DISPLAY WEEK 2016 REVIEW ISSUE -...

DISPLAY WEEK 2016 REVIEW ISSUE

Official Publication of the Society for Information Display • www.informationdisplay.orgSeptember/October 2016

Vol. 32, No. 5

Jul-Aug Cover_SID Cover 9/4/2016 6:06 PM

http://www.informationdisplay.org

Radiant.InformationDisplay11.2015_outlines.indd 1 11/12/2015 3:06:34 PM

http://www.RadiantVisionSystems.com

mailto:[email protected]

2 Editorial: Mining the Vast Wealth of Display Weekn By Stephen P. Atwood

3 Industry News n By Jenny Donelan

4 President’s Corner: Serving the Society in an Ever-Changing Landscapen By Yong-Seog Kim

6 Show Review: Best-in-Show WinnersThe Society for Information Display honored five exhibiting companies at Display Week 2016in San Francisco last May. These companies were LG Display, Asahi Glass Co., E Ink Corp.,DigiLens, and MY Polymers.n By Jenny Donelan

10 Show Review: nVerpix Takes Best Prototype Honors in the I-ZoneDisplay Week’s Innovation Zone continues to provide an inside look at up-and-coming displaytechnology. n By Steve Sechrist

14 Show Review: Enter the Feature-Driven MarketFaced with a consumer market that is reasonably content with current-sized panels and accustomed to ever-lowering prices, TV manufacturers are looking toward specialized features to drive sales – and profits – upward.n By Steve Sechrist

18 Show Review: Four Materials Stories from Display Week 2016The show in San Francisco highlighted intriguing advances in the areas of electrophoretic displays, OLED materials and processing, quantum dots, and glass.n By Ken Werner

26 Show Review: Better Form, Lower PowerDisplay Week 2016 offered an inside look at the state of the art for mobile and wearable displays.n By Jyrki Kimmel

30 Show Review: Advances in Augmented- and Virtual-Reality Technologies and ApplicationsThe first wave of AR and VR devices has reached the marketplace, but much work needs to bedone in order to provide immersive and life-like experiences to mainstream users.n By Achin Bhowmik

36 Display Marketplace: Flexible Displays Require Flexible ElectronicsDisplay Week 2016 provided numerous examples of advancements in flexible-display technologies. But even though flexible displays are now in production, they are used in fixed formats encasedin rigid packaging, so users have not experienced the actual physical flexibility. In order for trulyflexible displays to emerge, flexibility of the electronics is required, beyond the backplane anddisplay driver electronics. Clues to such developments could be found in many presentations atthe annual event.n By Paul Semenza

38 Frontline Technology: Bulk-Accumulation Oxide-TFT Backplane Technology for Flexibleand Rollable AMOLED Displays: Part IIIn the second of a two-part series on a new backplane technology for flexible and rollable AMOLED displays, the author describes a system built on a bulk-accumulation (BA) amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) TFT. n By Jin Jang

44 SID News: SID Honors and Awards Nominations Procedure48 Corporate Members48 Index to Advertisers

Information Display 5/16 1

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016VOL. 32, NO. 5

InformationDISPLAYcontents

For Industry News, New Products, Current and Forthcoming Articles, see www.informationdisplay.org

INFORMATION DISPLAY (ISSN 0362-0972) is published 6 times ayear for the Society for Information Display by Palisades ConventionManagement, 411 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10003;William Klein, President and CEO. EDITORIAL AND BUSINESSOFFICES: Jay Morreale, Editor-in-Chief, Palisades ConventionManagement, 411 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10003;telephone 212/460-9700. Send manuscripts to the attention of theEditor, ID. SID HEADQUARTERS, for correspondence on sub-scriptions and membership: Society for Information Display, 1475 S. Bascom Ave., Ste. 114, Campbell, CA 95008; telephone 408/879-3901, fax -3833. SUB SCRIP TIONS: Information Display is distributedwithout charge to those qualified and to SID members as a benefit ofmembership (annual dues $100.00). Subscriptions to others: U.S. &Canada: $75.00 one year, $7.50 single copy; elsewhere: $100.00 oneyear, $7.50 single copy. PRINTED by Wiley & Sons. PERMISSIONS:Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. Libraries are per-mitted to photocopy beyond the limits of the U.S. copyright law forprivate use of patrons, providing a fee of $2.00 per article is paid to theCopyright Clearance Center, 21 Congress Street, Salem, MA 01970(reference serial code 0362-0972/16/$1.00 + $0.00). Instructors arepermitted to photocopy isolated articles for noncommercial classroomuse without fee. This permission does not apply to any special reportsor lists published in this magazine. For other copying, reprint orrepublication permission, write to Society for Information Display, 1475S. Bascom Ave., Ste. 114, Campbell, CA 95008. Copyright © 2016Society for Information Display. All rights reserved.

In the Next Issue ofInformation Display

Emissive Technology• Materials for EL and PL Applications • MicroLED Displays• Emissive Technology Landscape Overview

• An In-Depth Look at a Radical NewOLED Technology

• TADF Emitters

SIDSOCIETY FOR INFORMATION DISPLAY

DISPLAY WEEK 2016 REVIEW ISSUE

Official Publication of the Society for Information Display • www.informationdisplay.orgSeptember/October 2016

Vol. 32, No. 5

Cover Design: Jodi Buckley

ON THE COVER: Images from Display Week2016 are, clockwise starting at upper left: Best-in-Show winner Digilens’ MotoHUD demo with motorcycle (rider is Geena Dabadghav, IT Manager at MCA); Best-in-Show winning color electro-phoretic displays from E Ink (photo courtesy KenWerner); Moscone Center in San Francisco, hometo Display Week 2016; Withings activity monitorwith electronic-ink screen (photo courtesy JyrkiKimmel); LG Display’s 77-in. HDR OLED TV,also a Best-in-Show winner; busy show floor atMoscone; Tianma’s 5.5-in. flexible OLED display(photo courtesy Ken Werner); crowds head ontothe show floor as Display Week gets under way; a bus-stop demo from Best-in-Show winner AsahiGlass Co.; and crowds wait to enter the exhibithall on opening day.

