from May 20 - 22, 2008 in Los Angeles/USA

Booth of Germany, Booth no. 101-7

The Fraunhofer IPMS carries out customer specific developments in fields of microelectronic and micro systems technology in Dresden, serving as a business partner that supports the transition of innovative ideas into new products. The Fraunhofer IPMS develops and fabricates modern CMOS technology products in its own clean room facilities, up to small pilot series production. With modern equipment and about 240 scientists, the range of projects and expertise covers sensor and actuator systems, microscanner, spatial light modulators, lifetronics and organic materials and systems. At the SID 2008 show the Fraunhofer IPMS presents:

1. Tilt compensated laser projection unit integrated into a mobile phone

Fraunhofer IPMS shows a miniaturized monochrome laser projector which optical part fits into a mobile phone. The system is based on its own two dimensional micro scanning mirror. The system contains an ultra compact projection head and a separate laser and signal processing unit. It allows the projection of arbitrary images and video sequences with a geometrical resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, 256 brightness levels per pixel and elementary color, and 50 hertz frame rate. The projection modules developed by Fraunhofer IPMS overcome limitations of conventional projection systems – like rather large components for light deflection and high power light sources that consume lots of electrical power and radiate most of it thermally – by deploying the micro scanning mirror as key element for image generation and lasers as light sources. The patented micro scanning mirror of Fraunhofer IPMS is an ideal base for the development of compact projection heads. It distinguishes itself by high mechanical robustness and ease of both electrical control and optical coupling of the laser beam. Independent from the projector technology one major difficulty has to be solved: Movement of a handheld device will affect the image quality. Every object has six degrees of freedom, three translatory and three rotatory. Position changes are comparably slow and the human eye is used to follow moving objects and images. More difficult is the compensation of rotatory movement that occurs from shiver with a frequency to smear image pixels to lines. This has to be compensated electronically, which is shown in the demonstrator by adding an Inertial Measurement Unit to the system and electronically compensating rotatory movements. Additionally the movement can be used actively to control software functions of the handheld device.

2. Bidirectional Microdisplay (OLED on CMOS)

For the first time ever, OLEDs and OLED-on-CMOS integration offer the possibility to integrate highly efficient light sources with photo detectors on a single CMOS chip. This enables monolithically integrated optoelectronic applications based on standard silicon. One possibility of implementation are emitting and sensing elements nested into each other in array structures, which together form a so-called Bidirectional Microdisplay, i. e. an element that displays an image and acts as a camera at the same time. Such a component will lead to new generation of personalized information systems that on one hand provide visual information to the user and on the other hand are sensitive to visual interaction. Using some sort of modified eyeglasses the user will perceive her or his environment the usual way, additional optical information will be provided using the information system (Augmented Reality). This information may be adapted to the overall context, both unconsciously and by intent. Without using the hands or spoken commands the user can control the presented information just with movement or actions of the eyes. At SID, Fraunhofer IPMS will present a respective demonstrator for the first time, which clearly shows the future possibilities of this technology.