Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) is a technology company with head office in

Godmanchester Godmanchester ( ) is a town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Huntingdonshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. It is separated from Huntingdon, to the north, by the valley of the River Great Ouse. Being on the Roman roads ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It was the first company spun out of the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

ever to go public. It was subsequently acquired by

Sumitomo Chemical is a major Japanese chemical company. The company is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the on the Nikkei 225 stock index. It's a member of the Sumitomo group and was founded in 1913 as a fertilize ...

for about $285 million in 2007.

History

Cambridge Display Technology was founded in 1992 in order to commercialise technologies following from the discovery of a new form of

electroluminescence Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical phenomenon, optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field. This is distinct from black body light emission ...

in 1989 by

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

researchers Richard Friend, Donal Bradley, and Jeremy Burroughes together with Department of Chemistry researchers Chloe Jennings and Andrew Holmes. In 2002, the company was presented with the MacRobert Award by the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

”for light-emitting polymers”. CDT's

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

(IPO) took place on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

stock exchange in December 2004. In 2007, the company became a subsidiary of

References

{{reflist, 2 Technology companies established in 1992 British companies established in 1992 Companies based in Cambridgeshire 2004 initial public offerings