Touch user interfaces have made significant advances in the consumer electronics market particularly for mobile phones and notebook computers, opening the door for adoption in other applications including white goods, computer peripherals, medical equipment, and instrumentation. Synaptics made its debut in the home appliance market earlier this year with the launch of the Samsung Hauzen ZERO air conditioner.
The standout products on day three of the SID 2010 conference is Universal Display's new PHOLED display architecture with a unique four-color, sub-pixel design, which promises to drive commercial development of all-phosphorescent active-matrix OLEDs and Sony's tiny rollable OLED display that can wrap around a pencil.
Smaller distributors were the only ones to post sales gains in 2009. Interestingly, two of the five distributors that posted growth last year -- Interstate Connecting Components and Sherburn Electronics -- derive 100 percent of their sales from interconnect products. Both of them also target the military/aerospace industry. Here are the top 10 sales leaders by ICs, passives/electromechanical devices, interconnects and computer products as well as sales growth.
DOE invests $12M in solar technologies
Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will invest up to $12 million in four companies to support the development of early stage solar energy technologies and help them advance to full commercial scale. The companies are Alta Devices, Solar Junction, Tetra Sun and Semprius.
Companies awarded under DOE’s Photovoltaic Incubator Program will work with NREL to transition prototype and pre-commercial PV technologies into pilot and full-scale manufacturing. The anticipated subcontracts, up to $3 million each, will be awarded as 18-month phased subcontracts with payment made upon completion of project milestones, says the DOE.
Through the Recovery Act, the DOE is investing more than $117 million in developing and deploying solar energy technologies.
The four new partnership projects are as follows:
- Alta Devices, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) up to $3 million: The company will focus efforts on developing an innovative high-efficiency (>20 percent), low-cost compound-semiconductor photovoltaic module, with market entry expected in 2011.
- Solar Junction Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) up to $3 million:
Solar Junction will develop a manufacturing process to produce a very high efficiency multi-junction cell that will be used by concentrating PV (CPV) manufacturers to produce lower cost CPV systems. - Tetra Sun (Saratoga, Calif.) up to $3 million: The Tetra Sun project will target back surface passivation for high efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells to develop a high efficiency low-cost C-Si solar cell.
- Semprius, Inc. (Durham, NC) up to $3 million: Working on a massively parallel, microcell-based CPV receiver, the company combines the benefits of unique-to-solar manufacturing techniques with the performance and operational benefits of microcell concentrating photovoltaics.
NXP offers a low-power IC aimed at MPPT applications using PV cells or fuel cells. 
C&K Components offers a series of low-cost, miniature slide switches. The OS Series of RoHS-compliant switches feature a new high-temperature option for lead-free soldering.