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The Week in Germany: Business and Technology January 5, 2007 The Plastic Revolution is Coming to Dresden Dresden has attracted a $100 million dollar investment in a new technology that could revolutionize the electronics industry – the plastic semiconductor. The Cambridge, England based startup Plastic Logic announced that it will build a factory in the city on the Elbe to open in 2008. The plastic semiconductor is simpler, cheaper, and cleaner than traditional silicon chips, whose production requires very high temperatures and the use of toxic substances. According to a report by NPR's Marketplace, the new technology could cut the price of electronic circuitry by up to 90 percent.
The first application for plastic semi-conductors is likely to be flexible plastic display screens, which bend like paper but hold the equivalent of thousands of books. While the plastic circuits are still too slow to replace microprocessors, faster chips are in development. Cheaper than silicon chips, these may someday allow for the incororporation of microprocessors into electronic devices for which silicon microprocessors are currently too expensive, such as children’s toys. The factory will create at least 140 jobs in a region that has already established itself firmly as Germany’s answer to Silicon Valley. Manufacturers like AMD, Infineon, and Qimonda have invested €9 billion ($11.8 billion) and employ around 9,000 people in the former Eastern state of Saxony. Dresden’s economic mayor Dirk Hilbert told Spiegel Online that “Dresden is the only site in Europe with larger-scale mass production” in the high-tech industry, pointing out that the region’s roots in high-tech date back to the Dresden Center for Microelectronics, founded by the East German government in the 1960’s. “We have a highly-skilled workforce,” said Hilbert, Dresden's top economic official. Links: |
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