GE Drives Advanced Wing-to-Wing Materials Solutions for Displays Worldwide

BERGEN OP ZOOM, THE NETHERLANDS — July 24, 2006 — GE Plastics and GE Advanced Materials are aggressively driving the use of their proprietary breakthrough materials solutions for the global electronics industry, including high-performance plastic resins, sheet, and films, as well as silicones and quartz products. The most recent success is the launch of GE Plastics’ new Illuminex* ADF film - a high-tech prismatic film for LCDs that can boost screen brightness by up to five percent while hiding moiré and defects.

“GE Plastics is focused on anticipating and proactively solving key display industry challenges, such as the performance requirements of ever-larger LCD screens,” said Arlene Borkowski, general manager, Displays & Optical Films at GE Plastics. “As the only major supplier with the ability to integrate resin and optical technologies into film and plate solutions such as Illuminex ADF prismatic film, we are able to provide exceptional brightness, temperature resistance, and blocking of interference patterns. Through our full range of innovative products, we offer display manufacturers comprehensive performance and quality advantages in a range of applications with our diffuser film, diffuser plate, and now prismatic film solutions.”

Introducing Illuminex ADF film

New Illuminex ADF film is a prismatic film that provides manufacturers a superior alternative to existing materials for LCD displays. Typical prism films often have issues with moiré due to the pitch of the prism film and the pattern of the LCD pixels. Frequently, a top diffuser and/or slight rotation of a typical prism film must be used to minimize moiré. GE Plastics’ Illuminex ADF film uses a patented, proprietary pattern to reduce this moiré effect without having to rotate the film.

GE’s Illuminex ADF film features excellent optical properties that are created using proprietary GE coatings applied to a high-quality polycarbonate (PC) optical film. With Illuminex ADF film, customers have achieved improved luminance of up to five percent higher than best-in-class competitors. Illuminex ADF film can be superior in reliability to coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film, offering performance in high-temperature and high-humidity environments due its higher Tg (130 C) of the base film. Further, because they hide moiré and defects so effectively, Illuminex ADF films may allow manufacturers to avoid adding a top diffuser film, lowering system costs.

GE Plastics’ portfolio of Illuminex diffuser films and plates are used in applications such as televisions, computer monitors, and automotive global positioning system (GPS) displays. These materials provide both top and bottom diffuser film solutions in LCD backlight modules to help enhance performance under demanding environmental conditions. GE’s Illuminex diffuser films offer key advantages over traditional PET films by eliminating the coating, which can experience failures from flaking, voids, and scratching of light guides, resulting in poor customer yields. Illuminex diffuser plates used in LCD TV applications can provide an excellent balance of luminance and hiding power in increasingly larger LCD TV applications.

As LCDs continue to evolve, becoming larger and thinner with an increased number of light sources, there is a need for higher performance. GE products help address these requirements, offering a heat deflection temperature (HDT) of 130 C and outstanding performance in high-temperature and high-humidity conditions with these products positioned for larger monitor and LCD TV applications.

In response to growing customer demand, GE Plastics is accelerating manufacturing efforts for its Illuminex product line with film capacity expansions in both 2006 and 2007 at its Nansha, China manufacturing facility. Additionally, through its Global Application Technology (GApT) initiative, GE is adding resources and expanding capabilities at its China Technology Center in Shanghai - and other GApT Centers of Excellence in Asia - to work more closely with customers in the development of next-generation display applications.

In addition, GE continues to innovate through its network of global research centers, on new and exciting emerging technologies. For example, GE’s recent addition of a flexible OLED system features a developmental high-temperature Lexan* polycarbonate (PC) film combined with a transparent, ultra-high-barrier coating to protect a flexible OLED device against oxygen and moisture damage. This research, jointly funded by the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) and GE, is designed to address the critical need for plastic substrates that can enable cost-effective, lightweight, flexible organic displays in the future.

GE Advanced Materials’ Offering

GE Advanced Materials’ Silicones business offers a wide range of materials that can add value to electronics. Among the silicones solutions are GE’s SilCool* thermal interface materials with excellent thermal and electrical properties. These silicone adhesives and greases can help solve the challenge of higher heat generation by electronic parts used in flat-panel displays. Benefits include higher definition and more extensive color tones. Another solution is the ECS series of silicone coatings for electrodes. These insulative, protective coatings are designed to provide reliability and durability for ICs within flat panel displays.

For backlight units, the use of GE’s ECS 1100 silicone for formed-in-place gasketing improves manufacturing productivity. By automatically dispensing the GE silicone instead of hand-applying two-sided tape, manufacturers can also reduce part failure rates, saving money. Finally, GE Silicones’ optical materials and coatings enhance uniformity of illumination and reduce reflectivity for improved viewing of flat panel displays.

The Quartz and Ceramics division of GE Advanced Materials has a long history of supplying high-performance materials to the lighting and semiconductor industries. GE offers a full range of fused quartz materials for use in applications where high purity, low particle count, and high temperatures are required. As a supplier of such materials for state-of-the-art semiconductor applications, GE's products are also well-suited for critical display applications. Large fused quartz ingots can be used to fabricate a stable, high purity platen for processing and testing of display components. Large high purity chambers made from GE's quartz tubing provide the controlled environment necessary for the most sophisticated processes.

GE also provides specialty boron nitride ceramic products for source metallization, crystal growth, and epitaxy. In addition to high purity, these materials possess unique thermal and electrical properties. GE's high performance heaters and electrostatic chucks for wafer processing have excellent thermal shock resistance and low thermal mass. They ramp and stabilize quickly for improved cycle times over wide operating temperatures. GE also provides pyrolytic boron nitride (PBN) crucibles, shapes, and various coatings for molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metalorganic epitaxial chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) equipment. Included are metal carbide, PBN, pyrolytic graphite (PG), and aluminum nitride (AlN) coatings. GE's intermetallic composite evaporation boats and flash evaporators are critical components in vacuum metallization. Applications include cathode ray tubes, reflectors, capacitors, and decorative packaging.

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