ID TOC Issue5 p1_Layout 1 9/4/2016 7:21 PM Page 1



Mining the Vast Wealth of Display Weekby Stephen Atwood

Welcome to our annual Display Week review issue. Theevents at this year’s show formed a rich tapestry of new and exciting technological discoveries, as you no doubtremember if you were with us in San Francisco. If youmissed the show, then settle in and read all about it here.Each year, this pivotal gathering of the display industry

attracts the best and brightest (pun intended) of the industry and its member compa-nies. There is no better place to both learn from the best and contribute what youknow to educate others. People come to Display Week for many reasons, includingthe technical presentations, the seminars, the short courses, and the business confer-ences, but above all, everyone comes to see the great exhibits. Our cover stories thismonth are the Best-in-Show and I-Zone awards, which are conveyed each year to thecompanies deemed by the awards committees to have created the best exhibits in allthree booth-size categories and within the I-Zone. This year the field was especiallygreat and the choices really hard, but I think the committees did an excellent job cap-turing the most innovative and informative exhibits. Our own Jenny Donelan hascompiled the Best-in-Show results for you, and roving reporters Steve Sechrist andKen Werner describe the I-Zone award.In order to cover the vast array of content and happenings that is Display Week,

we recruit an annual team of reporters to help us. This year, our group of talented and highly experienced reporters consisted of Achin Bhowmik and Jyrki Kimmel, aswell as Steve and Ken. They spent their days combing through the vast amount ofnew exhibits and presentations to bring you the most important highlights of the week. I am very grateful and wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to them all for theirhard work. We lead off our Display Week review coverage with Steve’s survey of TVs,“Enter

the Feature-Driven Market.” As you can probably guess from this title, with overallrevenues in decline, set makers are desperately searching for features that will drivehigh-value purchasing decisions, and that desire is generating great technologicaladvancements, especially in areas such as high dynamic range (HDR), wide colorgamut (including quantum-dot enhancements), and ultra-high definition (UHD).While it is hard to know if consumers will really monetize the difference in perform-ance these features bring, they surely will be impressed by the latest advancements. If you were at the exhibition you cannot have missed the outstanding display of the77-in. OLED TV panel from LG and the 65-in. UHD “Black Crystal” LCD TV fromSamsung. These and other worthy items are highlighted in Steve’s review article foryour enjoyment.I think many attendees will remember the exciting breakthrough shown this year by

E Ink using four different colors within separate microcapsules to produce an almostfull-color-range electrophoretic display (EPD). This was an exciting development thatI know has been many years in the making. It also can open up many new applica-tions for EPDs. This and a number of other headlines, including advances in OLEDmaterials, quantum dots (QDs), glass (yes glass), and light guides can be found in Ken Werner’s review article appropriately titled “Four Materials Stories from DisplayWeek 2016.”

2 Information Display 5/16

Executive Editor: Stephen P. Atwood617/306-9729, [email protected]

Editor-in-Chief: Jay Morreale212/46 0-9700, [email protected]

Managing Editor: Jenny Donelan603/924-9628, [email protected]

Global Advertising Director: Stephen Jezzard, [email protected]

Senior Account ManagerPrint & E Advertising: Roland Espinosa201-748-6819, [email protected]

Editorial Advisory BoardStephen P. Atwood, ChairAzonix Corp., U.S.A.

Helge SeetzenTandemLaunch Technologies, Westmont, Quebec,Canada

Allan KmetzConsultant, U.S.A.

Larry WeberConsultant, U.S.A.

Guest EditorsApplied VisionMartin Banks, University of California at Berkeley

Automotive DisplaysKarlheinz Blankenbach, Pforzheim University

Digital Signage Gary Feather, NanoLumens

Display MaterialsJohn F. Wager, Oregon State University

Emissive DisplaysQun (Frank) Yan, Sichuan COC Display DevicesCo., Ltd.

Flexible TechnologyRuiqing (Ray) Ma, Universal Display Corp.

Light-Field DisplaysNikhil Balram, Ricoh Innovations, Inc.

Contributing EditorsAlfred Poor, ConsultantSteve Sechrist, ConsultantPaul Semenza, ConsultantJason Heikenfeld, University of Cincinnati Raymond M. Soneira, DisplayMate Technologies

InformationDISPLAY

The opinions expressed in editorials, columns, and feature articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions ofthe Executive Editor or Publisher of Information DisplayMagazine, nor do they necessarily reflect the position ofthe Society for Information Display.

editorial

(continued on page 42)

ID Editorial Issue5 p2,42_Layout 1 9/4/2016 6:14 PM Page 2






Global Lighting Technologies Opens Fifth Fab in TaiwanGlobal Lighting Technologies, a major maker of LED-based edge-litlight-guide technology, has completed construction of a fifth manufac-turing facility, located within a newly built Science Park in Tongluo,

Taiwan (Fig. 1).The factory wasscheduled toopen for produc-tion in Septem-ber 2016.This facility

was developedas a green build-ing and includesnew fully auto-matic equipmentthat will enablelight-guide fab-rication to gofrom “pellet to pallet” with-out operator

involvement. These are the most efficient extrusion lines everemployed by GLT for production and are capable of manufacturinglight guides up to 80 in. on the diagonal. GLT estimates that the addi-tional capacity will enable the company to reach 15–20% market sharefor light guides used within edge-lit LCD TVs worldwide.

Nanoco and Merck Sign Agreement on Cadmium-Free Quantum Materials for DisplaysUK-based Nanoco Group plc, a world leader in the development andmanufacture of cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials,has entered into a non-exclusive license agreement with science andtechnology giant Merck, which will market Nanoco’s material to itscustomer base in the display industry. Nanoco, a spinoff from the University of Manchester, already has development and manufacturingagreements in place with Osram and Dow, respectively. The licenseallows Merck to immediately start marketing Nanoco’s cadmium-freequantum dots and to ultimately establish its own production facility tomeet growing market demand. Merck will begin marketing Nanoco’stechnology in the near term by selling cadmium-free quantum dotsmanufactured at Nanoco’s expanded production plant in Runcorn, UK. “The license agreement with Nanoco will strengthen our position in

quantum materials research, for which we laid the foundations byacquiring [nanocrystal materials developer] Qlight Nanotech of Israellast year,” said Walter Galinat, a member of the Merck ExecutiveBoard and CEO of Performance Materials.The financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed, but

Nanoco will receive a license fee and royalties on Merck’s sales of the Nanoco cadmium-free quantum dots Merck manufactures. Whilethe environmental and performance advantages and disadvantages of

cadmium-free QDs are currently a subject for discussion in the courtsand in the literature (see article below), European regulations tend tofavor cadmium-free QDs over those with cadmium – though perhapsnot for the long term.

