With the Society for Information Display Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition taking place in Boston this week, the use of nanomaterials in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) has been a hot topic.

Optiva, Inc., which makes thin optical coatings for the display industry, announced that it entered into a manufacturing agreement with Sony Magnetic Products of America, Inc. (SMPA) in Doltham, Ala., for Optiva's Thin Crystal Film (TCF) technology. The first product resulting from the agreement, a TCF Plastic Sheet Polarizer to be used in LCDs, began shipping in early May.

The polarizer plastic film lamination set can be used for transmissive and reflective passive LCDs. According to Greg King, Optiva's Vice President of Operations and Marketing, the TCF Plastic Sheet polarizers are more durable and up to 70 percent thinner than traditional polarizers. And that's the direction the display industry is headed.

"There's a big premium on smaller," King told NanotechPlanet. But that's not where the advantages end. "It makes the screen much more durable, and it behaves differently. It will make viewing angles much more stable."

The technology uses a printed, self-assembled crystalline film, and it replaces a polarizer technology developed at Polaroid that dates back 75 years. Optiva's history doesn't go back quite as far. The South San Francisco-based company was formed in 1997 to commercialize its core technology, which was developed at the Russian Academy of Science. It employs 48 people, including a research staff in Moscow.

The other half of the manufacturing agreement is also an interesting story. Prior to teaming with Optiva, SMPA never produced optical films, but did make, among other things, magnetic coatings for VCR tapes. With the advent of the DVD era, SMPA began looking for opportunities beyond its traditional markets. SMPA invested what King called "a fair amount" of money to enable the production of Optiva's film coating, but was able handle scalable production without building a new facility.

Cleveland, Ohio-based Viztec announced a partnership agreement this week with FlexICs of Milpitas, Calif., for the joint development of flexible, plastic active matrix LCDs. The companies will work to integrate Viztec's Plastic Pixels LCD nanotechnology with the ultra-low temperature poly-silicon active matrix architecture developed by FlexICs.

Viztec manufactures LCDs using two sheets of very thin flexible plastic from roll stock, which are combined to make a display with a diameter of .010 inches. By combining Viztec's LCD technology with FlexICs poly-silicon thin film transistor fabrication process, which enables the design of electronic devices on plastic substrates and enables the use of a low-cost roll-to-roll semiconductor manufacturing process, Viztec plans to expand its current product capabilities from monochrome and color passive displays to include full-color active matrix displays.

The joint development effort will initially focus on mobile LCDs for use in cell phones, PDAs, electronic games and other consumer and industrial electronics, but it is hoped it will lead to Plastic Pixel technology finding its way to larger display formats including laptops and televisions.