Media Releases

Quantum dot spin-out from U of T wins Wall Street Journal Innovation Award

September 28, 2010

TORONTO, ON – A new tech­nol­o­gy invent­ed by U of T Pro­fes­sor Ted Sar­gent that allows dig­i­tal cam­eras to bet­ter cap­ture light has won the Wall Street Journal’s 2010 Tech­nol­o­gy Inno­va­tion Awards in the Semi­con­duc­tor cat­e­go­ry.

The win­ning prod­uct is called Quan­tum­Film and was devel­oped by InVis­age Tech­nolo­gies Inc., a com­pa­ny found­ed by Pro­fes­sor Sar­gent in 2006.

Quan­tum­Film makes vast improve­ments in cap­tur­ing light for dig­i­tal cam­eras, and espe­cial­ly cell phone cam­eras. Using semi­con­duc­tor quan­tum dots instead of weak­ly light-absorb­ing sil­i­con, Quan­tum­Film image sen­sors cap­ture more than 90% of avail­able light instead of the 25% in sil­i­con-based sen­sors.

Pro­fes­sor Sar­gent, of the Edward S. Rogers Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, is also the Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer for InVis­age, which is based in Cal­i­for­nia but lever­ages research and tech­nol­o­gy from U of T.

“The WSJ award is great news for InVis­age,” says Pro­fes­sor Sar­gent, who also holds the Cana­da Research Chair in Nan­otech­nol­o­gy. “It acknowl­edges the dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion this com­pa­ny brings to the image sen­sor mar­ket. This award also speaks to the vision and lead­er­ship of the indi­vid­u­als at UofT who enabled the high­ly suc­cess­ful trans­fer of tech­nol­o­gy to this dynam­ic start-up.”

InVis­age will have the prod­uct avail­able in con­sumer prod­ucts as ear­ly as the end of next year.

“This is an immense accom­plish­ment for Ted Sar­gent and InVis­age, and we con­grat­u­late him and his team,” says Cristi­na Amon, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Applied Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing. “The award reaf­firms the excep­tion­al qual­i­ty of research and tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion that comes out of Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Engi­neer­ing and its spin-off com­pa­nies.”

U of T Engi­neer­ing has been at the lead­ing edge of entre­pre­neur­ship in Cana­da since 1951, with the estab­lish­ment of more than 100 suc­cess­ful spin-off com­pa­nies.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Eliz­a­beth Raymer
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Media Rela­tions Coor­di­na­tor
Fac­ul­ty of Applied Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416–946-7257
elizabeth.raymer@utoronto.ca