Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron Dior who wrote (5082)	8/1/2002 3:07:34 PM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 24758

Ron, Quick thoughts right now. I looked at FED displays as done by PIXT and there were two problems which seemed unique to the tech. One was the difficulty in driving emitters and they had to be placed very close to the front of the device thus requiring very close manufacturing tolerances and not very good yields. SIDT seems to have solved this problem with their more efficient emitters. Another is the requirement for a vacuum - it is a CRT. Ultimately, how rugged can it be compared to solid state? CRTs can be made pretty rugged but I still wouldn't want to drop a flat one. I don't think you're going to see these in laptops. Difficulty common to all flat panels is the backplane - how do you scale it up without increasing your costs. Yields. SIDT has beaten this partly by going away from an emitter for every pixel thus simplifying the display design but the electronics driver will be more complex than for a conventional CRT. But that can go on a chip. And partly with using printing techniques instead of photo lithography, as you point out. Using this method, we are able to use thick film techniques such as screen-printing to deposit a catalyst in selected areas. The growth of the carbon nanotubes is done in situ without the need of additional photolithographic steps. This method lowers the cost tremendously and also makes possible the use of carbon nanotubes for high resolutions displays. Furthermore, these metalized nanoparticles can be achieved on ceramics or other dielectrics, on silicon, etc., and can be used as catalysts in many other fields. sidiamond.com They've also licenced a process allowing them to grow nanowires in situ. It's non exclusive but might well have applications for manufacturing displays. sidiamond.com Upside:This will be cheaper than plasma displays to build and run. It will allow most CRT makers to make the equivalent of a plasma display. Downside: It's still a vacuum tube - a glass and metal can. Perhaps I should say a possible downside. Because there's little heat generated could this be made of plastic and composites? Are they strong enough to withstand vacuum pressures? Nonetheless, I ask if forward looking CRT manufacturers really would want to go in this direction rather than switching over to totally solid state devices made of plastics. The competing device is projection screens which are already on sale. I think the cold cathode emitter is a thing to watch. It's efficient and it's got lots of potential applications and is a genuine nanotechnology device as opposed to a nanomaterial. The company is already selling them to one customer. This is the real product, not the display, I think. They should concentrate on developing lots more applications for it - they are doing this and should do it lots more and get more partners who are device manufacturers. I also think the the technique of growing nano tubes using process described above should be something they could apply or licence profitably. The shares are dirt cheap and they so far don't seem to have had problems financing themselves through share sales and will probably continue that way. My view of that is that it's OK - they get value from the share dilution and folk can always buy some more. That's how it works with development companies. (I suspect I'm talking to Mom about making apple pie). They are talking about cutting the company up so it may be possible to get a pure play in the nanotechnology which I think is going to be a glamour investment area the next few years. It's nice to be where the action is if you can buy value. Thankyou for pointing it out.