Candescent Staffs-Up to Focus on Manufacturing

As part of a shift toward a manufacturing focus, flat panel display developer Candescent Technologies Corp. (San Jose, CA) has appointed three new vice presidents. Ralph Ahlgren II has been named as vice president of front-end operations, Tom Dillon has been named vice president of information technology, and Bob Phillips has been named vice president of development line and manufacturing operations.

"Our principal mission in 1998 is to transform a development company into a manufacturing company," stated Harry Marshall, Candescent chairman, president, and CEO.

Ahlgren was most recently senior director of Fremont, CA fab operations at Read-Rite Corp., (Fremont, CA). Dillon was vice president and chief information officer at Seagate Technology Inc. (City, ST), and Phillips was vice president and general manager of worldwide manufacturing at Integrated Device Technology (City, ST).

Candescent is involved in the development of flat panel displays based on field-emission device (FED) technology, essentially an array of CRT-like microdevices. This miniature photocathode technology delivers higher color fidelity and brighter video-rate images with no motion smearing, wider viewing angles, and lower power consumption than active matrix liquid crystal displays (AMLCDs). Candescent's FED-based ThinCRTs are designed for high-volume manufacturability, so the cost to original equipment manufacturers is expected to be competitive with AMLCDs. The first ThinCRT is slated for delivery later this year.