a fairly rapid clip, according to a recent article in the WSJ about outdoor advertising. It is not growing as fast as online advertising, but the spending on it is significant (see link below).
Although, ZBD is not in the outdoor ads business at the moment, we think that it benefits from the general trend of digitization of signage.
The startup's original invention was a bright, flat display (based on liquid crystal display tech) that does not use power to hold an image -- only when the image actually changes does the display need power.
It came out of one of Britain's military technology research units, Qinetiq. Over the years, it has had to figure out how to commercialize it, choosing electronic shelf pricing systems targeted at retailers. To do that, it also developed the software and systems to manage the pricing indicators, hone it for supermarkets, and then convince them to try it out.
In the meantime, competitors are emerging that compete directly, although the ones we looked at do not have the brightness and contrast that ZBD is showing, or they rely on infra-red and wireless tech.
So it still has a marketing and sales challenge ahead of it, and if it finds it too challenging, we say there enough potential acquirers that have shown an appetite in the recent past for such startups. ZBD has raised £14.9 so far, with Esprit's Prelude fund having invested a total of £5.6 million to own about a third of the company now.
Read - Technology Boosts Outdoor Ads (WSJ)
Posted at 08:37 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 16, 2006
Euro Organic Electronics Market Takes Shape, Investors Ignore It
We noticed that the Organic Semiconductor Conference to be held in September in Frankfurt dropped the "Semiconductor" from its name. The change highlights the trend that sees polymer or organic electronics, a technology that so far is mainly targeted at flat screen displays, moving into radio frequency ID chips, solar cells, and memory devices.
Memory Devices On Polymer Are Lightweight And Dramatically Increase Storage, Says Thin Film Electronics
But we're wondering why there aren't any venture capital firms or investment banks scheduled to take the podium or take part in the business and marketing panel discussions.
Looking at the roster, there will be a lot of startups on hand. There's the ones we know like Novaled, Oled-T, Nanoident, MicroEmissive Displays, Liquavista, PolyIC, and Plextronics (which just got funded this week, according to sister pub alarm:clock).
And we see some new names like Xaar, out of the UK and Thin Film Electronics out of Sweden, which looks like it has some pretty interesting printable memory "chips" in the works. It was recently trying to raise funding but didn't close the round as far as we know.
Read - Plextronics Close To Closing (alarm:clock)
Read - Speakers at Organic Electronics Conference and Exhibition 2006 (oea-osc)
Read - Organic semiconductors: history, industry and funding (oea-osc)
Posted at 07:18 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 31, 2006
Light Blue Optics = Laser Tech For Mini Beamers + Big Screen TVs
3i said today it led a $2.5M seed investment in Light Blue Optics, whose optics technology can be used in miniature projectors. It recently demo'd its technology with Forth Dimension, the Scottish micro-display manufacturing company. (No typo - Forth is the name of a river in Scotland)
One of the applications that it has demonstrated is to deploy its optics with a micro-display to generate high-definition images for big screen (rear projection) TVs.
Read - Light Blue Optics secures US$2.5 million seed funding (press rel.)
Read - Personal beamer from Cambridge (a:c euro)
Posted at 11:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 14, 2006
Liquavista Pans OLEDs, Touts Its Power Efficiency
A lot of venture capital and industry money has gone into OLED startups in Europe with the hopes that plastic displays will take a chunk of the booming LCD market.
But Liquavista, the recently spun off venture from Phillips R&D unit that has an alternative to OLEDs, is making moves to challenge that notion. It has published a comparison of the power efficiency of its tech to rivals, which dramatically shows its superiority (naturally).
So far, we haven't detected any response from OLED vendors or the VCs backing them.
Read - Liquavista launches world’s brightest reflective displays
Posted at 05:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 26, 2006
OLED-T Takes Over Elam-T Assets And Gets Financed
OLED-T, a UK startup that has taken over the assets of ELAM-T, a display materials developer, has raised £3.8M in a deal led by E-Synergy, reports eetimes. Aberdeen Asset Management, Foresight Venture Partners and Gartmore Investment Management have also invested as part of the funding round.
The company makes materials for OLED displays that it claims have a longer life than competing materials. Capital will be used to fund an R&D facility to scale up chemicals production and hire staff
Read - OLED materials specialist gets funds, adds CEO (eetimes)
Posted at 01:21 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 11, 2006
Plastic Logic Looking For New Capital?
Plastic Logic, a UK company that makes key parts for OLED displays, is going to be investing between $50M and $100M to build a new plastic electronics fabrication plant, according to one of its backers in an article in EETimes.
He did not say how the fab would be financed.
From the EETimes
Plastic Logic (Cambridge, England) has a roughly 12-inch diagonal display prototype working that combines an active plastic logic backplane with an electrophoretic display technology from E Ink (Cambridge, Mass.). The company announced a collaboration with E Ink in December 2004.Hauser [Hermann Hauser of Amadeus, one of its VC backers] told his audience said that Plastic Logic is performing a detailed investigation of the costs of volume manufacturing of such active backplanes and that it seemed likely that the factory would cost between $50 million and $100 million and would be able to turn out millions of displays a year.
“We can build our first fab starting now for completion in about 18 months,” Hauser said. He said that after selection of a location, construction would begin in 2007 with a view to volume manufacturing in 2008.
Plastic Logic has raised more than $50M in venture capital to date from US, Chinese, European, and Japanese investors.
Read - Cambridge Startup Mulls Plastic Electronics
Posted at 06:44 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 05, 2006
Personal Video Sunglasses
Mirage Innovations, which last September raised $7.5 million in a Series A round of financing from Gemini, Landa Ventures, and Benchmark Capital, is demoing a nano-prism wearable display.
It says the lightweight display is for use with portable media players, game consoles, cellular phones, and PDAs.
The headgear, which looks to still be in prototype phase, has been a long time in coming. The company was founded in 1998.
Read Israeli Startup Creates Wearable Display (infoweek)
Link Mirage Innovations
Posted at 08:43 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 20, 2006
Liquavista Poised To Make Displays Brighter
New Venture Partners has spun Liquavista out of Philips with an undisclosed amount of funding from both sides. The Dutch startup is looking to market equipment used to make brighter displays for mobilephones, MP3 players, and other electronic devices. It uses a diffeerent technique and materials compared to LCD, the industry standard for displays, but the founders say that the equipment is compatible with existing LCD production lines.
This is the first startup resulting from a contract that NVP signed with the Dutch electronics company a year ago to spin out promising R&D projects.
NVP has a similar partnership with British Telecommunications plc (BT), which has resulted in the following startups: Azure Solutions Ltd., Vidus Ltd. (acquired by NASDAQ-listed @Road), Evolved Networks Ltd, Psytechnics and iO Microwave Photonics Inc.
Its claim to fame is a Lucent venture portfolio that had done well since NVP got its hands on it. Some of the spinoffs (and exits) include iBiquity Digital, Flarion (acquired by Qualcomm), Vallent (formerly Watchmark-Comnitel), LPSS (now Intrado), Celiant (now part of Andrew Corp.) and Internet Photonics (now part of Ciena).
