Andre Arsenault (CTO Opalux Inc., left) receiving the Technical Development Materials Award from Raghu Das (CEO, IDTechEx) at the Printed Electronics Gala Awards Dinner in Santa Clara on November 30, 2011.

November 30, 2011 – Opalux is pleased to announce that it has received the “Technical Development Materials Award” from IDTechEx’s Printed Electronics USA 2011 Conference for its tunable photonic crystal technology called Photonic Ink, or “P-Ink”. This award recognizes “the most significant technical development over the last 24 months in the field of material development”. Opalux is pleased to be following in the footsteps of the many illustrious recipients of this award.

Opalux’s P-Ink material represents a revolutionary step forward in display technology, offering the ability to selectively reflect bright and vivid colors from any full spectrum source of lighting. By applying low power electrical pulses, even by capturing and converting minute RFID signals, the color of the material can be selected readily and near instantaneously, and the resulting color states require no power to maintain (electrically bi-stable). P-Ink can be coated onto both rigid as well as flexible substrates in scale, highlighting its potential to drive the development of bendable form factors for displays of all types. Segmented or pixilated arrays can be generated using established techniques and materials, while surfaces and static graphics with changeable colors can be created using an alternative low cost printing approach.

“We are honored and encouraged to have received the Materials Award this year. This award is a testament to the public’s interest in high performance, flexible, and low powered display materials and I take this opportunity to thank the incredible team at Opalux who is driving this groundbreaking technology towards commercialization. We look forward to working with innovation leaders across multiple industries to bring the P-Ink technology into the marketplace.” says Dr. Andre Arsenault, Chief Technology Officer of Opalux.

Opalux was founded in 2006 to develop and commercialize honeycomb-like nanostructures, which are able to diffract and reflect a broad range of specific wavelengths of light perceived as color by the human eye. The Company has been developing a platform of technologies based on this effect, called photonic color, using active polymer-based materials that can respond to an array of stimuli such as pressure, stretching, heat, humidity, and electrical current/voltage. By exploiting the many advantages of photonic color, Opalux has invented a new color display technology that stands apart with its unique combination of brightness, energy efficiency, form factor, customizability, and economy.

Best of luck to the P-Ink team and all the finalists!

CTO Dr. André Arsenault will be giving a presentation featuring two of  Opalux’s Photonic Color Optical Security devices on Jan 20 at 1:50pm.

Come visit us at our booth number: I-113 at the Santa Clara Convention Centre.
Printed Electronics USA 2011

To see the abstract click here.

Photonic Ink (P-Ink) technology comprises an active photonic crystal that reflects a band of color that can be tuned by controlling the applied current or voltage. All the individual spectral colors in the visible range can be reflected by a single P-Ink material. This technology provides an opportunity to create a wider range of primary colors than the conventional RGB system, given the same numbers of pixels for color mixing.
By Hai Wang, Fergal Kerins, Ulrich Kamp, Leonardo Bonifacio, Andre C. Arsenault, and Geoffrey A. Ozin

For the full article click here.