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Cima Nanotech Eyes ITO Replacement

August 29. 2013. 2 mins read
Table of contents

In earlier articles we discussed various companies providing replacement alternatives for Indium Tin Oxide such as Cambrios, Unipixel, and Atmel. Another private company in this space is Cima NanoTech.

About Cima NanoTech

Minnesota based Cima NanoTech was founded in 2003 with the merger of two entities; Aveka’s nanotechnology unit and Nanopowders Industries. Aveka is a spin off from 3M and Nanopowder Industries was an Israeli company founded in 1997 which provided bulk nanoparticles. In 2011 Cima received 15 million in a third round of funding from Nikko Antifactory, a Japanese venture capital company. The company has 111 patents with 55 employees and operations in 7 countries.

Technology

The company’s technology is SANTE® Technology, a self-assembling nanoparticle technology, and is different to Cambrios in that it uses silver nanoparticles vs. Cambrios silver nanowires. Cima NanoTech’s uniqueness is in its self-alignment properties of the application. The process involves the spreading of water, oil, and silver nanoparticles over a surface and within ten to sixty seconds the silver nanoparticles align to form an organic mesh as seen below:

Cima_Nanotech_Alignment

The resulting mesh has a similar transparency to ITO retaining the required screen brightness and is 4 to 10 times more conductive than ITO which allows for a faster response to touch. Unlike ITO, the material allows for flexible displays and given it’s higher conductivity it is also much more suitable for larger touchscreens which require higher conductivity for 10-finger touch capabilities. While the technology has many applications such as photovoltaics, OLEDs, and transparent heating, the company seems primarily focused on touch display and EMI shielding applications.

Road to Commercialization

In May of 2013, Cima won the Display Week Best in Show Award for their SANTE® Technology. During an interview at this event, the company’s CEO stated that SANTE® Touch Films will be used in touch screens by Q3 of 2013. As of the date of this article, the company is on track to do so.

So far Cima has commercialized their technology by providing an EMI shielding solution for Getac’s rugged notebooks and also by providing transparent heating solutions to multiple Taiwan OEM partners who make heating for transparent LCD heaters.  The Company also provides film to Renias, a large industrial company in Japan, for heating on windows for light industrial equipment.  Currently they are working with the number #2 heating company in the US and have been selling them films for usage in military heating applications.

Conclusion

With Cambrios’ technology already being shipped in products from companies such as NEC and LG, Cima will need to aggressively pursue partners for their touch screen film in order to carve out a niche in this application area. With the CEO stating the usage of SANTE® Technology in Q3 2013 in touch screen applications, they may have already solidified these much needed partnerships.

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