Friday, November 7, 2008

Pixtronix pushes its new display tech into the light

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

After spending the last three years under a shroud of secrecy, Andover-based Pixtronix Inc. has unveiled its micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) display technology and put a new management team in place that features a well-known local industry name.

Founded in 2005 by president and CTO Nesbitt Hagood, Pixtronix has been quietly working on a mechanical way of improving electronic displays, while also reducing the power it takes to operate such screens. Two weeks ago, the company added Quantum Bridge Communications Inc. founder and former president and CEO Tony Zona to the post of CEO, and last week unveiled its first product, PerfectLight, publicly.

“All of these new (mobile) applications require bigger, clearer and prettier displays, but displays are the major power hogs of the device,” said Hagood, who also founded Billerica-based optical communications technology maker Continuum Photonics Inc.

The promise of PerfectLight is to provide better visual characteristics — including a wider color gamut and a greater viewing angle — for cell phones, PDAs and laptops, while also reducing power consumption by 75 percent. Executives hope that it is a promise device makers can’t pass up.

While the level of interest from manufacturers remains to be seen — the company has built a number of alpha prototypes and is currently shopping them to unnamed screen manufacturers — investors have bought in. The company has raised a total of $31 million from two rounds, the most recent coming in June 2007. Investors in both rounds include Atlas Venture of Waltham and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of California.

While new technologies have traditionally taken years to penetrate the display market, Pixtronix board member Jim Iuliano, also the CEO of Acton-based Azimuth Systems Inc. and former CEO of electronic display maker E Ink Corp. of Cambridge, said the timing could be right for Pixtronix.

“I think this plays into the emerging energy market opportunity by providing a low-power solution without losing any clarity,” he said.

But while the market for an improved mobile screen could be in the billions of dollars, according to analysts, Pixtronix isn’t alone in its pursuit, even in New England. In Watertown, QD Vision Inc. is barking up a similar tree, using quantum dot LEDs (QD-LEDs), as opposed to MEMS tech. The companies’ technology approaches and target markets differ, according to QD Vision’s founder and CTO Seth Coe-Sullivan. 

“Phones aren’t on our road map for the next year or so,” he said.

Pixtronix is focused initially on the mobile handset market, but executives say the technology — based on tiny mechanical devices on semiconductor chips and measured in micrometers — is applicable to any number of display applications, both large and small, in the future.