London Press Service
Informs
IS “PLASTIC PAPER” THE FUTURE
OF READING?
Most of us still buy our daily paper on the way to work and read it on the train or bus. But with the unstoppable march of technology – and news of a massive investment project – that tradition may soon make way for a different form of media.
United Kingdom-based Plastic Logic has raised 100 million US dollars to build the first factory to make plastic electronics on a commercial scale, producing flexible display modules for “take anywhere, read anywhere” electronic reader products.
Plastic electronics is the fabrication of devices such as thin-film transistors using semiconducting polymer materials. These materials can be deposited from a solution allowing the devices to be printed. Polymer materials are also fundamentally flexible. This pioneering technology could revolutionise the way that people interact with their media on the move.
The facility will use Plastic Logic’s unique process to produce Active-Matrix displays that are thin, light and robust; enabling a reading experience closer to paper than any other technology.
The Active-Matrix is an array of pixel electrodes on which the voltage on each pixel is controlled by an active electronic component, usually a thin-film transistor (TFT), and by the signals on an array of intersecting row and column electrodes.
Up to now, TFTs have been fabricated with amorphous silicon deposited at high temperature on a rigid glass substrate. This requires a complex process of multiple mask-based photolithography steps.
The facility, in Dresden in the “Silicon Saxony” region of eastern Germany, will produce display modules for portable electronic reader devices – a product category that is predicted to grow to 41 million units in 2010. It will have an initial capacity of more than a million display modules per year and production starts in 2008.
The Cavendish was opened in 1874 as the Laboratory of Physics at Cambridge University, one of the first teaching laboratories in England. Research in the Cavendish has led to a number of the most important discoveries in physics.
The UK publishing industry creates and disseminates content in a variety of formats including newspapers, books and magazines, academic journals and online educational products. The industry has a special role in terms of promoting UK culture and ideals. Its importance on the global landscape is partly because of the dominance of the English language and because much education internationally is delivered in English.
The annual turnover for books, journals and online educational products is reckoned at 3.3 billion pounds, with export earnings of 1.2 bn pounds. The book and journals market can be divided into three sectors of roughly equivalent value: academic and professional, educational and English language teaching, and consumer books.
Licensing in particular has shown extensive growth as a form of export. UK publishers produce more titles than any other nation. A high proportion of business magazines’ content is now available online.
UK Trade & Investment’s role is a proactive one of facilitating overseas investment in the UK and enabling domestic business to expand confidently overseas. A spokesman said: “As the UK government’s international business development organisation, we help companies internationalise. Our services bring together a network of business sector specialists and support teams around the UK and in British Embassies and posts all around the world.”
By Ray Cooling |