PowerFilm, a company that develops and produces thin and flexible solar panels and other flexible electronics, declared that it has arranged a live presentation of its flexible electronics technology to select government officials recently.
The demo was attended by Kevin Condon representing Senator Tom Harkin’s office, Debi Durham, Economic Development director of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, Iowa Lt. Governor and U.S. Congressman Tom Latham.
PowerFilm Phicot Roll to Roll Flexible Electronics
PowerFilm has developed the roll to roll production technology for semiconductors originally for its photovoltaic products and now has extended it for the manufacture of flexible electronics. The new technology has been formulated by Phicot, a subsidiary of PowerFilm in association with the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Hewlett-Packard (HP). The technology has the advantage of being light weight and durable due to the use of thin backplane driver and sturdy plastic and produced utilizing a low cost production process. The backplane driver comprises an array of transistors to manage the operations of individual pixels in a display through computer commands. The technology and the working prototypes have been developed in the USA.
Earlier, the company received a grant of around $5.5 m from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to produce a self powered flexible display for the use of soldiers by utilizing a mix of its thin film solar material and flexible display expertise. The display received its power from the thin film solar material.
The other potential uses of this thin film flexible display include billboards, e-books, display screens and briefing boards for the use of military.