Gamma Scientific Releases New GlassMeasurement ToolA new reflectometer system from Gamma Scientific delivers high-speed automated reflectance measurements of glass for display andarchitectural uses and is designed for use in a production setting. TheDual Angle Reflectance Measurement System provides ±0.05% accu-racy and includes built-in second-surface reflection suppression thatcan eliminate measurement errors on glass as thin as 0.3 mm. Built-inself-calibration is designed to enable the system to consistently pro-duce high accuracy data, even when being used by untrained personnelin harsh environments.The Dual Angle Reflectance Measurement System comprises two

optical heads and spectrometers, all housed in a dark enclosure thatenables measurements in high-ambient-light production environments(Fig. 2). The measurement head uses motorized positioners to rapidly acquire

any number of desired data points on substrates as large 0.4 m × 0.4 mand automatically acquires correct focus at the glass surface throughthe use of a laser-based height sensor. All instrument control and dataacquisition hardware and software are included with the system.


industry news


A Quantum Dot by Any Other Name ... According to a recent report from authors at Germany’sÖko Institute for Applied Ecology, cadmium-basedquantum dots should retain a “short-term” exemption fromEuropean environmental regulations for TV applications,but not for lighting.EU environmental regulations generally ban cadmium, but there are exceptions; for example, the cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar panels made by First Solar, cadmium-doped optical filters, and the cadmium-selenide (CdSe) QDs used in TVs and other displays. The authors concludethat CdSe-based QDs provide wider color gamut and lowerenergy consumption in displays compared with alternativeQDs, although that finding has already been disputed bycadmium-free QD-developer Nanoco Group (see main article). Regulations are paticularly difficult to establish,note the reports’s authors, because the pace of commercialproduct introduction outstrips that of the related investiga-tion and testing.1________________________1http//optics.org/news/7/6/8

Fig. 1: GLT’s new fab in Taiwan will enable themanufacture of light guides up to 80 in. on thediagonal.

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Serving the Society in an Ever-ChangingLandscape

by Yong-Seog KimPresident, Society for Information DisplayIt is my great honor and pleasure to serve the Society forInformation Display in the capacity of President for thenext 2 years. As an incoming president, I found DisplayWeek 2016 at San Francisco completely different from apersonal perspective. I felt the sheer responsibility of

running the SID successfully, and, in addition, I enjoyed the privilege of meeting andgetting to know many volunteers and members of the society. Without their unselfishcontributions and participation, DW16 would not have been as successful. To thatend, I would like to thank all the SID volunteers for the countless hours of personaland professional sacrifice they have made to help SID become a better society.

Display Week 2016 in the beautiful city of San Francisco was a great success. The number of attendees exceeded 7,000 for the first time in a decade. Our exhibitremained strong even during the severe economic downturn our industry is facing.Display Week continues to offer many must-see and must-attend events for everyonein the display-industry community.

For the last 2 decades, our society has witnessed a near-explosive expansion of display technologies, including TFT-LCD, PDP, OLED, FED, projection display, laserdisplay, and various reflective displays including electrophoretic e-Paper, to only namea few. These displays have been in competition with each other for market share overthe last decade. Among those technologies, TFT-LCD has outgrown the others to rulethe industry. Other technologies, for example PDP, have disappeared completely fromthe landscape. During this painful consolidation period, many of our close friends leftthe industry and the society, but others adapted and reinvented themselves for the ever-changing display-industry environment. I was one of the latter group. I transformedmyself from a PDP expert to a researcher of the flexible display, which took a while.

At Display Week 2016, I believe we might have again seen a harbinger of tectonicchange in the display industry. Approximately 80% of media attention was directedtoward OLED flexible displays and related technologies. This indicates that thedemand for differentiation from maturing and commoditized TFT-LCDs is stronglydriving the evolution of our society. In an associated observation, technical sessionson vehicular displays and AR/VR displays captured a large audience at Display Week2016. This has resulted in a significant increase in new membership in those technol-ogy areas – where traditionally SID has not been as strong.

As technology transfer occurs at light speed in the current era, a swift rise and quickreplacement of one technology with another is becoming the new normal, includingwithin the display industry. Our current flat-panel-display technology will not enjoythe 60-year run of CRTs. I am sure that we are also going to witness the rapid adapta-tion of new display technologies in the coming years. This change could be a rela-tively modest transition from TFT-LCD to OLED or a revolutionary transition fromhardware display imaging technologies to direct communications with our brains,eliminating the display panel altogether. Those of us at SID should embrace and leadthe way through this changing landscape of information-display technology.

With this background, I have set some goals for the next 2 years of my presidency.First, I would like to expand the society’s conference scope and related membershipand exhibits to new technology areas, while maintaining strong leadership in the


president’s corner


SID EXECUTIVE COMMITTEEPresident: A. GhoshPresident-Elect: Y. S. KimRegional VP, Americas: A. BhowmikRegional VP, Asia: B. WangRegional VP, Europe: P. KathirgamanathanTreasurer: H. SeetzenSecretary: T. TsujimuraPast President: B. Berkeley

DIRECTORSBangalore: T. RuckmongathenBay Area: S. PeruvembaBeijing: X. YanBelarus: A. SmirnovCanada: J. ViethGreater Dayton: D. G. HopperDelaware Valley: J. W. Parker IIIMetropolitan Detroit: J. KanickiFrance: F. TemplierHong Kong: H. S. KwokIndia: S. SambandanIsrael: G. GolanJapan: K. KondohKorea: K.-W. WhangLatin America: A. MammanaLos Angeles: L. TannasMid-Atlantic: J. KymissisMid-Europe: H. De SmetNew England: S. AtwoodPacific Northwest: A. AbileahRussia: V. BelyaevSingapore: T. WongSouthwest: S. O’RourkeTaipei: J. ChenTexas: Z. YanivU.K. & Ireland: S. DayUkraine: V. SerganUpper Mid-West: B. Bahadur

