Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of LCDs, has acquired Liquavista company which develops ultra-low power display technologies. The decision emphasizes Samsung's interest to use the electrowetting display technology in electronic book readers, mobile phones, media players and other low-power mobile gadgets.

Liquavista's electrowetting technology, which operates in transmissive, reflective, transparent and transflective modes, enables the creation of displays with bright, colorful images with dramatically reduced power consumption. Offering more than twice the transmittance of LCD technology and able to operate at low frequencies, displays utilizing electrowetting consume just 10% of the battery power of existing display technologies, according to the developer.

With the acquisition of Liquavista, Samsung aims to expand its leadership in next generation display technologies by pioneering the application of electrowetting in e-Paper and transparent displays. As electrowetting can be manufactured by modifying existing LCD production lines, Samsung will be able to realize significant synergies through the utilization of existing manufacturing equipment and capabilities.

In e-paper applications, the response time of the electrowetting displays will be more than 70 times faster than that of existing reflective displays, allowing for color videos, which was previously thought impossible. In future, the application of the technology is expected to expand to transparent, transmissive and transflective displays.

Liquavista was founded in 2006 as a spin-out from the Philips Research Labs. Liquavista is based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Tags: Samsung, Liquavista, E-Book