Benzinga | Apr 19, 2021 05:31AM EDT

Himax Technologies and CM Visual Technology Jointly Announced Microstructure Optical Film for Automotive Panel Customers

Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIMX) and CM Visual Technology Corp. (CMVT), a Taiwan-based company dedicated to microstructure optical film design and manufacturing, today jointly announced their microstructure optical film, Omniwide Film, for resolving optical display performance challenges in certain types of display panel applications. In October 2020, Himax made a strategic cash investment to acquire 66.71% of the common shares of CMVT to become the largest shareholder. Since joining Himax, CMVT's Omniwide Film has received greater recognition from leading TV brands and designed-in automotive panel platforms.

"CMVT has industry-leading microstructure optical film design capabilities along with nearly ten years of service and mass production experience. Its microstructure optical film, Omniwide Film, features optimized optical compensation and can be applied to various types of displays that are in high demand from Himax's focused customer base," said Dr. Biing-Seng Wu, Chairman of Himax. "Meanwhile, CMVT has developed its own unique optical simulation and design expertise as well as optical mold engraving technology. We believe this collaborative investment will strengthen our position and create positive technological synergies for Himax's ever-growing optical-related product development."

CMVT holds proprietary seamless roller type mold generation and roll-to-roll nano-imprinting production capabilities to manufacture the Omniwide Film. Its comprehensive Omniwide Film product lineups include the HVN series for TN TFT-LCD display, HVA series for VA TFT-LCD display, HVS series for IPS TFT-LCD display and HVD series for OLED display. By laminating to the top surface of the panel, the Omniwide Film offers optimized optical compensation for a superior user visual experience. Moreover, to avoid the most troublesome Moir patterns frequently accompanying different kinds of microstructure optical film designs, CMVT offers the exclusive Moir-free Omniwide Film design by leveraging CMVT's advanced nano-scale engraving and precise positioning technologies. With the Moir-free Omniwide Film's exceptional applicability, it could drastically save mold developing fee, shorten product development time and eliminate lamination positioning, all greatly shorten manufacturing time while improving production yield.

The HVN series of Omniwide Film is designed to improve the gray scale inversion problem of TN TFT-LCD display. The HVA series of Omniwide Film is designed to improve the wash-out issue of VA TFT-LCD display. Both HVN and HVA Omniwide Films are in mass production and meanwhile the HVS series of Omniwide Film for IPS display is now available to the market. IPS has been widely adopted in automotive displays as mainstream technology. The automotive IPS display laminated with HVS Omniwide Film can eliminate the light leakage issue under oblique viewing angles. These results outperform optical compensation film solutions from rivals while also meeting performance requirements from automotive customers.

For isotropic self-light emitting OLED displays, the multi-layer thin-film structure constantly derived unequal optical interference from the RGB light signals. This caused the OLED display, particularly flexible OLED, to have severe color-shift problems and/or nonuniform color appearance under various customers' use cases. CMVT's HVD series Omniwide Film was especially designed to resolve these problems and greatly reduce the color-shift and nonuniform color problems as a result for OLED customers.

Dr. Walter Li, Chairman of CMVT, said, "Aside from the industrial panel market that we focus on, we are pleased to partner with Himax to leverage their strengths in marketing and operational management to proactively engage with TVs, public displays (PID), automotive, laptop and OLED markets." Mr. Yi-Pin Shen, General Manager of CMVT added, "After joining Himax, our HVA series products have received greater recognition from leading TV brands in terms of outstanding optical performance. In addition, the HVS series has designed-in automotive panel platforms and is under customer verification. We expect these opportunities to swiftly generate meaningful revenue. In the meantime, CMVT will closely collaborate with Himax to enable additional business engagements with display customers."

CMVT will participate in the 2021 Touch Taiwan exhibition in Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall, Taipei City, Taiwan, from April 21 to 23, 2021, and will showcase their Omniwide Film products. The booth number is L628.