Financial Report 2009
- Start page
- 2009 in brief
- History
- Statement of the Chairman of the Board
- Statement of the CEO
- About Obducat
- Outlook
- Market
- Technology, development, patents and products
- Employees
- Sustainability, environment, ethics
- Five year review
- Key ratios
- Share capital and ownership structure
- Corporate Governance
- Financial Reports
- Affirmation
- Audit Report
- Board of Directors
- Management
- Financial Calendar
- Contacts
- About the Annual Report
Other application areas
Other application areas
Flexibility and cost-efficiency are Obducat’s most significant assets in the development race. NIL works excellently in an array of application areas undergoing development – where in many places it is used in the development work itself – and its capacity in high volume manufacturing is particularly attractive in the nanotech market. Another great advantage of nanoimprint, soon to be of increased interest, is the possibility to pattern also non-flat surfaces such as lenses.
Epitaxy on patterned substrates, ELO (epitaxial lateral overgrowth) is an area which has recently attracted great interest. This technology is utilised for those applications with a higher demand on quality of the substrate material which is subsequently used to manufacture components such as Blu-ray laser for game pads and HD video equipment.
Photovoltaics, PV, is a term used for solar cell technology, and for Obducat it borders on the area of displays. PV is still impeded by the technology’s very limited efficiency; yet another challenge is meeting the extreme demands for throughput, production capacity. The interest and research in the area is on the other hand rising dramatically and the potential, as application area as well as future source of energy, is enormous.
Obducat’s NIL technology is well adapted for PV production, and in the PV area there are discussions on the use of Obducat’s technology in a number of solar cell applications.
New application areas for patterning surfaces with nanometre solution are constantly emerging. Displays for large surfaces, epitaxy on patterned substrates, manufacturing of flat Fresnel lenses, anti-reflex treatment of surfaces, and structures for various biomolecular applications are but a few examples. An exciting application that we no doubt will be seeing more of is the manufacture of materials with new and enhanced properties. This is made possible by epitactical growth of perfect crystal layers on patterned substrates. This would enable a more economical production of solar cells with significantly improved efficiency, with optical components on silicon integrated circuits.
Once Moore’s law has taken the semiconductor industry to and past line widths of 20 nm for the structures that require replication on integrated circuits, the ITRS trade association predicts that the most promising replacement for optical lithography will be NIL technology.
These new application areas are monitored by Obducat on their own or in collaboration with potential customers to allow for speedy development when the demand for them arises.