| Updated 1/15/2006 - Energy Conversion Devices, Nasdaq ENER, owns the controlling patents on several technologies that will become part of our everyday lives:
1. Nickel Metal Hydride batteries - Being manufactured by licensees as consumer batteries and for hybrid cars.
2. CDRW and DVDRW disks - Being manufactured by licensees and avaiable in stores now.
3. Solar Panels - Available now through solar outlets, and being used by large roofing contractors.
4. Non-volatile computer memory - Under license with Intel, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, and BAE, among others.
5. Hydride tanks for hydrogen storage - Under development.
6. Regenerative Fuel Cell - Under development.
7. Cognitive Computer - Under development.
8. OLED Displays under development with GE.
More Detailed Information
1. NiMH Batteries ECD's rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride batteries are quickly replacing Nickel Cadmium in many consumer products such as cell phones and camcorders. NiMH batteries don't have the memory effect problem associated with NiCads, while having a greater energy storage capacity, are non-toxic, and don't have the inherent potential fire hazard of Lithium based batteries. ECD has signed license agreements with most of the major consumer battery companies, and receives royalties from them.
Dec. 3, 2004 — ENER announced that it was entering into a series of agreements with Cobasys LLC, the 50-50 battery manufacturing joint venture between Chevron Corp. and Ovonic Battery, a subsidiary of ECD Ovonics, to expand the scope of licenses granted to Cobasys at the time of the formation of the joint venture in July 2001. Cobasys presently develops, manufactures and markets advanced Ovonic NiMH battery systems for transportation, telecommunication and uninterruptible power supply applications. One objective of the agreements is the expansion of the Ovonic Battery license to Cobasys to provide an opportunity for Cobasys to take advantage of the growing interest in NiMH batteries and enable it to address a full range of battery opportunities for military, homeland security, load leveling, stationary power and other prismatic battery applications.
On Jan. 9, 2006, Cobasys was selected to provide the battery systems for Saturn VUE Green Line Hybrid SUV. This is the first contract of many that are expected from the auto cos. On Jan., 2001, Sanyo, a licensee, announced that they were selected by Ford to provide the batteries for it's first hybrid car. The Honda and Toyota hybrids already are using NiMH batteries, with royalties being paid to ENER. Azure Dynamics is providing test hybrid vehicles using Cobasys's batteries for the commercial market. New york City has a program with Ford to encourage the use of hybrids for it's taxi fleet. Although Lithium Ion batteries are showing promise for hybrid car use, they remain more expensive, and most major auto cos. have chosen our NiMH tech for their production autos.
The Cobasys JV is funded by Chevron, with no cost to ENER, and profits are expected to be shared after the initial costs of the plant and machinery are paid for.
2. CDRW and DVDRW drives are now standard equipment on most computers being sold. The rewritable disks use ECD's phase change disks that can be written to up to 100,000 times and last 100 years.
Toshiba plans to introduce, possibly by March '06, two HD DVD player models — priced at $499 and $799, which is sure to begin a standards war. An HD DVD disc has a single layer capacity of 15 gigabytes and a dual layer capacity of 30 gigabytes. Blu-ray, a competing technology, supports 25 and 50 gigabytes in single- and dual-layer capacities. Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Dell and most of the other major electronics companies lead the Blu-ray brigade, along with most of the major Hollywood studios. Toshiba heads the HD DVD push and has Microsoft, Intel and NEC in its camp. But so far only three movie studios have agreed to produce DVDs in that format. Manufacturers are sure to follow with DVD recorders.
No matter which DVD rewritable format wins out, the recorders will use ECD's RW disks, with royalties coming to ENER. We also have a JV with GE to produce the disks ourselves, but that has been put on hold awaiting the outcome of related events.
3. Solar panels. Unisolar, ENER's wholly owned subsidiary, has developed a roll to roll process of manufacturing solar cells. A thin film of amorphous silicon is deposited on a continuous roll of stainless steel in a vacuum machine, also developed by ECD, capable of producing 30 megawatts of panels annually. The company believes their continuous roll manufacturing process is inherently cheaper than the batch process implicit in single crystal silicon PV manufacture, and costs will fall as production increases. It's flexible steel backed panels are rugged and uniquely suited as building integrated photovoltaics, unlike the glass clad crystalline solar panels.
On Jan. 7, 2003 — UNI-SOLAR announced today an exclusive strategic alliance with SOLAR INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES of Los Angeles to utilize UNI-SOLAR® flexible solar electric laminates for integration with single-ply roofing membranes for Southern California. The unique qualities of the UNI-SOLAR® flexible laminate combined with time-proven roofing membranes will provide the basic building block to produce the first (in North America) building-integrated photovoltaic (PV) roofing membrane system for commercial and industrial uses. Solar Integrated Technologies' proprietary design will hasten the marriage of the solar industry to the commercial roofing industry.
