Canatu and Carbon Nanobud Enabled Displays
Table of contents
In previous articles, we highlighted companies such as Cambrios and Cima Nanotech that are looking to displace the use of Indium Tin Oxide in touch screens. One other company that is playing in this space is Canatu.
About Canatu
Founded as a spin-off from the Helsinki University of Technology in 2004, private Finnish company Canatu has raised $18 million from government funding as well as private funding from the likes of Troika Ventures and Inventure Capital. With 150 patents in 17 patent families, the company started its commercial activities in 2008 and now has over 40 companies evaluating their “carbon nanobud” CNB™ films for touch screens, displays, and touch sensitive surfaces.
Technology
Canatu’s new material, the Carbon NanoBud®, is a hybrid of carbon nanotubes and fullerenes which combines the best features of both fullerenes and nanotubes. The material has shown to be a much superior field emitter than traditional nanotubes and they need not be aligned for the purpose. The result is what is claimed to be the world’s highest performance carbon based transparent conductive film. Since 2007 Canatu has been able to double the conductivity at a given transparency approximately every 12 months. Canatu has developed a manufacturing method called Direct Dry Printing® (DDP) which allows direct application of the NanoBud films on any substrate material, even at room temperature at much less cost than competing methods.
Products
Canatu has developed flexible touch sensors with world-record bendability, to be applied in flexible and foldable consumer electronics products. Additionally the sensors are thermoformable, which means they maintain conductivity even after 100% stretching. The sensors can detect 10 simultaneous touches and are totally invisible with light transmission achieving a record high of 97%. Additionally, these films have the highest transmission of any carbon nanomaterials, with 96% transmission at 150 ohms/square sheet resistivity. With almost zero reflectivity and haze, Canatu’s film is the highest performing transparent conductor material in the market. The high contrast characteristics of these films further enable the use of lower backlight power to increase battery life by up to 20%.
Conclusion
While Canatu’s headquarters and production facility are located in Helsinki, the company also has sales offices in Japan, Korea, China, Europe and the USA. The company is now taking orders for their CNB™ films and sensors with a high-volume CNB™ film manufacturing plant planned to open in 2014. Given the company’s claims to the competitive superiority of their ITO displacement technology, it should not be long before the company aligns itself with a major industry player.
Share
Itanium Tin Oxide or Titanium Tin Oxide?
Thank you for pointing out the typo. It’s actually Indium Tin Oxide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium_tin_oxide