Sony develops film-thin display

 

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 25 minutes ago

TOKYO – In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all — a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.

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Sony Corp posted video of the new display on its Web page Friday. The display is being held up by a hand that’s squeezing the 0.3 millimeter, or 0.01 inch, display, while showing color video of a bicyclist stuntman, picturesque lake and other images.

Sony will present the research and video at an academic symposium in Long Beach, California, for the Society for Information Display this week, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said in a release.

The display combines Sony’s organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display, it said.

The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market — liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels.

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that’s so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.

Sony said plans for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided.

Sony President Ryoji Chubachi has said a film-like display is a major technology his company is working on to boost its status as a technological powerhouse.

In a meeting with reporters more than a year ago, he boasted Sony was working on a technology for displays so thin it could be rolled up like paper, and that the world would stand up and take notice.

Some analysts have said Sony, which makes Walkman portable players and PlayStation 3 video game machines, had fallen behind rivals in flat-panel technology, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and Sharp Corp. of Japan.

But Sony has been marking a turnaround under Chubachi and Chief Executive Howard Stringer, the first foreigner to head Sony, including reducing jobs, shuttering unprofitable businesses and strengthening its flat TV offerings.

The Tribune, Chandigarh, India – Punjab

Bathinda girl tops in class VIII examination
Our Correspondent
Mohali, May 24
Amanjot Kaur of Government Senior Secondary School, Rajgarh Kube (Bathinda ) has topped in the middle standard examination conducted by the Punjab School Education Board even as the pass percentage in the examination has come down by nearly 10 per cent compared to last year. The result was declared here today.
Kanika Goel of Holy Heart Senior Secondary Convent School , Mangwal ( Sangrur) has been placed second on the merit list while Manjeet Singh of Rabindra Day Boarding Senior Secondary Public School, Jalandhar, has bagged the third position.
According to a press release issued by the board , a total of 513977 students had appeared in the examination conducted in March this year out of which 102324 students had appeared privately. The pass percentage of students this year stood at 54.81 compared to about 63 of last year.
The result gazette will be available for the public in the board’s text book sales depots located at district and tehsil headquaters on May 26 at 4 p.m. Book sellers could collect their gazette from text book sales depots located at district headquarters only. Principals or their authorised representatives could collect the result of their respective institutions on May 27 at 10 a.m. from text book depots concerned. Result cutting for the SAS Nagar district could be collected from the Middle Cell in the board’s office here.
Detailed result will be available from midnight between May 26 and May 27 on websites.
The names of students placed in the first 10 positions on the merit list are : Taranjeet Singh , Rabindra Day Boarding Senior Secondary Public School, Jalandhar , (4); Supriya Sethi , S.M.Jain Model Senior Secondary School, Phagwara, (5) ; Bhawna Regmi, Nawanshahr (6) ; Vishali Aggarwal, Shivalik High School , Bhucho Mandi (Bathinda) (7); Kulwinder Singh Chana , S.M.Jain Model Senior Secondary School, Phagwara, (8) ; Upasana Sharma , Toddlers Home Study Hall, Hoshiarpur, (9) ; Amritpal Singh , Holy Heart Senior Secondary Convent School, Mangwal ( Sangrur), ( 10 ).

The Tribune, Chandigarh, India – Punjab.

PV Costs to Decrease 40% by 2010

PV Costs to Decrease 40% by 2010
Washington, DC [RenewableEnergyAccess.com]
The solar industry is poised for a rapid decline in costs that will make it a mainstream power option in the next few years, according to a new assessment by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Prometheus Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“To say that Chinese PV producers plan to expand production rapidly in the year ahead would be an understatement. They have raised billions from international IPOs to build capacity and increase scale with the goal of driving down costs. Four Chinese IPOs are expected to come to market this month alone.”

– Travis Bradford, Prometheus Institute, president
Global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity still provides less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, it increased nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by booming markets in Germany and Japan.
Spain is likely to join the big leagues in 2007, and the U.S. soon thereafter.
This growth, while dramatic, has been constrained by a shortage of manufacturing capacity for purified polysilicon, the same material that goes into semiconductor chips. But the situation will be reversed in the next two years as more than a dozen companies in Europe, China, Japan, and the United States bring on unprecedented levels of production capacity, stated the assessment.
In 2006, for the first time, more than half the world’s polysilicon was used to produce solar PV cells. Combined with technology advances, the increase in polysilicon supply will bring costs down rapidly — by more than 40 percent in the next three years, according to Prometheus estimates.
“Solar energy is the world’s most plentiful energy resource, and the challenge has been tapping it cost-effectively and efficiently,” says Janet Sawin, a senior researcher at Worldwatch, who authored the update. “We are now seeing two major trends that will accelerate the growth of PV: the development of advanced technologies, and the emergence of China as a low-cost producer.”
The biggest surprise in 2006 was the dramatic growth in PV production in China. Last year, China passed the U.S., which first developed modern solar cell technology at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the 1950s, to become the world’s third largest producer of the cells — trailing only Germany and Japan.
China’s leading PV manufacturer, Suntech Power, climbed from the world’s eighth largest producer in 2005 to fourth in 2006, and PVs have made the company’s CEO one of his nation’s wealthiest citizens. Experts believe that China, with its growing need for energy, large work force, and strong industrial base, could drive dramatic reductions in PV prices in the next few years, helping to make solar competitive with conventional power even without subsidies.
“To say that Chinese PV producers plan to expand production rapidly in the year ahead would be an understatement,” says Travis Bradford, President of the Prometheus Institute. “They have raised billions from international IPOs to build capacity and increase scale with the goal of driving down costs. Four Chinese IPOs are expected to come to market this month alone.”
In the meantime, supply shortages have led manufacturers to find ways to use polysilicon more efficiently, and have accelerated the introduction of new technologies that do not rely on purified silicon and are inherently less expensive to manufacture. So-called thin film cells can be made from amorphous silicon and other low-cost materials, and companies developing these technologies have recently become the darlings of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
Although in the past, thin film cells have not been efficient enough to compete with conventional cells, today over a dozen companies — including Miasole, Nanosolar, and Ovonics — are competing to scale up production of low-cost solar modules that can be churned out like rolls of plastic.
“The conventional energy industry will be surprised by how quickly solar PV becomes mainstream — cheap enough to provide carbon-free electricity on rooftops, while also meeting the energy needs of hundreds of millions of poor people who currently lack electricity,” Sawin says.

PV Costs to Decrease 40% by 2010.