GlobeNewsWire: Himax acquires "certain advanced nano 3D masters manufacturing assets and related intellectual property and business from a US-based technology company. The transaction is expected to be closed in February 2018." Terms of the agreement and the name of the "US-based technology company" were not disclosed.
The advanced nano 3D manufacturing masters are primarily used in imprinting or stamping replication process to fabricate devices such as diffractive optical element (DOE), diffuser, collimator lens and micro lens array. The acquisition brings Himax the master tooling capability to supplement the company’s wafer level optics (WLO) technology, which is critical in its efforts to offer 3D sensing total solutions. In addition, certain intellectual properties such as those related to true grey scale image and micro lens arrays will enable Himax to enter into new markets such as biomedical, computational camera and niche displays, and develop more sophisticated DOE and diffuser for future generation 3D sensing solutions.
Himax IGI Precision Ltd. (“Himax IGI”), a wholly owned subsidiary, has been established for the said acquisition. Himax IGI, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will continue to invest in the development of state-of-the-art nano 3D mastering technology and solutions.
Jordan Wu, President and CEO of Himax, said, “The team that are joining us along with the acquisition are true experts in what they do and are arguably the best talents in the world in the small but very technically challenging field of nano 3D mastering. We sometimes got frustrated by the less than satisfactory result in our WLO product development, unsure whether the issue was caused by the quality of the master or our own product design or manufacturing. By adding mastering know-how into our family, we can surely enhance the overall WLO product quality and shorten our development cycle. I am sure many of our innovation driven customers will be thrilled to hear that finally someone has taken the right move to bring nano 3D mastering, design and manufacturing of high precision optical structure product all under the same roof.”
Update: As written in comments, the company that sold the mastering technology to Himax is probably IGI, located in Minneapolis.
Oddly enough, the company is probably IGI, located in Minneapolis. (http://igi.com/).
ReplyDeleteThat's a good find. Can we update the original post to reflect this?
DeleteDone.
DeleteHimax learned of IGI when Lytro shared process details of how it created lens arrays. It was an attempt to produce replicated Light Field microlens arrays at lower cost than the US supplier they were dealing with at the time. The Himax-Lytro effort was killed due to poor yields from Himax and very limited capability.
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