Taiwan's ITRI Racks Up Two Prizes at 49th R&D 100 Awards

Tech-fans and geeks believe the ultimate technological and innovative achievement is to win the R&D 100 Awards, selected by an independent judging panel and editors of R&D Magazine published in the U.S. As such and once again, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), generally seen as the hotbed of technological invention and innovation in Taiwan, deserves a degree of respect for winning two R&D 100 Awards, given to the 100 most technologically-significant products introduced to market over the past year.

Being winners at the 49th R&D 100 Awards, after three straight years of victories, shows ITRI's R&D and innovation capabilities.

The ITRI again proved it's in the same league as Intel, Dell, 3M and Hitachi, who are also R&D 100 Award winners, by entering two eco-friendly technologies that defeated many rivals worldwide: the rewritable i2R e-Paper and polarizer protective film HyTAC.

Despite its white-lab-coat-oriented name, the R&D 100 Awards have since 1963 honored many life-quality-enhancing technologies, many of which have not only changed lifestyles in the U.S., as the automated teller machine, but also that globally. Calling such innovations “household names” almost trivializes the enormous brainstorming, motivation and resources invested in their developments, for product as the fax machine, precursor to the scanner, enabled any individual with a phone line to transmit even complicated graphics in the pre-Net era, with other equally groundbreaking winners including the flashcube, halogen lamp, liquid crystal display, Kodak Photo CD, Nicoderm anti-smoking patch, Taxol anticancer drug, lab on a chip, and HDTV.

Economy Transformer
The ITRI, founded in 1973, is a nonprofit R&D organization engaged in applied research and technical services, being instrumental to transform the labor-intensive economy in Taiwan to one well-known for tech industries, whose world-class members such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and United Microelectronic Corp. (UMC) trace their origins to the Institute.

The R&D 100 Awards, widely recognized as the "Oscars of Innovation," have long been the benchmark of excellence for industrial sectors as diverse as telecommunications, high-energy physics, software, manufacturing, and biotechnology. Perhaps more importantly, given many bright ideas may not turn into big moneymakers, R&D 100 Award winners is a “free” stamp-of-approval by a non-profit body, hence independent, attesting to the innovation, practicality of emerging technologies to at once recognize R&D efforts and capabilities of industry leaders, government labs and academic institutions, literally taking R&D 100 Award winners to the cusp of improved commercial success.

The ITRI has also won R&D 100 Awards for On-Chip AC LED lighting technology and STOBA (Self Terminated Oligomers with hyper-Branched Architecture), as well as from the Wall Street Journal the Technology Innovation Award for its FleXpeaker, a paper-thin loud speaker.

Rewritable e-Paper: i2R e-Paper
John Chen, general director of ITRI's Display Technology Center, says the ITRI, backed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), has been engaged in R&D related to innovative flexible display for mobile, intelligent living and green energy conservation. Interdisciplinary R&D teamwork and consistent product technology promotion have enabled the ITRI to achieve many technological breakthroughs. The FlexUPD, first-prize winners of the Wall Street Journal technology innovation award and R&D 100 Awards, makes future smart mobile devices lighter, thinner and robust.

The ITRI's winning rewritable i2R e-paper is lauded for special green-energy-conserving display technology. Needing only "heat" to store or transmit images on the flexible cholesteric liquid crystal display (LCD) panel, this e-paper achieves 300dpi resolution, has memory without using electricity. Users simply put paper in a thermal-writer to complete image-removal and writing very quickly.

So the e-paper is both eco-friendly and multi-rewritable. With a compact thermal writing head using minimal electricity, users need not remove images. Production cost is low and mass production is easy. Recently, 4 material manufacturers and 5 equipment operators have completed “industry science and technology programs”, with such technology having been transferred to Taiwan's Changchun Chemical Engineering Co. for trial mass-production. The technology may be used for producing digital books and graphics without limiting length, electronic bulletin board, wall paper, large digital bulletin board and other innovations, and possibly create business opportunities for advertising, architecture and the “cultural creative industry,” says the ITRI.

Eco-friendly, Polarizer Protective Film: HyTAC
Regarding the HyTAC, Su Tsung-tsan, general director of ITRI's Material and Chemical Research Laboratories (MCL), says that the ITRI began researching the new polarizer protective film since 2003.

According to MCL, the research team has made the materials for the LCD display greener, more eco-friendly with excellent transparency and stability. This technology uses a unique organic, inorganic nano material mixing technology. The highly transparent optical film and low-toxic manufacturing processes not only meets eco-protection trends but also replaces existing polarizers with TAC film, with the critical material totally developed in Taiwan, with such material to sharpen the competitive edge of Taiwan's LCD display industry to be used extensively upstream, says the MCL.

Since polarizer is an important critical component of LCD, MCL explained, the structure of the current polarizers has polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) film with polarizing function and bonded on both sides with the TAC (triacetyl cellulose) film which is transparent and water-absorbing. Presently, the manufacturing processes of TAC protective film used in polarizers globally use mainly dichloromethane solvent, needing expensive processing equipment to ensure no leakage and residue. It makes up an exceedingly high proportion of the production cost, therefore the ITRI's use of epoxy silicon dioxide nano mixing material technology and successfully researched and developed the highly transparent new-type polarizer protective film HyTAC materials as a substitute for the conventional TAC film.

MCL says it does not need to use dichloromethane solvent to reduce two-thirds of exhaust recycling equipment cost. It conforms to the trend of environmental protection and concomitantly boasts superior 3D optical refraction rate which is suitable for use in the new-generation IPS (In-Plane Switching) mode LCDs. With extensive market application potential, this technology has been transferred to manufacturers in Taiwan for mass production. The LCD display material technology will generate a new wave of market development opportunities, says the laboratory.

Taiwanese Winners of 2011 R&D 100 Awards
Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan	HyTAC (Thin-Film and Vacuum Technologies)
Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan	i2R e-Paper, ITRI re-writable and re-usable electronic paper technology (Materials Sciences)
Institute for Information Industry (III), Taiwan	In-Snergy Technology: Cloud-based Intelligent Energy Management Technology (Energy Devices)
Taiwan Textile Research Institute, Taiwan	All-Foldable Fabric Ultra-Capacitor (Electrical Devices)	Litnertex Co., Ltd.