ACADEMIA

Intermolecular announced the expansion and extension of their collaborative development program (CDP) and strategic technology licensing agreement. Guardian is the world's largest manufacturer of coated glass for automotive, architectural and other applications. Intermolecular accelerates research and development (R&D) for semiconductor and clean-energy industries.

The partnership between Intermolecular and Guardian addresses development of a diverse portfolio of advanced glass coatings, many related to energy conservation or generation. Intermolecular's High-Productivity Combinatorial (HPC) R&D platform accelerates time-to-market for new and improved Guardian glass products. The newly signed agreement will extend and broaden the existing partnership to allow the two companies to collaborate on a greater number of technology development projects simultaneously.

"Over the past two years, Guardian has evaluated and validated Intermolecular's team and HPC technology platform," said Scott Thomsen, President of Guardian's Flat Glass Group. "Our programs with Intermolecular in both sputtered and liquid coatings are succeeding as expected, rapidly generating differentiated intellectual property that will result in superior products coming to market in the coming months and years. In fact, Intermolecular's approach to accelerated R&D led to a greater internal demand to work together. The team at Intermolecular is both responsive and capable, and HPC technology delivers as advertised. We look forward to an ongoing relationship with Intermolecular."

Craig Hunter, senior vice president and general manager of Intermolecular's clean energy group, commented, "Guardian is a fantastic partner. Their openness to our collaborative R&D model coupled with their commercial aggressiveness and world-class technical team creates a situation where everyone is focused with urgency on the same goal -- getting better products to market as quickly as possible. Extending and broadening the collaboration with Guardian after working so closely together over the past two years represents tremendous validation of the value proposition we offer to our industrial partners. It is a privilege to be working so closely with a global technology leader as we jointly develop products that can have such a positive effect on daily life."

Intermolecular's mission is to improve R&D efficiency in the semiconductor and clean-energy industries through collaborations that utilize its HPC platform, which allows R&D experimentation to be performed at speeds up to 100 times faster than traditional methods.