Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
AlphaMicron Innovates Liquid Crystal Sunglasses
KENT, Ohio -- Navy Seals out on a mission wear ballistic sunglasses so they can see in the blinding sun. But before they storm their targeted building, they need either to switch to clear lenses – wasting valuable time, or take off their sunglasses – leaving their eyes unprotected and vulnerable to shrapnel, dust and gases. It’s a problem the military wants to be solved.
U.S. Army Special Forces troops are now testing a cutting-edge liquid crystal technology developed by AlphaMicron. The new type of eyewear could become standard issue – allowing the military to change the tint of their glasses with a push of the button.
“Our technology is practically instantaneous,” demonstrates company co-founder Tamas Kosa as he holds up a pair of goggles. “When you apply the electricity, it turns dark. Then you push the button again to take away the electricity and it immediately bleaches clear.”
While photochromic or transition lenses have been around two decades, Kosa says their tint darkens and lightens too slowly for the military as they go in and out of the sun. But it wasn’t the Special Forces’ dilemma that launched AlphaMicron, it was the Air Force.
Kosa and the two other founders of AlphaMicron, Bahman Taheri and Peter Paiffy-Muhoray, were involved in post-doctoral work at the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University when it became clear they needed to establish a company to tackle another problem presented by the military.
“The Air Force had been working on head-mounted displays for a long time – long before Google glass or anything came around,” recounts Taheri. “One of the problems with that is when you go into the sun, the image gets washed out.”
While Pacific Rim companies had been putting liquid crystal on flat glass for television displays and watches, no one had the technology to put it on the curved plastic surface that Air Force pilots use.
“They came to us and said, ‘We really need to see if liquid crystals can solve this problem but we want it at a company level, not a university, because we want a product rather than a concept,’ ” explains Taheri.
That led to the formation of the company and a contract with the Air Force in 1997. AlphaMicron chemists were able to develop a patented dichroic dye that can change color in 10 to 15 milliseconds when combined with a liquid crystal purchased from Merck & Co. By adding electricity, just clicking a small button on the side of the goggles or helmet, the ballistic lens become clear or tinted again nearly instantaneously. The technology was then applied to sunglasses.
“There’s a liquid crystal film laminated onto the same standard-issue eyewear they [Special Forces] have that we retrofit with our technology,” explains Kosa, who is also the company chief operations officer.
AlphaMicron sits on the edge of the KSU campus where it renovated, and now leases, the university’s former bus garage. It employs about 35 people, a third of whom have doctorates or masters’ degrees.
At noon, you’ll see these highly educated employees microwaving their lunches and washing dishes in an open kitchen in the center of the building. You might also see Kosa challenging someone to a game of Ping-Pong in a nearby hallway.
Windows on two sides of the open area allow you to see into rooms where a chemist in the R&D department is mixing dyes. Another is dressed in a clean suit as he cuts the plastic for the film to be applied. Another room is filled with a variety of lasers to test the reaction of the film-to-light sources. And in another lab, an intern is peering through a microscope.
Look closely and you’ll catch a glimpse at the end of a hall or in a corner of a life-size Darth Vader, Mr. Spock or Batman cutout keeping watch over the operations.
AlphaMicron is not only intergalactic, it’s also a small United Nations of sorts. The chief operating officer is from Hungary and the chief chemist is a woman from Siberia.
“We’re really proud of that. We got people for their talents,” says Taheri. The laser physicist and now company CEO was born in Iran and left with his family during the 1979 revolution.
“Each culture has its own advantage in the way they think, Taheri says. “You bring everyone to the table and realize we now have a lot of different points of view to look at a problem. That has been crucial, critical in terms of our ability to surpass it.”
Taheri says it was a very long process for the company to get where it is today, including about $15 million in state and federal funding with a big chunk coming from Ohio’s Third Frontier program.
AlphaMicron has expanded to the consumer market as well. It’s teamed up with a German company, Uvex, to add its liquid crystal films to ski goggles that can switch to any of four color tints on demand. The product recently won a gold award at the ISPO Expo in Europe.
And AlphaMicron is targeting motorcyclists. Kosa shows us a helmet with the company’s liquid crystal film on the shield.
“You’re riding on a sunny day. It turns dark or you ride into a tunnel, it immediately bleaches. You ride out of the tunnel, plenty of light again. It turns immediately dark.”
Helmets are sold under the Akari brand on its AMI Power Sports website that can change tint with the switch of a button. Or you can purchase just the film and electronic device to apply to any helmet for about $150.
Marketing manager Ross Armbruster says that 60% of AlphaMicron revenues come from the military, 40% from commercial sales.
Taheri expects the sunglasses that have been developed for the military could put the company on the fast track, he says. “If the military goes down the path that they are, then this product will become a requirement. Then you can imagine not only the military, but police departments, tactical units, and even NATO could follow.”
The next step is to crack the $30 billion consumer sunglass industry.
“We’re going to be releasing a consumer version this summer. And that should be a really, really big seller,” Armbruster predicts.
The potential applications for the liquid crystal technology seem endless, from sports enthusiasts who need glasses for biking and hunting, to the mirrors and sunroofs in your car, to windows in your home that tint with a click of the button or flick of a switch.
“We believe the market can be very, very big,” says Taheri.
AlphaMicron brought in about $1.5 million in sales last year, up from less than $1 million in 2012. Tahari says it’s done very little marketing – regardless companies from all over the world are seeking it out.
“Bottom line: we’re a small company. Liquid crystal is a $120 billion industry with 99.9% of it in the Pacific Rim. They’re spending billions in R&D yet we have a company here that is doing something none of them do and we’re actually ahead,” Tahari says.
“It is one of the most innovative companies in the region,” proclaims Timothy Fahey of NorTech. “The TechBelt needs more companies like AlphaMicron that are creating high-quality, high-paying jobs right here in the region.”
Fahey says NorTech helped AlphaMicron market its high-potential products by connecting it to local manufacturing and supply chain assets. Through its Speed-to-Market Accelerator program, Nortech helped AlphaMicron with product design, manufacturing scale-up, ISO compliance and market research.
“These efforts helped AlphaMicron get new products to market faster and with lower development cost,” explains Fahey.
Taheri is married with two young children and has traveled all over the world, living in Iran, England, California and elsewhere. But he says it’s the help the company has received in northeastern Ohio that will likely keep his family here.
“This region has been very good to us, a lot of help and in reality,” he pauses, “a great place to raise a family.”
This story, the latest installment in our Trending: TechBelt series of reports, was published in the April edition of The Business Journal.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our twice-monthly print edition and to our free daily email headlines.