ITRI Receives Four R&D 100 Awards for Advancements in Smart and Green Technologies

HSINCHU, TAIWAN--(Marketwired - Nov 16, 2015) - Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan's largest and one of the world's leading high-tech applied research institutions, received four 2015 R&D 100 Awards this year in Las Vegas November 13. ITRI's technologies were selected as winners for the most innovative products in the IT/Electrical and Mechanical Devices/Materials categories:

• Higher Sensitivity Tactile-film System for Wearable Orthosis (HSTS) (IT/Electrical Category), a thin film sensor technology, interprets the wearer's movements through physical contact between a wearable orthosis device and the wearer's skin. HSTS allows people with Essential Tremor to voluntarily control their movements, significantly improving their quality of life. With lower disturbance sensitivity and lower cost, HSTS is an improvement upon the current auxiliary wearable device technologies.
• Plasmon-Coupled Organic Light-Emitting Diode (PCOLED) (IT/Electrical Category) solves the problem of short lifespan of the OLED blue light component. It uses a single green light-emitting material to generate red, blue and green light without the use of color filters. In addition, PCOLED can recover energy lost to surface plasmon, effectively tripling the efficiency of blue emission. It can increase the lifespan of OLED displays and lamps up to 300,000 hours, or up to 20-fold. With successful pilot production and high compatibility with the existing OLED manufacturing process, PCOLED can revolutionize the OLED industry.
• PolyE (Mechanical Devices/Materials Category), a new cost-saving reverse osmosis technology for water desalination and filtration, is capable of lowering energy consumption by 30 to 80 percent. PolyE, the world's first commercially viable nanofibrous thin film composite membrane, can desalinate water on a utility scale at a much lower hydraulic pressure than conventional methods and at a lower cost, without compromising the level of filtration.
• Fluid-Driven Emergency Lighting (Mechanical Devices/Materials Category), a high-illumination LED light driven by hydropower, uses water from firefighters' water hose nozzles and also from water sprinklers in buildings. With water powering the light mechanism and providing improved visibility in fire conditions, this technology can improve safety during fires and give firefighters enhanced life-saving capabilities.

"To keep on winning on a regular basis every year just shows the dedication ITRI has to promoting technology and innovation. It's just encouraging for everybody to see that ITRI is continuing that sort of dedication, investment in R&D, and creativeness," said Tim Studt, Editorial Director of R&D Magazine. "ITRI has the strength in covering a wide range of industrial technologies and trying to make products that are commercially available," he added.

"ITRI's focus on value-added systems with intelligence drives our ability to offer innovative technology solutions across different market segments," said Dr. C.T. Liu, Executive Vice President of ITRI and group leader of ITRI's R&D 100 Awards representatives. "This year, the winners and finalists represent a wide spectrum of technologies, validating this focus. We're excited to bring these solutions to the marketplace through our flexible collaboration model and welcome inquiries from potential partners and end-users."

Bo Zhang, visiting researcher of Waseda University and researcher of Kikuchi Seisakusho Co., Ltd., also attended the ceremony to share the honor of the award-winning HSTS Technology, a multi-win cooperation result that draws the strengths of his institutions and ITRI, he said.

ITRI has collected 22 R&D 100 Awards since 2008. Most of the winning technologies have been licensed to industry partners, helping them create greater value and stay competitive. Other R&D 100 Awards recipients this year include Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, MIT Lincoln Lab, Dow Chemical Company, and Siemens.

About ITRI
Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the world's leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan's industries from labor-intensive into technology-oriented. It focuses on the fields of Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment.

Over the years, ITRI has cultivated more than 140 CEOs and incubated over 260 innovative companies, including well-known names such as UMC and TSMC. In addition to its headquarters in Taiwan, ITRI has branch offices in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow and Eindhoven in an effort to extend its R&D scope and promote opportunities for international cooperation around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.itri.org/eng.