January 18, 2012 — SEMI presented its annual SEMI Award for North America to QD Vision. QD Vision team members made significant progress on the integration and manufacturing processes essential to the commercialization of quantum dot (QD) technology.
The QD Vision team’s pioneering work in the commercialization of QD technology is expected to support a wide range of products from lamps to displays to photovoltaics with lower cost, higher energy efficiency and greater wavelength control. Seth Coe-Sullivan accepted the SEMI Award on behalf of his team during a banquet at the 2012 SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) yesterday in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Team members include:
- Moungi Bawendi, MIT professor, QD Vision Science Advisory Board
- Vladimir Bulovic, MIT professor, QD Vision Science Advisory Board, QD Vision founder
- Seth Coe-Sullivan, QD Vision founder and CTO
- John Ritter, QD Vision, EVP of Product Development and Operations
- Jonathan S. Steckel, QD Vision founder and director of Chemistry
Quantum Dots are semiconductor nanocrystals that glow when exposed to current or light. Discovered in the early 1980s, they were researched throughout the 1980s and early 1990s when the industry recognized the commercial potential. QDs emit different colors depending on their size and the semiconductor material in the nanocrystal. The commercial differentiation is in the bright, pure tunable colors, low-power consumption for displays and lighting, and the potential of improved efficiency for photovoltaics. QD Vision was the first to sell QD products which were integrated into general illumination lamps, introduced in 2009 at Light Fair International. QD-based displays will first improve the color quality of LCDs, and will subsequently become the emissive element in an electroluminescent display, where R&D efficiencies demonstrated in 2011 have already eclipsed that of OLEDs and LCDs.
“Our industry honors the QD Vision team for their combined efforts to speed commercialization of Quantum Dot technology,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. “This team’s work on developing integration and manufacturing processes has moved the industry forward for a wide range of applications.”
“The commercialization of quantum dot technology, led by the team at QD Vision, opens the door to new generations of products in lighting, displays, and photovoltaics,” said Bill Bottoms, chairman of the SEMI Award Advisory Committee. “They offer greater wavelength control, improved color purity and greater energy efficiency than any existing alternative. Quantum dots hold the promise of replacing the technologies we use in those areas today.””
The SEMI Award was established in 1979 to recognize outstanding technical achievement and meritorious contribution in the areas of Semiconductor Materials, Wafer Fabrication, Assembly and Packaging, Process Control, Test and Inspection, Robotics and Automation, Quality Enhancement, and Process Integration.
The award is the highest honor conferred by SEMI. It is open to individuals or teams from industry or academia whose specific accomplishments have broad commercial impact and widespread technical significance for the entire semiconductor industry. Nominations are accepted from individuals of North American-based member companies of SEMI. Past award recipients include Walter Benzing and Mike McNealy, Ken Levy, Jean Hoerni, Dan Maydan, Robert Akins and Igor Khandros, among others.
SEMI is aglobal industry association serving the nano- and microelectronics manufacturing supply chains. For more information, visit www.semi.org.
2012 SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) reports:
ISS 2012: What is the semiconductor industry’s strategy? by Michael A. Fury
ISS Top 10 trends, from Pete Singer