Plastic Logic closes in on pilot production for 'disruptive' high-res plastic e-readers
Development of Plastic Logic's e-readers, thin flexible plastic sheets showing active high-resolution data, one of the most disruptive technologies in development in the Cambridge Cluster, is on track to set up pilot production lines within a year.
Low cost, power-light, portable e-readers may free us from the tyranny of the computer screen, straightening backs, relieving necks and soothing eyes the world over.
The technology has the potential to radically change the economics of key segments of the electronics industry, and be what economists call 'disruptive' in existing markets. It enables revolutionary new applications by printing electronics on thin and flexible plastic substrates using a process scaleable for large area, high volume and low cost.
The technology has been subject to intense development since it was spun out of Cambridge University's famed Cavendish Laboratory into the Plastic Logic company five years ago.
Says Simon Jones (pictured), Plastic Logic's VP Business Development: "We are now at the point where we know what kind of applications we can support and what kind of production equipment is necessary to build a line for mass production. We're in discussions now with potential manufacturing partners; we expect to be building the first pilot lines starting from very early next year, possibly the end of this year.
"The pilot lines will enable us to make reasonable volumes of product-quality displays in 2007. We'll be able to use those to launch early products and do field trials.
"Then in 2008 we'll be ramping that up to a full mass production line."
The excitement about the potential of plastic electronics technology, based on the printing of active electronic circuits using advanced plastics, has attracted high calibre support.
High calibre backing
Plastic Logic Limited, which operates out of state-of-the-art clean room facilities on the Cambridge Science Park, has attracted a big-hitting board of directors and blue chip investors.
Board chairman is Professor Lord Alec Broers, vastly experienced in high-tech business and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge widely credited with adding considerable impetus to the Cambridge Cluster. Non-executive directors include Professor Sir Richard Friend, Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University, a pioneer of the study of organic polymers and who revolutionised the understanding of the electronic properties of molecular semiconductors; Dr Hermann Hauser, now director of Amadeus Capital Partners, a Cluster icon who has been involved with over 20 technology firms; Simon Segars, from chipmaker ARM Holdings, perhaps the most successful high-tech company in the region; and Dr Simon Waddington, a managing partner of PolyTechnos Venture Partners.
Lead investors are Amadeus Capital Partners and PolyTechnos Venture e-Partners but others with holdings in the non-listed company include Dow Venture Capital, Bank of America Equity Partners, Intel Capital, Yasuda Enterprise Development Co, Siemens Venture Capital and Nanotech Partners.
Since it started up Plastic Logic has raised almost $50m from these and several others investors. Its business model in high volume markets is to licence its device and process technology to manufacturers.
Focus on three applications
There are a myriad of potential applications for the technology. Mr Jones says "our new capability will trigger a wave of product innovation enabled by thin and flexible plastic displays."
Glass based active-matrix displays like laptop screens are heavy and fragile. They can't tackle many applications in mobile devices and retail signage where, Mr Jones says, there is a strong market demand for large, thin and unbreakable screens.
"Our approach of printing transistors on plastic is the first commercially attractive solution to meet this market need. The flexibility of the display even allows a pressure sensor to be placed under the screen to implement a touch screen without compromising the optical performance of the display."
Mr Jones says Plastic Logic is focusing on three market applications that are seeing very strong interest - e-readers; e-signs, mainly for retail signage; and sub displays for phones and other devices, where surfaces become displays carrying such data as, for example, photographs.
A key attraction for the latter application is that power is only used to update a display so that the photo on show does not run the battery down.
As a businessman frequently on the move himself, he's also excited by the prospects of shedding his laptop. "You can't even fit them in on some seats in economy class planes," he says. "If you can make it possible for people to easily access all their text material, especially while on the move, wouldn't that be a fantastic asset?"
"Or we might ask, would you take this device to bed to read? If the answer to that is yes, there's a tremendous market opportunity.
"We're enabling the next step of user friendliness. Batteries lasting longer, all of that data on a thin flexible device - that's the vision."
Limited competition
Mr Jones says that the company's unique process technology doesn't face much direct competition. "There is some effort trying to make more classic approaches work by taking a mainstream technology and making it flexible, which is incredibly difficult to do because silicon isn't flexible," he says.
In organic electronics, other firms are making displays on plastic but they haven't demonstrated displays as large or at as high a resolution as Plastic Logic’s recent 10” SVGA demonstrator. The alternative approaches are based on patterning of successive layers using masks and, because plastic distorts, the masks lose their alignment severely limiting size and resolution.
"We use a number of techniques to address that problem and have designed a process that is scalable, so large displays can be made on a distorting substrate," Mr Jones says. "That's unique."
Another major plus of its technology is it can produce low cost displays in relatively low volumes. A production line to make LCD screens, by comparison, costs more than $2 billion, which has to run 24/7 to get unit costs down to a level that won't frighten off customers.
"The economics of our process don't require such a large scale capital investment," Mr Jones says.
Because its product is new and innovative, Plastic Logic has to do a fair bit of application engineering to demonstrate how a product might incorporate a display module.
The company has just put together an electronics team of six that will focus on application engineering, of putting a module in a product. "So we add a lot of value not only to the manufacturer, but our intention is to add value to the system integrator", Mr Jones says.
2nd March 2006