COMMITTEE CHAIRSAcademic: P. BosArchives: L. Tannas, Jr.Audit: S. O’RourkeBylaws: A. SilzarsChapter Formation – Europe: H. De SmetConventions: P. DrzaicConventions Vice-Chair, BC and MC: J. JacobsConventions Vice-Chair, Europe: I. SageConventions Vice-Chair, Asia: K.-W. WhangDefinitions & Standards: T. FiskeDisplay Industry Awards: W. ChenHonors & Awards: S-T. WuI-Zone: B. SchowengerdtInvestment: H. SeetzenLong-Range Planning: Y. S. KimMarketing: S. PeruvembaMembership: H.-S. KwokMembership Vice-Chair, Social Media: H. AtkuriNominating: B. BerkeleyPublications: J. KymissisSenior Member Grade: Y. S. KimWeb Site: H. Seetzen

CHAPTER CHAIRSBangalore: S. SambadamBay Area: R. RaoBeijing: N. XuBelarus: V. A. VyssotskiCanada: A. KitaiDayton: J. LuuDelaware Valley: J. BlakeDetroit: J. ByrdFrance: L. VignauHong Kong: M. WongIndia: S. KauraIsrael: I. Ben DavidJapan: K. KondoKorea: S. T. ShinLatin America: V. MammanaLos Angeles: L. IboshiMid-Atlantic: G. MelnikMid-Europe: H. J. LempNew England: J. GandhiPacific Northwest: K. YugawaRussia: M. SychovSingapore/Malaysia: C. C. ChaoSouthwest: M. StrnadTaipei: C. C. WuTexas: R. FinkU.K. & Ireland: M. JonesUkraine: V. SorokinUpper Mid-West: R. D. Polak

SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION DISPLAY1475 S. Bascom Ave., Ste. 114, Campbell, CA 95008408/879-3901 e-mail: [email protected]://www.sid.org

ID Presidents Corner p4,43_Layout 1 9/4/2016 3:02 PM Page 4


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BEST-IN-SHOW is the most “holistic”award that SID bestows. The Display IndustryAwards honor great products that have hit themarketplace; the Best Prototype award is forthe most exciting, cutting-edge prototype inthe Innovation Zone. Best-in-Show winnersare chosen for exciting technology, whetherpre- or post-market, and also for the company’sability to showcase that technology. Forexample, this year the awards panel chose to honor Asahi Glass Co. not for a particularproduct, but for the way it showcased a rangeof products in its booth on the show floor.Great exhibitions help anchor the other excitingevents at Display Week, and these awards recognize the effort that companies invest inmaking the exhibition such a success Thisyear’s five winners were selected from morethan 200 exhibitors at Display Week 2016 inSan Francisco.The Best-in-Show awards are presented in

three categories of exhibit size: large, medium,and small.Large Exhibit: LG Display won in the

large-exhibit category for its high-dynamic-range 77-in. UHD OLED TV (Fig. 1). This display was stationed at the front of the exhibit hall this year and stopped showgoers in theirtracks as they entered the hall. This wasOLED at its best and biggest. According to LG, high-dynamic-range

(HDR) technology boosts the TV’s pictureperformance with near-perfect black and

improved brightness. LG adds that OLEDtechnology is well suited to HDR because it is self-emitting. It can show deep blacks andpeak luminance at the same time because each self-emitting pixel can turn on and offindependently. This capability also offerssuperior HDR video performance, says LG.

Medium Exhibit: Asahi Glass Co. (AGC)won an award in the medium-exhibit categoryfor its unique booth presentation showcasingintegrated display technologies. Asahi is wellknown as one of the major players when itcomes to display glass. Its booth this year atDisplay Week showed to great advantage the

Best-in-Show WinnersThe Society for Information Display honored five exhibiting companies at Display Week 2016in San Francisco last May. These companies were LG Display, Asahi Glass Co., E Ink Corp.,DigiLens, and MY Polymers.

Compiled by Jenny Donelan

Jenny Donelan is the Managing Editor ofInformation Display Magazine. She can bereached at [email protected].

6 Information Display 5/160362-0972/5/2016-006$1.00 + .00 © SID 2016

show review: Best-in-Show

Fig. 1: Among the admirers of LG’s 77-in. HDR OLED TV at Display Week were CatherineGetz, Director of Design and Development for Elotouch Systems (left), and ID magazine’s executive editor Steve Atwood (right) and his wife Linda Atwood (middle). Photo courtesy LGDisplay.

ID Donelan p6-8_Layout 1 9/4/2016 3:48 PM Page 6


many ways the company’s products could beused. According to Asahi, it designed its presen-

tation to showcase its expertise in glass,advanced chemicals, ceramics, and liquid-crystal-related technologies, as well as in combining these elements to create new typesof information displays. Among these are abus-stop kiosk using AGC’s infoverre, aninformation display directly attached to aglass wall (this appears on the cover of thisissue), a programmable window shade, andthe potentially interactive Glascene technologyshown in Fig. 2.AGC says that one of its goals is to convert

glass areas all around us into information signage “because glass is used in every auto-mobile or architecture.” The company looksforward to promising new markets based onthe fusion of glass and displays. Also winning in the medium-exhibit category

was E Ink Corp., for its breakthrough color e-Paper display. E Ink, a company that is

more or less synonymous with electronic-inktechnology, announced its Advanced ColorePaper (ACeP) at Display Week 2016. This isa reflective display that can produce full colorat every pixel without the use of a color-filterarray (Fig. 3). (For more about this product,see the Materials Review from Display Week2016 in this issue.) The initial target applica-tion for ACeP, according to E Ink, is digitalsignage.Small Exhibit: DigiLens won in the small-

exhibit category for its unique presentation ofhighly efficient holographic head-up-displaytechnology. Although DigiLens’ Color Moto-HUD display is an exciting head-up applica-tion in its own right, it did not hurt that thecompany’s booth presentation at DisplayWeek offered attendees a chance to sample theMotoHUD onboard a (stationary) BMWmotorcycle (Fig. 4). This was a very popularexhibit during the show. DigiLens notes that inquiries for auto-

motive HUDs and wearable displays like theMotoHUD continue to grow. On the auto-motive side, it claims that the integratednature of its optical platform enables the light


Fig. 2: This interactive virtual conciergerobot is an example of Asahi Glass Co.’sGlascene technology, in which an image projected onto a transparent glass screenbecomes an interactive presentation throughmotion sensing.

Fig. 3: E Ink’s new color electrophoretictechnology produces color without the use offilters.

