• 1995-1997
• ATP funding amount:   $1.7M
• Displaytech, Inc. cost-share amount:  $1.6M

ATP provided cost-share to Displaytech, a small company with limited funds, to develop mass-production technology for a new generation of LCD microdisplays that could produce detailed real-time images as small as a postage stamp that are still sharp when magnified to the size required for HDTV.

• Developing a manufacturing process for the wafer-scale mass production of silicon-based micro-displays
• Making reliable ferroelectric liquid crystal materials in a wide temperature range.

Prior to the ATP project, manufacturing microdisplays were capital-intensive (dedicated plants that cost up to $1 billion) with low productivity. Through the ATP project:

• Production capacity increased from one chip at a time in 1994 to a capacity of 100,000 chips per month by 2000;
• Technical barriers were overcome to achieve a 600% increase in final image quality, 100% increase in product lifetime, and a decrease in per unit costs from $6,000 to $160; and
• DisplayTech was awarded three patents for innovations created under this project.

Displaytech was then able to translate these technical results into economic impacts:

• Despite a world-wide high-tech crash, DisplayTech has grown from 20 employees at the project start in 2004 to 50 as of the end of 2004.
• The ATP project helped Displaytech attract over $80 million of private sector capital, from which a state-of-the art pilot plant was built in Longmont, CO.

Its manufacturing partner, Miyota, built a $30 million factory for large-scale production dedicated exclusively to making Displaytech microdisplays.

• Production began in 2000, and 12 months later, Displaytech had produced and shipped 1 million displays.
• By 2004, the annual output is close to 4 million displays.
• The technology has been integrated into JVC camcorder displays, and Concord, Minolta, and Hewlett-Packard digital-still camera viewfinders.

The spillovers of this project have been significant. Through the ATP-funded project, Displaytech facilitated a new production process, a “fabless semiconductor” model that has significantly lowered the barrier to entry in this market and productivity increased by orders of magnitude. Displaytech’s success has encouraged more than 24 U.S. firms to enter the micro display market.