Deaths, Survivals, and Revivals
Lillian Hartmann Hoddeson, Peter Garrett · The MIT Press eBooks · 2018
Reckless financing for expansion by its new management led ECD to file for bankruptcy in February 2012. That failure also ended Ovshinsky’s solar power effort. Work on his nickel metal hydride batteries, however, was continued by BASF, which purchased the Ovonic Battery Company. The batteries continue to be used widely, including in hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. Ovonyx was sold to Micron, and phase-change memory has now been developed by an Intel-Micron collaboration resulting in the recent memory device called 3D Xpoint, poised to become an important addition to information technology. Ovshinsky Innovation ended its work soon after Ovshinsky’s death, but a small new company has revived the name of Ovshinsky Innovation and is continuing some of Ovshinsky’s work.