Industrial Technology Research Institute
The Wall Street Journal announced the winners of its 2009 global Technology Innovation Awards on September 14. Taiwan's ITRI, which paper-thin flexible loudspeaker (fleXpeaker)
Wall Street Journal points out 「Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, or ITRI, won in the consumer-electronics category for its work developing a paper-thin, flexible speaker. Researchers at ITRI, devised a way to create arrays of tiny speaker that can be combined to produce high-fidelity speaker systems of almost any size. Because the FleXpeaker is lightweight and consumes little power, it could be attractive for use in cellphones or in car sound systems. Other possible applications include giant banners that could be used to deliver public-service announcements in train stations or advertising messages in shopping malls. ITRI is seeking to license the technology or create a spinoff company to commercialize the product.」
The Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards has all along been highly acclaimed internationally. Since its commencement in 2001, this year is its 9th annual award and there have been numerous competitors every year. At this annual award, 16 judges came from various nations from across the world including reputed research institutes of various fields, joint venture companies and experts and scholars of reputed enterprises. The award not only stresses innovation of technology itself, but also application and commercialization and market potential which are indices of extreme importance for the examination board. Like the low-price automobile of India's Tata Motors selected by Wall Street Journal and widely acclaimed on the market 2 years later after its debut.
ITRI President Dr. Johnsee Lee says, 「ITRI commenced with R&D of the paper-thin flexible loudspeaker in 2006 through the team led by General Director Dr. Yi-Jen Chan in Electronic & Optoelectronic Research Laboratories. Presently, ITRI has applied for 45 global patents for its 17 projects. Applications for this technology are rather extensive and with enormous industry potential. Aside from currently using in family stereo automobile hi-fi equipment, it can also be used in earphone or for industrial anti-noise purpose. The papers of this technology have been published at the largest display exhibition in the world—the US Display Consortium (USDC), the Society For Information Display (SID), and also adopted by the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America in 2009.」
The paper-thin flexible loudspeaker utilized paper and metal layer as the material and printing for production. It will pioneer a new era in speakers and the electronic sound industry. Aside from upgrading traditional speaker industry, it can be extended to the revolutionary Memo card, thin-sheet MP3 innovative applications, and can be integrated into energy-saving buildings, electric vehicle, entertainment and medical application. Coupled with the needs of humanized, mobilized and personalized for daily living, it will also bring along with new type of technology products.
In recent years, ITRI has successively been affirmed internationally for its innovative R&D and application capability. The Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Awards is the third international award won by ITRI in 2009. Earlier this year, ITRI also won the R&D 100 awards for its high safety STOBA lithium battery. The innovative material STOBA can effectively enhance the safety of the lithium battery and massively reduced of the explosion rate of lithium battery. It is the only technology in the world which fundamentally resolved safety of the lithium battery from the material end. Furthermore, this year's international industrial design award—the Red Dot Best Design Award was also won by the innovative application Portable Broadcast developed from the paper-thin flexible loudspeaker (refer to the attached photo). Now the same technology has won the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards.
More Information
(1) Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards
The Technology Innovation Awards was created by the world's most influential financial media The Wall Street Journal in 2001. It is a highly acclaimed international technology R&D award. Every year genuinely novel, unique and commercialized technologies with breakthrough in concept or methodology, innovation evolutionary or revolutionary in evaluation will be selected from up to thousands of innovative technologies across the world. In past years, the awarded units included Siemens in Germany, LG Electronics, India's Tata Motors, and the Applied Materials of the United States, etc. For more information, please refer to http://online.wsj.com/
(2) Introduction to award-winning technology
Paper-thin flexible loudspeakers
With support from the technology project of the Department of Industrial Technology of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the paper-thin flexible loudspeaker of ITRI has made breakthrough in the heavy and bulky traditional audio speakers. Mainly used paper as the material, its thickness is less than 0.1cm. It is light and thin and does not occupy space, and can bend and use printing to produce speakers and allow electronic products become still lighter and slimmer. These speakers produce sound with high frequency of 20KHz and low frequency of 200Hz. Its sound effect is particularly suitable for expressing sophisticated changes in medium and high frequency gamut such as the chirping of birds and insects, putting them on a par with traditional speakers. Moreover, it is eco-friendly and its power consumption is only 10% of the traditional speakers.
In the future, the paper-thin flexible loudspeakers can be applied to portable 3C products, transportation products and large-size commercial billboards, and can also be integrated with wallpaper and become part of decoration, or cut into various forms at will, develop into handy stickers, speakers for sticking on the body, clothing or other articles, memo cards, thin-sheet MP3, and even be integrated with buildings, and applied to emerging entertainment and medical fields and bring along new business opportunities. It is estimated to carry out technology transfer of large-size paper-thin flexible loudspeaker mass production by early 2009-2010, and complete R&D of the bendable transparent speakers of plastic material by 2010.
Through special integration technology, the paper-thin flexible loudspeakers may also be integrated with broadcasting and speakers and packaged into handy bags like the instant drinks. In accordance with national and regional preference, such handy bags may be assembled into personalized paper-thin flexible loudspeaker broadcasting gift boxes for portable carriage for receiving broadcast.
Industrial Technology Research Institute (http://www.itri.org.tw/
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