SIT has installed several large scale roofs, including on a Frito Lay warehouse and WalMart. Over the next few years, as data is analyzed, Wal-Mart hopes to establish a corporate best practice approach to environmental conservation that will serve as a design standard not only for future Wal-Mart stores but for the retail industry in general.
On January 11, 2006 – Solar Integrated Technologies announced that it won a $2.5 million contract from Honeywell Building Solutions, a leading global energy services company. Under the contract, Solar Integrated will help Honeywell install a 144,000 square foot BIPV roofing system on a building that forms part of the Base Exchange at Luke Air Force Base (AFB), Arizona. The BIPV roofing system will initially include 122 kilowatts of solar power, with an additional 253 kilowatts of solar power pre-wired or “solar ready” for planned future project expansion.
solarintegrated.com
Several European companies are also using our solar panels, including ThyssenKrupp and Sunset Energietechnik.
Growth in solar is forecast at 30%+ per year, and we have a 25 megawatt machine up and running, with a second machine due for completion in late '06. The production from both is sold out. On Jan. 12, 2006, California passed a landmark solar initiative. The plan is both historic and monumental for the solar industry in the U.S. and beyond. It allots USD $3.2 billion for solar energy rebates in the state for the next 11 years, providing for the installation of approximately 3000 MW of solar energy, roughly the power equivalent of six large natural-gas fired power plants. Unisolar, a wholly owned subsidiary of ECD, is expected to announce further machines as funding becomes available.
Lockheed Martin has awarded Unisolar a contract to deliver solar cells on polymer substrates for evaluation on it's High Altitude Airship program. Work on that is being done on a smaller 5 megawatt machine.
On Aug. 11, 2005 — Unisolar announced today that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, has awarded United Solar Ovonic a $6.7 million, 18-month contract to continue the development of its ultra-lightweight, high-efficiency solar cell technology for use in space and airship vehicles addressing defense and homeland security applications.
The solar division is the first to provide a positive cash flow to the company, and it is easy to see a tenfold demand appearing in the coming years.
uni-solar.com
<b.4. Hydrogen storage. ECD has developed a proprietary solid hydrogen storage system to provide the auto industry with an alternative to the on-board reforming of fossil fuels to obtain hydrogen for fuel cell cars. It is the enabling technology that should help speed the transition to hydrogen fuels. Hydrogen, often referred to as the ultimate fuel, contains no carbon and emits no pollution, with water vapor being its only byproduct. Almost unbelievably, a 1 liter propietary Ovonic hydride cannister will safely store, in a solid state, 40% more than a 1 liter bottle of liquid hydrogen, at low pressure, and allow rapid charge/discharge times. At present, hydrogen is stored and transported in a liquid or gaseous state, impractical, costly and potentially dangerous. With this remarkable technology, hydrogen can be stored in a solid state with none of the risks associated with these current methods."
It is expected that ECD's solid state hydride storage will be used in the coming fuel cell cars. It is also possible to run lawn mowers, tools, electronics and other devices with hydrogen safely stored in ECD's hydrides.
5. Non-volatile computer memory, also known as Ovonic Unified Memory (OUM). OUM utilizes a proprietary phase change chalcogenide alloy to store non-volatile information economically and with excellent solid state memory properties. A computer utilizing OUM could be turned off, then turned back on immediately, or 10 years later, and be started right up where it left off. These OUM computers would not be subject to critical data loss when the system hangs up or when power is abruptly lost as are present day computers using DRAM a/o SRAM.
With instant on operation, OUM computer users would not have to wait for the system to boot up and reload DRAM. OUM requires fewer steps in an IC manufacturing process resulting in reduced cycle times, fewer defects, and greater manufacturing flexibility. The operating speed of OUM memory technology is similar to DRAM and many orders of magnitude faster than Flash write. Also, unlike conventional Flash memory, OUM memory is randomly accessible for memory addressing. Further, Flash memory wears out (fails) after 100,000 write cycles, while the OUM memory state can be written greater than 10 trillion times, making this memory useful for program storage (Flash) as well as general purpose interactive (DRAM) data storage memory.
