WILMINGTON, Del., May 28 -- DuPont Displays and Philips Components, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, announced a joint development agreements with Alien Technology, a start-up company based in Morgan Hill, Calif. The three companies aim to bring Active Matrix Polymer OLED on plastic technology to market. Philips Venture Capital separately announced that it had made an investment in Alien, while DuPont Displays completed an equity investment in Alien Technology in 2000.
    The companies will explore the potential of Alien's NanoBlock IC technology in the design of next generation Polymer OLED displays on glass substrates. The research will involve the development of smarter, passively driven full-color Polymer OLED displays, as well as direct-drive displays for higher information driven applications. Unlike the conventional active matrix approach, direct-drive technology eliminates display refresh overhead through the use of local control, memory and drive circuits to service individual pixels.