Fig. 4: DigiLens’ Color MotoHUD display has been developed for BMW. Pictured aboard themotorcycle is Geena Dabadghav, IT Manager for MCA.


transmission ratio for a wide-FOV windscreenAR HUD projector to be reduced from 30+today down to under 2. On the wearable side,the company says it is committed to full pro-duction of the MotoHUD and is now finaliz-ing designs for AR eyeglass displays.Also winning in the small-exhibit category

was MY Polymers for its low-refractive-indexliquid optically clear adhesive with high bond-ing strength. The company’s LOCA-133 (Fig. 5) is distinguished by its unique combi-nation of low refractive index and high bondstrength. Previously, according to MY Polymers, it

was not possible to produce low-index adhe-sives with strong adhesion, and this limitationprevented their use in the display industry.

Now, due to LOCA-133’s low index, the lightremains contained in the light-guidingmedium. This property enables improvementsin various applications, including thinnerhigh-efficiency backlight units, a minimizationof light leakage in curved and flexible LCDs,improved light-based touch screens, improvedautostereoscopic 3D displays (due to enhanceddisparity between the two images), improvedVR and AR headsets, higher transparency innanotech-based transparent conductors, andimproved light extraction from OLEDs. n

show review: Best-in-Show


Fig. 5: While the bottle may not look all thatexciting, it’s what’s inside that counts. TheLOCA-133 adhesive from MY Polymersimpressed the Best-in-Show committeebecause it’s a low-index adhesive with strongbonding capabilities, making it useful for awide range of display technologies.

EXH IB I T NOW AT

EXHIBITION DATES:May 23–25, 2017Los Angeles Convention CenterLos Angeles , CA, USAEXHIBITION HOURS:Tuesday, May 23 10:30 am – 6:00 pmWednesday, May 249:00 am – 5:00 pmThursday, May 259:00 am – 2:00 pm

CONTACTS FOR EXHIBITS ANDSPONSORSHIPS:Jim BuckleyExhibition and Sponsorship Sales, Europe and [email protected] +1 (203) 502-8283Sue ChungExhibition and Sponsorship Sales, Asia [email protected] +1 (408) 489-9596

J O I N S I DWe invite you to join SID to participate in shaping the future development of:

• Display technologies and display-related products

• Materials and components for displays and display applications

• Manufacturing processes and equipment

• New markets and applications

In every specialty you will find SIDmembers as leading contributors totheir profession.

http://www.sid.org/Membership.aspx

For daily display industry news, visit

www.informationdisplay.org

Display Week 2017SID International Symposium, Seminar & Exhibition

May 21–26, 2017Los Angeles Convention Center,

Los Angeles, CA, USA







www.InformationDisplay.org2016 Print & Digital Media Guide

PRINT EDITORIAL CALENDAR

THE DISPLAY INDUSTRY’S SOURCE FOR NEWS AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Event Date Event Description Closing Date

January/February Digital Signage, MaterialsSpecial Features: Digital Signage Technology Overview, Digital Signage Market Trends, Oxide TFT Progress Report, Alternate Display Materials, Top 10 Display Trends from CES, Chinese Business EnvironmentMarkets: Large-area digital signage, in-store electronic labeling, advertising and entertainment, market research, consumer products, deposition equipment manufacturers, fabs

December 28

March/April Display Week Preview, Flexible TechnologySpecial Features: SID Honors and Awards, Symposium Preview, Display Week at a Glance, Flexible Technology Overview, Wearables UpdateMarkets: Research and academic institutions, OLED process and materials manufacturers, consumer products (electronic watches, exercise monitors, biosensors), medical equipment manufacturers

February 29

May/June Display Week Special, Automotive DisplaysSpecial Features: Display Industry Awards, Products on Display, Key Trends in Automotive Displays, Insider’s Guide to the Automotive Display IndustryMarkets: Consumer products (TV makers, mobile phone companies), OEMs, research institutes, auto makers, display module manufacturers, marine and aeronautical companies

April 21

July/August Light Fields and Advanced DisplaysSpecial Features: Overview of Light-field Display Technology, Next-generation Displays, Market Outlook for Commercial Light-field ApplicationsMarkets: Research institutions, market analysts, game developers, camera manufacturers, software developers

June 20

September/ October

Display Week Wrap-up, Emissive TechnologiesSpecial Features: Display Week Technology Reviews, Best in Show and Innovation Awards, Quantum Dot Update, A Look Forward at Micro-LEDsMarkets: OEMs, panel makers, component makers, TV and mobile phone companies

August 25

November/ December

Applied VisionSpecial Features: Advanced Imaging Technology Overview, Current Key Issues in Applied Vision, Real-World Applied Vision ApplicationsMarkets: Medical equipment manufacturers, game developers, research institutions, OEMs, software developers

October 24

SID-2016.indd 4 11/18/15 7:55 PM


THE Innovation Zone (I-Zone) hasbecome a top destination for Display Weekshowgoers. SID’s I-Zone is celebrating its 5th year, with the same sponsor – E Ink –backing the new and emerging technologyshowcase. The I-Zone features both cutting-edge demos and prototypes fresh out of thelabs. This is where you will see some of the most innovative display-related work anywhere. There were 24 I-Zone participants this year.

This article describes a few of the highlights,but the showstopper, and the winner of the2016 Best Prototype award, was nVerpix. The company received the award, which isbestowed on just one I-Zone exhibitor peryear, for its Carbon-Nanotube VerticalOrganic Light-Emitting Transistor (CN-VOLET). This 3D design for OLED pixelscreates a new architecture by pivoting the traditional horizontal structure and re-orientingthe transistor channel to a vertical position.For more about this year’s winner, see thesidebar, “OLEDs Get Reoriented.”Elsewhere in the I-Zone, China-based

Halation Photonics was showing its newmulti-stable liquid-crystal (MSLC) technologythat retains its crystal alignment even after thepower is off. Power is only needed to make

changes to the display, so like electrophoreticEPH and other bistable technologies, MSLCis very efficient. Halation’s first applications seem to be in

the shelf-label market. For this, the companydeveloped Whiteon, a black-and-white

e-Paper technology. Other applicationsinclude a smart dynamic privacy function,which operates much like 3M’s privacy filmfor displays. MSLC technology is dynamic,however, in that the privacy can be turned off and the panel returned to a fully functional

nVerpix Takes Best Prototype Honors in the I-ZoneDisplay Week’s Innovation Zone continues to provide an inside look at up-and-coming display technology.

by Steve Sechrist

Steve Sechrist is a display-industry analystand contributing editor to Information Display magazine. He can be reached [email protected] or by cell at 503-704-2578.


show review: I-Zone

Fig. 1: Maradin demonstrated a new imaging system based on laser scanning and detectionwith MEMS technology.

