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Technology Stocks : Research Frontiers (REFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lawrence smith who wrote (1099)	10/13/1998 6:54:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50166

Larry, I have been around the electrochomic scene for quite sometime, the problem is not that they do not work (many cars use a rearview mirror made by Donnely that is activated electrochromically), the problem is that the costs premiums you are assuming kill the market. Who would pay even $.50 per foot royalties on something that sells for less then a dollar per square foot (standard glass). Last at 85,000 sq feet to 55 gallon of Goop, the thickness of the active layer is 25 micron (exactly as you said a mi), have you ever tried to maintain glass surface of any area like that at 25 micron parallelism? Have you ever tried to maintain (in the face of UV flux) a suspension of particles in suspension for any length of time? What I am trying to say is that the approach of solid films containing droplets have a greater chance of long term stability, and ask Lampert and he'll tell you that long term stability is one of the "minor" problems not yet resolved. It just cannot. Any colloid chemist will give you a litany of reasons why it is difficult. I think that you have both major commercial hurdles (cost) and technical hurdles (long term stability) to overcome before you solve this problem and if you intend to maintain the colloidal suspension with a high frequency voltage constantly applied to the pane, as suggested in one of REFR's patents, you are going to buy a bunch of additional problems. Zeev