Technology commercialization recognized nationally

The Federal Laboratory Consortium honored Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with three 2002 Excellence in Technology Transfer Awards. The FLC annually recognizes federal laboratories and their employees who have made significant contributions in transferring important federally funded technology into the private sector. With 51 awards, PNNL has been honored by the FLC more than any other federal laboratory since the recognition program began in 1984. Awards were given for:

Ultra-barrier coatings for flat-panel displays

Glass electronic displays in cell phones, watches and computer monitors may soon be replaced with plastic, making electronic devices thinner, more rugged and lighter. PNNL developed an ultra-barrier coating technology that gives plastic the necessary levels of protection without affecting clarity.

In 1999, Battelle created a subsidiary to commercialize these products. Vitex Systems, Inc. soon attracted $15 million in investment from Mitsubishi Corp. and is bringing two products to market.

For decades, the semiconductor industry has been increasing the amount of circuitry, or computing power, on a chip while reducing its size. However, the industry soon will hit a technical wall preventing additional size reduction unless methods can be found to create cost-effective "nanoscale" semiconductors.

PNNL's advanced work with molecular beam epitaxy, or MBE, has provided Motorola Labs with the ability to create the next generation of semiconductor wafers. MBE uses separately generated and controlled beams of atoms and molecules to deposit a thin film of crystalline material on a solid substrate. Motorola plans to have silicon wafers manufactured using this new technology and produce communication devices containing circuits on these wafers.

Radio frequency tags are small, inexpensive and can be used to identify, inventory and track items. Ranging in size from a grain of rice to a credit card, they can be encoded with detailed information. PNNL has made significant advances to the technology, creating tags that can be read from distances up to 10 times further than previous tags.

In late 2000, Battelle created a new company, Wave ID, to manufacture, market and distribute the PNNL-developed RF tags. Within a year, Wave ID was acquired by Alien Technology, a fast-growing California-based company with a patented technology that dramatically reduces the cost of manufacturing electronic products.