ID Sechrist IZONE p10-13_Layout 1 9/4/2016 4:06 PM Page 10


display with its conventional viewing anglefor collaboration and image sharing. Lumii is an MIT spin-off company that was

showing its light-field engine that accepts 3Dmodels and computes a set of unique patternsthat can be printed and stacked, then illumi-nated by a backlight. This gives off a multi-view light field that, according to Lumii, canbe of any size or dimension. The technologyoffers high resolution, large size, high lumi-nance, full parallax, and ease of production. Maradin showed a full laser-scanning solu-

tion based on a 2D MEMS mirror device powered by an RGB laser diode and optics.This is a laser imaging system/laser scanningand detection device. It includes a 2D singlemirror that uses a small optic (to increase optical efficiency) and combines electrostatic(in the horizontal plane) with electromagnetic(in the vertical plane) sensing, which serve toimprove system robustness and performance.It also offers a rather wide optical field ofview (FOV) of 45° (H) × 30° (V), which is afairly large image/scan area for this smalldevice (Fig. 1).


Fig. 2: Synaptics demoed a steering wheel (left) and a fingerprint-sensing application, bothusing its haptic technology.

nVerpix’s award-winning Carbon-Nanotube VerticalOrganic Light-Emitting Transistor (CN-VOLET) hasroots in an earlier architecture developed by Andrew

Rinzler and his colleagues at the University of Florida.The university spun off nVerpix in 2010 to commercializethe CN-VOLET technology. The company is now a sub-sidiary of Nanoholdings.

The earlier architecture was a carbon-nanotube-basedvertical field-effect transistor (CN-VFET) that could drive

OLED pixels at low operating voltages, according to Rinzler. The new architecture incorporates the OLED layers in the transistor stack, creating what can be viewedas a light-emitting transistor.

In the conventional TFT architecture, current flows inthe plane of substrate. The CN-VFET configuration con-ducts the current under the channel layer, at which pointit flows vertically to the drain electrode. This architecturepermits the incorporation of OLED layers in the transistorstack. A top-down look (Fig. 3) shows that the new archi-tecture can deliver an aperture ratio of up to 70%.

If you are not a specialist, it may not be immediatelyevident that the vertical transistor is the current-controltransistor. The switching transistor is still a conventionalTFT, and a simple single-transistor a-Si switch serves todrive the CN-VOLET, said R&D head David Cheney.

In its I-Zone booth, the company showed a smallmonochrome QVGA display. Although the technology isstill a long way from being usable for TV-sized panels withtheir requirements for very long lifetimes and minimalcolor shift, it is somewhat closer for cell-phone displays,where the very compact CN-VOLET structure would beespecially appealing.

– Ken Werner

OLEDs Get Reoriented

Fig. 3: nVerpix’s carbon-nanotube-vertical OLED light-emitting transistor (left) can deliver a much larger aper-ture ratio than a conventional AMOLED (right).


Components included an advanced photo-diode sensor (APD) that receives the image (it uses the MAR1100 2D MEMS scanner)mirror device that floods the object with IRlaser light. Then data from the image is sentfrom the sensor to a special processor tocrunch it for processing and displays it onto adesktop monitor. The company also includesa MEMS controller and standard digital videointerface.Last but not least, we discovered at the

I-Zone a new technology from Synaptics –founded in 1985 – almost ancient in digitalyears. The company was showing off its latest concept device, which it calls “Torch.”This is a prototype steering-wheel application,which gives force feedback via a haptic-enabled technology called ClearForce.The group claims its haptic-enabled immer-

sion offers the advantage of gesture valida-tion, improved “no-look” operation, and theability to avoid accidental activation, all whilemotoring down the highway. It was prettycool to use this concept demo, but my guess isthat any pure driving enthusiast would saythey would much rather feel the real road thanan augmented version of some other kind ofhuman interface device not related to driving. Synaptics also had another prototype, an ID

fingerprint sensor technology it modified forcars. Its fingerprint sensor can be used for ahost of biometric authentication purposes.This, according to the company, includesonline navigation. The concept included finger navigation capabilities, including,remarkably, a wallet mode for on-line shop-ping (while you drive??) plus some features topersonalize the vehicle and systems, all aimedat “reducing driver distraction,” while at thesame time grossly enabling it. The sweet spotbetween available in-auto technology andusable in-auto technology remains elusive(Fig. 2). Each year, the crowds at the I-Zone get

larger. It’s exciting to see so many new technologies. Many seem far off, but at leasta few will no doubt form the basis of futureproducts as yet unimagined. n

show review: I-Zone


For Industry News, New Products, Current and Forthcoming Articles, see









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Display Week 2017:

www.displayweek.org

Submit Your News ReleasesPlease send all press releases and newproduct announcements to:Jenny DonelanInformation Display Magazine411 Lafayette Street, Suite 201New York, NY 10003Fax: 212.460.5460e-mail: [email protected] Display Week 2017

Innovation Zone (I-Zone)May 23–25, 2017

Sponsored by E InkThe prototypes on display inthe Innovation Zone at DisplayWeek 2017 will be among themost exciting things you see at thisyear’s show. These exhibits werechosen by the Society for InformationDisplay’s I-Zone Committee for theirnovelty, quality, and potential toenhance and even transform the dis-play industry. Programmable shoes,interactive holograms, the latesthead-up displays, and much morewill not only fire your imagination,but provide an advance look at manyof the commercial products you’ll beusing a few years from now.SID created the I-Zone as a forum forlive demonstrations of emerginginformation-display technologies. This special exhibit offers researchers space to demonstrate their proto-types or other hardware demos dur-ing Display Week, and encouragesparticipation by small companies,startups, universities, governmentlabs, and independent research labs.Don’t miss the 2017 I-Zone, takingplace on the show floor at DisplayWeek, May 23–25.I-Zone 2016 Best

