QD Advancements on Agenda

The Quantum Dots 2007 conference will bring together manufacturers, materials and equipment suppliers and end users to discuss recent market developments and technology advancements critical for the adoption of quantum dots (QDs) in LED, organic LED (OLED, flash memory, photovoltaic and biomedical/biotech applications when it takes place Dec. 3-4 at the Hyatt Regency Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale.

The second annual two-day conference will also attract executives, sales and marketing directors, product development managers, and engineers from the quantum dot, lighting, display, life sciences, energy, data storage, and investment communities.

The QD industry is growing rapidly: Revenues reached $14 million in 2005, but are expected to surpass $500 million in 2009. With biotechnology and biomedical applications leading the adoption of QDs, a number of other industries, including flash memory, lighting and solar cells, could benefit with improved manufacturing, potentially leading to higher growth rates than originally projected.

Those in the industry consider QDs superior to fluorescent dyes in a number of applications due to their resistance to chemical degradation and photobleaching, and they have superb optical properties such as broad-band excitation, narrow-band emissions and photostability. However, challenges do exist, including stability and shelf life, synthesis and surface functionalization, and manufacturing scalability, which must be addressed before QDs can succeed.

Quantum Dots 2007, organized by conference and research organization IntertechPira Corp., will begin Dec. 3 with an overview of the business of QDs provided by Vincent Caprio of Nanobusiness Alliance. Later, Clinton Ballinger, president of Evident Technologies, will speak on "Transitioning Quantum Dot Technology into Commercially Viable Products." Providing an overview of product environmental regulations in the electronics industry will be Bill Kierl, manager, product and business support, Corporate EHS, Motorola.

Giving a presentation on shell doping of nanoparticles and applications for chemical sensing will be Preston T. Snee, assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. The day's presentations will conclude with a talk on quantum dots for solid-state lighting applications by J. Lynn Davis, director, engineering research, RTI International.

Tueday's presentations begin with "Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Devices -- An Engineered Light Source for Displays, Lighting and Photonics Applications," a talk by Seth Coe-Sullivan, cofounder and CTO of QD Vision. Discussing "Colloidal Quantum Dot at Electronic Grade for LEDs" will be Andrew Wang, chief scientist, Ocean NanoTech. Nigel Pickett, CTO of NanoCo Technologies, will discuss recent developments in heavy metal-free QDs and their applications and Andrew Metters, CTO of Selah Technologies, will speak on carbon-based quantum dots and their performance potential.

Rounding out the conference will be presentations on non-cadmium-based quantum dots by Xiaogang Peng of the University of Arkansas, nonclassical and nonlinear optics of nanocrystals in photonic crystal nanostructures for information processing by Ranojoy Bose of Columbia University and on printed electronics by Marija Drndic, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. The conference will end with a talk on quantum dot-enabled electro-optical devices by George M. Williams, president of Voxtel.

For more information, visit: www.intertechusa.com/qds/