OUM has direct applications in all products presently using solid state memory, including desktop, laptop, and palm computers, cell phones, graphics-3D rendering, GPS, video conferencing, multi-media, Internet networking and interfacing, entertainment, digital TV, telecom, PDA, digital voice recorders, modems, DVD, networking (ATM), Ethernet, and pagers. OUM offers a way to realize full system-on-a-chip capability through integrating unified memory, linear, and logic on the same silicon chip.
On 2/8/2000, Ovonyx, a joint venture between Energy Conversion Devices and Tyler Lowrey, former Chief Technical Officer and COO of Micron Technology, announced it has licensed its OUM memory technology to Intel and that the two companies will work together to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of high-density, non-volatile memory based on the technology. Intel has invested an undisclosed amount in Ovonyx.
BAE Systems, a licensee, has non-volatile, radiation hardened test chips available for use in space and military applications. Their assessment of OUM, and a roadmap for their product introduction plans can be found here. ovonyx.com
In May, 2004 – STMicroelectronics, a licensee, reported that it is entering a product-oriented phase using OUM. "We are accelerating the effort on chalcogenide memory. We are going to start designing a real product this quarter. It's also good for embedded applications as it is on a CMOS base," he added. ovonyx.com
On December 28, 2005 — Ovonyx, Inc. ('Ovonyx') and Samsung announced that they have entered into a long-term license agreement under Ovonyx' intellectual property relating to Ovonic Universal Memory (OUM) thin-film semiconductor memory technology. Samsung has announced their intention to produce OUM based chips in 2006, with royalties expected from the Ovonyx JV. The other licensees can be expected to react with product announcements of their own.
Ovonyx is self-funded, with no cost to ENER. ENER's tech was it's contribution to the JV.
6. Ovonic Regenerative Fuel Cell. ECD’s unique, low-cost, proprietary non-noble metal catalyst materials technology gives the Ovonic Regenerative Fuel Cell™ significantly superior performance, higher efficiency, and lower costs compared to other technologies, such as Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells. First applications are expected to be as power backup systems.
7. The COG The cognitive computer, envisioned by Stan Ovshinsky, has the most breath taking potential of all of his inventions. Based on the multi-bit, analogue-like, capabilities of the OUM memory technology, it is possible to build circuits that mimic how neurons work in our brains. Thus, in principle, it is possible to build a computer that "learns", just like our brains do. One can hardly imagine the possibilities that would arise from such a "cognitive computer", that would not only learn, but possibly be self-aware. Bill Gates has said that whoever would invent such a computer would be worth a hundred Microsofts. Not much is being revealed about the progress of "The Cog"(my label), but work is progressing.
8. OLED Displays On Sept. 25, 2003, GE Global Research, the centralized research organization of General Electric, and ENER announced that they have been awarded a grant from the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) of the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a low-cost, roll-to-roll process for the production of large-area organic electronic devices. This project will break new ground in the development of large, thin and flexible electronics systems.
The cost of the $13 million, four-year project will be shared among NIST, GE and ECD Ovonics. The program goal is to create a cost-effective system for the mass production of products such as flexible electronic paper displays, portable TV screens the size of posters, embedded sensors, solar powered cells and high-efficiency lighting devices.
The proposed roll-to-roll research prototype line will input a roll of plastic film and output working organic electronic devices. GE will design and provide the organic electronic technology, while ECD Ovonics will provide its unique roll-to-roll equipment-building expertise. The key is to form the active organic layers using low-cost printing techniques such as gravure or screen printing.
If successful, the program will demonstrate that organic electronic devices can be made on flexible material in a continuous roll-to-roll process without the huge capital investment normally required for batch-processed inorganic semiconductor technology. This will be the first attempt to create roll-to-roll manufacturing equipment specifically designed for the unique requirements of organic electronic device fabrication. Anil Duggal, manager of GE's light energy conversion program said "Although GE and ECD Ovonics will have to overcome some significant technological challenges, we are excited about the tremendous impact this program could have on establishing new, low-cost industries and an energy-efficient future for the United States."
The project will require expertise in organic electronic device physics and fabrication, as well as equipment design and roll-to-roll processing. Experts agree that organic electronic devices will undoubtedly tap a new market, involving applications that can be produced in large quantities over large areas and at a low price. The carbon-based materials combine efficient semiconducting properties with mechanical properties that permit flexible, lightweight applications. Consequently, organic electronics will enable scientists to create products that were never before thought possible.
Stan Ovshinsky, the founder of Energy Conversion Devices, has been called by some as one of the greatest inventors of our century. Any one of these technologies that he invented has the potential to generate huge revenues. ECD has so many breakthrough technologies, that are just beginning to pay off, that it is almost like investing in a high-tech mutual fund.
More information can be found at ECD's web site, ovonic.com |
|