Prototype Award Winner: nVerpix







Journal of the SIDJournal of the SID

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AS ALWAYS, TV panels were promi-nent on the show floor at Display Week thisyear. The TV market has become increasinglycomplicated, and for that reason a good wayto commence discussion of it is with somebackground data from the IHS/SID BusinessConference, which also took place at DisplayWeek 2016. Speaker Paul Gagnon, analyst and Director

of TV Sets Research at market research firmIHS, reported on the outlook of TV sales, noting that the global TV market will continueto grow in unit volume though the currentdecade (at about the same level as the decadeending in 2010), reaching 250 million units by2020. However, said Gagnon, “Revenues arenot expected to improve, which is weighingon profits for many TV brands.” That revenuenumber peaked in 2010 at $118 billion andwill decline to just over $80 billion by the endof 2016, remaining flat through the decadeand ending 2020 at just over the $80 billionmark (Fig. 1).According to Gagnon, set makers looking

to increase profits can do so by targeting features that customers are willing to pay for.Such features include UHD, full color gamut,and HDR, despite the lack of available contentor even standards in display quality to helpdrive this feature set forward. He alsoexplained that although there has been asteady average size increase in the TV space

over the last several years, this growth isslowing, which is also creating more focus onsuccessful feature introductions. “Picturequality ranked No. 1 in [customer] decisioncriteria in all 14 countries surveyed,” he said,“across all types of regional demographics,with high resolution a “close second.” While the “picture-quality” category seems

rather nebulous, in his presentation Gagnonidentified several consumer benefits such asHD, smart TV, and LED backlighting, as wellas full-HD/1080p resolution, considered tablestakes in today’s worldwide TV market (seebelow). Going forward, we can expect to seeUHD/4K, plus wide color gamut, HDR compatibility, and even 3D and curved sets asother options in the category. (Rememberwhen a wireless remote was considered thesole upgrade to a color TV set?) The survey also found that average TV

price is a function of both product-specific and country-specific factors that include screensize, product features, brand, retail environ-ment, and margins, tariffs, taxes (VAT), inflation, and exchange rates. The good newsfor manufacturers: higher efficiencies arehelping reduce panel price per inch (ppi),moving that number down from $15 (in 2016)to an anticipated figure below half of that (for base models anyway) within the survey periodthat reaches the end of this decade. Another featured conference speaker,

Robert O’Brien of RJO Options LLC, alsoreported that new product features forimproved picture quality represent an increasing share of revenue for all majorbrands. (O’Brien based his presentation on

his company’s recent brand report, which isbased on point-of-sale data across hundreds ofproduct categories in more than 90 countries.) His company’s findings were slightly

different from IHS’s: RJO’s research indicatedthat smart TVs currently dominate the pre-mium options, representing more than half ofall TVs sold. But 4K resolution has almostbecome a de facto standard in most markets.“It is on the path to mainstream adoption,”said O’Brien. He noted that other factors suchas curved sets, color saturation, and OLEDTVs were still emerging, yet likely to becomeincreasingly important in terms of value. Figure 2 shows the relative success of some ofthese features to date, including 3D, highframe rate, and HDR.O’Brien also noted that while major

features such as 4K and smart-TV capabilityare global in their appeal, local country markets do exhibit huge variations in prefer-ences regarding pricing, brand dynamics, andspecific features. For example, “high pricesare not necessarily found in high-incomecountries” he said, comparing the G201average selling price (ASP) of $503 toArgentina’s $817 and $436 for the U.S.“ Low prices can be a result of a competitiveenvironment among brands and retailers,” he explains.

Enter the Feature-Driven MarketFaced with a consumer market that is reasonably content with current-sized panels andaccustomed to ever-lowering prices, TV manufacturers are looking toward specialized features to drive sales – and profits – upward.

by Steve Sechrist

Steve Sechrist is a display-industry analystand contributing editor to Information Display magazine. He can be reached [email protected] or by cell at 503-704-2578.


show review: TVs

1The G20 includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil,Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia,Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia,Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UnitedKingdom, the United States, and the EuropeanUnion.

ID Sechrist p14-17_Layout 1 9/4/2016 4:07 PM Page 14


Brand DynamicsAccording to O’Brien, the TV market breaksdown into three groups that represent >85% of the market: This includes four top global

brands (Samsung, LG, Sony, and Panasonic)with a global presence. These typically leadmajor industry innovation and usually have an ASP above the industry norm. Brands

including Sharp, Philips, Vizio, and Toshibahave regional strengths, and in some cases aremarket leaders in their territories, with averagesakes prices (ASPs) at or near the industry


Fig. 1: The best days of flat-panel revenues are already well behind us, according to IHS market data that shows the peak occurring in 2010.

Fig. 2: Features such as LED backlighting have fared well since its introduction, whereas the curved form factor has done little to spike unitshares thus far.


average. The third group is represented bybrands from China (“the Big 6”), whichinclude TCL, Skyworth, Changhong, Konka,Haier, and Hisense. These companies’ products typically have ASPs below the industry average, O’Brien said.

LG Display OLED TVs Light Up theShow FloorTo make the case for features driving thefuture of TVs, one had to look no further thanthe exhibition floor at Display Week. Firstand foremost was LG Display, which demon-strated an impressive 77-in. OLED TV withHDR that drew crowds throughout the entire 3 days of the show (Fig. 3).This set (with a rumored price of $37K),

helped the company win the large-booth Best-in-Show award, taking it away fromBOE, which had won the award in the previous 2 years for its innovative TVs. LG Display went on record at Display

Week to say that the future of TVs is theOLED TV (Fig. 4). To back up its claim, thecompany showed an impressive range ofOLED-based TV prototypes, including a concave 65-in. UHD OLED, an OLED dual-view flat-display TV and an OLED trans-parent display, all representing plans for futureproducts from the Korea-based TV maker. My favorite LG TV panel in the group was

the dual-view 55-in. OLED in full HD, with athickness of just 7.9 mm and a tiny 6.6 mm(left, right) bezel, that showed a unique OLEDimage on both sides. This will be quite usefulin the digital out-of-home (DooH) market andother commercial B2B options. Another B2BTV candidate was a 55-in. OLED transparentdisplay that LG said had 40% transparency.The TV operated in full HD (1920 × 1080)running at 120 Hz and 200-nit luminance.Finally, the UHD OLED concave display was65 in.on the diagonal with 3840 × 2160 pixelsand a 500-mm curvature radius.LG Display also showed an LCD-based

curved panel with WQHD resolution (that’s3440 × 1440 pixels) with a whopping 109 ppi.The display was mounted on a wall in a three-panel landscape configuration (Fig. 5). Theradius of the curvature was 1900 mm, and LGsaid it was using an a-Si backplane. ThisLCD is currently in mass production, accord-ing to the company.LG Display made the case that the best way

to produce HDR images is by using OLEDs.LG said “OLEDs = The Best Solution for

show review: TVs


Fig. 3: LG Display’s 77-in. OLED panel with HDR was the first thing visitors saw when theyentered the show floor, and many of them stopped to gaze for a while.

