Light-emitting polymers land CDT the engineering "Oscar"

Five engineers from one of the UK’s most exciting new companies – Cambridge Display Technology – have won the nation’s biggest engineering prize, the £50,000 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, for their ground-breaking light-emitting polymer technology. The Academy will announce the CDT team as this year’s winners at its AGM in London on 8 July. Dr David Fyfe, Professor Richard Friend, Dr Jeremy Burroughes, Dr Karl Heeks and Dr Carl Towns will receive the prize and the MacRobert gold medal from HRH Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace on 30 October.

Light-emitting polymers are the way to a true flat-screen TV or computer display, giving a picture as good as the cathode ray tubes in conventional televisions without all the bulk and complexity. Displays can be created on one sheet of glass or, ultimately, plastic so they could be rolled up. CDT’s vision of the future of colour imaging has captured imaginations worldwide, and the company has licensed its technology to display manufacturers Delta Electronics, DuPont Displays, MicroEmissive Displays, Osram, Philips and Seiko Epson. The first consumer products are already in development and the first colour mobile phone screen, made possible through CDT technology, should be with us next year.

“The MacRobert Award is the most prestigious engineering award in the UK. We at CDT are honoured to receive this award which recognises not only the skills and dedication of our scientists and engineers over the past ten years but the tremendous support the company has received, and continues to receive, from the venture capitalists and private investors who have made it possible,” says CDT’s CEO David Fyfe. “It recognises the success of CDT on many fronts from core research to the development of industrial scale manufacturing processes through the investment we have made in the plant at Godmanchester. Most important, it recognises CDT’s successful commercialisation strategy.”

Professor Richard Friend (CDT’s co-founder and Chief Scientist) and Dr Jeremy Burroughes (Chief Technology Officer) and colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge discovered in 1989 that they could make polymers that emitted intense light under an electric current – and that changing the polymer compositions produced different colours of light. Realising that this breakthrough opened the way to high-quality displays, the researchers formed Cambridge Display Technology Ltd in 1992 to exploit the discovery – it was the university’s first spin-out company. Ten years on, CDT now employs 110 people in and around Cambridge and has recently invested £25 million in a technology development pilot plant at Godmanchester.

“CDT leads the world in its development of light-emitting polymer technology,” says Sir John Cullen FREng, Chairman of the MacRobert Award judging panel. “The company has pioneered a potentially disruptive technology that could replace both the cathode ray tube and liquid crystal displays. Their strategy of licensing and joint development has also ensured that the UK economy benefits from the original work at Cambridge University.”