Kopin Names VP for Defense Business Development, Unveils New Manufacturing Process

Wearable technologies firm Kopin Corp. has named Bill Maffucci vice president of business development. He will focus on emerging applications in the defense market.

Maffucci has more than 35 years of experience working with defense contractors in a variety of display applications, with emphasis on the development of head-mounted display systems.

He started working on head-up and head-mounted systems in 1983 with Kaiser Electronics, and later became a vice president for Kaiser Electro-Optics and senior director of display systems for the Rockwell Collins Government Systems Optronics Group.

Most recently he worked for Intevac Photonics after it acquired Creative Display Systems, which he co-founded.

“As the government replaces older-generation weapon sight and vision systems with new-generation digital systems, there is an opportunity for significant growth,” Maffucci said.

New manufacturing process

Meanwhile, the company recently launched a new process for creating micro LCDs for augmented and virtual reality applications.

The NanoJet process releases tiny drops of liquid crystal material with variations in weight within a few nanograms. This allows highly controlled and uniform layering, yielding superior image quality and higher brightness in the company’s transmissive CyberDisplay and reflective LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) displays.

“This process improves the display performance and reduces the cost to manufacture the display,” said CEO Dr. John C.C. Fan. “We are qualifying the NanoJet process and expect a tier-one customer to introduce in coming months a wearable product which includes a display manufactured using the Nanojet process.”

Kopin develops wearable technologies and solutions for integration into head-worn computing and display systems for military, industrial and consumer customers. Its technology portfolio includes ultrasmall displays, optics, speech enhancement technology, system and hands-free control software, low-power application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and ergonomically designed smart headset reference systems.

For more information, visit www.kopin.com.