MEMS displays get colorful

LOS ANGELES — Qualcomm MEMS Technologies Inc. took the wraps off its first multicolor displays at the Society for Information Display conference this week, simultaneously revealing the first customer application for the displays.

The initial versions of the company's Mirasol MEMS (microelectromechanical system) displays have snagged eight designs wins over the past year, three of them in cellphone handsets, despite being monochrome. Based on a movable membrane technology called iMOD (interferometric modulation), the displays are reflective devices that offer two advantages over LEDs and OLEDs: they consume very little power and are readable under outdoor ambient lighting conditions.

The new line of color displays include 0.9-inch, 2.1-inch and 3.3-inch-diagonal devices. The 0.9 incher, with a 128 x 96-pixel format and miniscule 9 mW power diet, has been chosen by Freestyle Audio for use in its next-gen waterproof, shockproof MP3 players. Freestyle's market consists of music enthusiasts who are also involved in outdoor sports such as swimming, surfing, boogie boarding, snow boarding, rafting, kayaking, recreational bicycling, running and hiking.

The new Freestyle devices will, in fact, be submersible. Regarding their displays' outdoor readability, "You don't want a surfer to have to cup his hand to read the display while he's being chased by a shark," quipped QMT vice president of business development, Jim Cathey.

The monochrome Mirasol displays are manufactured primarily for QMT by Prime View International in Taiwan, and last month QMT announced a collaboration with Taiwan's Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co. Ltd. to establish a new Taiwanese factory for "next generation" displays, now identified as multicolor displays.