Startup’s tech could put an end to unsightly screen ’notches’ on smartphones

Michael Helander, CEO and Founder of OTI Lumionics, says thorny problems in tech manufacturing can often be 'elegantly' solved by developing new materials - OTI Lumionics, a Toronto-based company that was spun out of research from the University of Toronto, recently raised more than $75 million to expand its line of organic LED technology solutions - including screens that are uninterrupted by "notches" common in today's smartphone and laptop displays. The startup's latest innovation is known as CPM Patterning and represents a new way to pattern print thin films - usually on the order of nanometres or micrometres in thickness. This is important because some of the techniques that have been developed over the last several decades, including photolithographic patterning and laser ablation, can't be used in certain manufacturing environments because the materials used are sensitive to oxygen, moisture and other factors that are difficult to control.  "What we've done is come up with a process, instead of new materials, that allows you to pattern thin films - but instead of making a film and removing materials, you can grow a pattern from the ground up at the atomic level. It's a 100 per cent material science-driven solution," says OTI founder and CEO   Michael Helander.  "What that lets manufacturers do in displays, for example, is pattern thin film coatings in the display that otherwise they couldn't pattern before. That means they can start introducing new features and functionality that weren't possible before, because they couldn't be manufactured."  One potential application for the technology is integration of displays with different types of sensors and cameras.