Investor's Business Daily, July 9th, 2007
Real-life display technology is about to catch up with science fiction.
Purdue University researcher David Janes and his colleagues have created see-through transistors and circuits, paving the way for a range of new products, including e-paper and "heads-up" displays in cars.
"The public has heard about nanotechnology. This is one of the first practical uses for it," Janes said in an interview.
Janes, leading a team of researchers from Purdue, Northwestern University and the University of Southern California, published the findings in the current issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology
The researchers say the new devices will also enable companies to bring to market clear display screens, electronic paper and other products.
Transparent heads-up displays, showcased in futuristic thrillers such as "Minority Report" and "The Terminator," feed info to users in a way that doesn't obstruct their view. The technology is widely used in aircraft and is inching its way into luxury autos and motorcycle helmets.
But today's technology uses complex light-projection systems that make it too expensive for most consumers.
See-through circuitry, embedded directly into transparent materials, could make such systems smaller and cheaper.
The researchers devised the transparent circuits using what they call nanowires -- super-thin wiring constructed with nanotechnology. Invisible to the human eye, these tiny cylindrical structures fit on glass or thin films of plastic.
Most chips today are made of silicon and metal. Using zinc oxide or indium oxide with a special process, the researchers were able to make the nanowires nearly invisible.
Marks says his group's nanowire materials are related to metal but "don't have the same reflection in the visible light spectrum." In other words, they're transparent.
Other researchers have created nanowire transistors. But the metal electrodes, which connect the the transistors to other circuitry, weren't transparent, says Northwestern professor Tobin Marks. That made them unsuitable for see-through displays.
Analysts say the breakthrough will enable a host of new products.
"This is one of the Holy Grails of electronics," said Gartner analyst Dean Freeman. He sees many potential uses in autos, military gear and aerospace.
"Everybody wants to get where you can put a display on your windshield and see through it," Freeman said.
The National Aeronautics & Space Administration, which helped fund the research, sees the value in it. The agency is interested in embedding transparent chips into astronaut's space suits and as sensors in the "skins" of spaceships, Janes says.
Northwestern's Marks says practical uses could come as soon as two years from now. He expects one of the first uses to be in car windshields.
"We've already had a number of contacts from automakers," he said.
The group's first efforts involved transparent transistors and simple computer circuits. Now, it aims to create more complex structures, such as material for screens that can replace the liquid crystal displays used today.
"The next announcement will come in the next few months," Marks said, noting, "This has attracted a huge amount of attention already."
The researchers recently filed a patent application and plan to license the technology to companies that make nanotech products.
Gartner's Freeman says several companies are working on transparent displays. Tech giants such as Philips Electronics PHG and Hewlett-Packard HPQ are doing research in this area. So are are conglomerates DuPont DD and 3M MMM.
"There are some strong possibilities for this technology," Freeman said. With all the competition in this arena though, the researchers will have to move quickly if they are to capitalize on it. And they could face some tough hurdles with that task, he says.
"It's getting it from that college lab into an industrial setting and making sure it's robust enough to make a product out of it that's the challenge," Freeman said.