Fig. 4: The future of TV is here and “It’s OLED, not LCD” proclaimed LG Display on the sideof its booth at Display Week 2016. Photo courtesy Steve Sechrist.


HDR.” And while the company may be rightin the long term, as reported above in theBusiness Conference sessions, price andyields have yet to push OLED display tech-nology anywhere near the volume (or lowcost) of rival LCDs that still dominate main-stream TVs. So, for now, LG will continue todifferentiate the high end of its TV productline with its stunning display-quality WOLEDpanels in sexy razor-thin form factors, albeitat higher prices and presumably lower profit margins due to yield and production-cost issues.

Samsung Sticks with LCD TVs (at least at Display Week)Samsung Display was also exhibiting at Display Week, showing off its high-contrast-ratio low-reflectance LCD technology. The companyhad a 65-in. UHD “Black Crystal” display thatused global dimming to achieve the high con-trast ratio and low reflectance for its panels in the booth on the exhibition floor. By usingits SDC VA mode, the company achieved a6000:1 contrast with just 2.3% reflectance. Samsung said it will use this technology to

help differentiate its product line and includeits Slim D-LED local-dimming feature in thestep-up models that will be selling at a higherprice. The company said the typical livingroom is at 131 lux and at that luminance level;its UHD display achieves a contrast ratio (CR)of 6K:1 (up from 1,500:1) with a remarkablylow 2.3% reflectance (conventionally around7-8%). That CR number boosts to 8K:1 inlow-light levels (meaning dark or less than 1-lux rooms). Samsung will offer this panel with an edge-lit or local direct-dimming optionto help support its good–better–best pricingmodel. On the curved side of LCDs, Samsung showed a 65-in. slim unit with UHD resolution. Samsung’s TV-panel presence this year was

rather muted, with very limited material,printed or on display, in the booth consideringit leadership position in worldwide markets.When we inquired about press meetings, theysaid none were planned at the show. One hasto imagine that the company is working onsomething that cannot be revealed yet (see“Four Materials Stories from Display Week2016” in this issue for some informed specu-lation on the company’s OLED-TV strategy).

Big Displays from BOEBOE showed an 82-in. 10K (10240 × 4320)curved display, the same technology thathelped the company take a SID Best-in-Show

large booth award at Display Week last year.Specs for this newest 10K curved set include136 ppi with a luminance at 360 cd/m2. Thecurved set offered a radius of 6,500 mm. Alsoimpressive in the BOE booth was its massive 98-in.-diagonal 8K-resolution panel with HDR. BOE claimed it could achieve black levels

as low as 0.001 cd/m2 with a peak brightnessat 1000 cd/m2 of luminance (a whopping sixorders of magnitude higher). The company said its 98-in. behemoth was available now, but no pricing was included with that statement.A second 8K panel was nearby, this one a 65-in. model that was thin and sexy at 3.8 mm.

QD Vision’s TV-Panel ExhibitOne interesting show-floor exhibit from QDVision featured the “Product Wall of Fame,”tracing the history of quantum-dot-enhanced LCD TV sets that have shipped since their first introduction in 2013. The world’s first evertitle goes to the Sony KD-65X9000A, whichwas shown at CES in January 2013. At thetime, Sony introduced its QD-based (edge-litLED) “triluminous panel technology” thatworked together with a powerful processor to boost RGB color.Other notable sets included examples from

Thomson and TCL that both achieved thewidest color gamut (90% of Rec.2020) avail-able in a commercial TV back in 2015. In thatsame year, Philips gained the prize for the

most energy-efficient commercial 55-in. QDset. China brand Hisense also made the QDVision “Wall of Fame” with its K7100 model,the first ever curved QD-based LCD TV. Thisshipped in 2015.

A Challenging MarketSo again, faced with a maturing consumermarket that is reasonably content with currentTV offerings, as long as they are selling forever-lower prices, today’s TV makers are facing challenges. Each TV maker must look toward specialized features (curved, HDR, and OLED panels, to name a few) to help drivethe next wave of sales – and profits – forward,lest it be relegated to the razor-thin margins atthe bottom of the TV commodity space. Intense competition from low-cost China

brands continues to persist, as these relativelynew panel manufacturers look to shift from aposition as white-box sellers to establishingtheir own worldwide brands that push theprice/feature and display-quality boundariesever forward. As this happens, we also expectto see continued consolidation in the space assome established TV brands decide the cost toplay in the consumer-TV space simply doesnot justify the return on investment. In themeantime, consumers at least will continue tobenefit from the increased market competition.

n


Fig. 5: LG Display did show some LCD-based panels as well as OLED ones, including thisWQHD-resolution curved display, shown here in a three-panel landscape configuration. Photocourtesy Steve Sechrist.


Icould begin this article by saying for thehundredth time that the most significant display developments depend on advances inmaterials. But you already know that. As thenarrator used to say at the beginning of an oldTV show, “There are 8 million stories in theNaked City….” Four of the most interestingmaterials (and processing and device-architec-ture) stories that came out of Display Week2016 in San Francisco deal with electro-phoretic displays, OLED materials and processing, quantum dots, and glass. We will start with electrophoretic displays:

E Ink’s Color Display Almost Stealsthe Show E Ink’s Carta reflective electrophoretic dis-play (EPD) is a near-perfect device for read-ing black text on a white background. Butthere are applications, such as many types ofsignage, which demand vibrant color. Untilnow, the only way to get “full” color from anEPD — at least the only way that E Ink hasshown us — is by placing a matrix color filterin front of the monochrome display.The problem with this approach for a

reflective display is that the 40% of lightreflected from a good EPD is brought down to10–15% by the filter. This results in a limitedgamut of rather dark, muddy colors. E Inkshowed the way forward a few years ago witha black, white, and red display, which man-

aged to control particles of three different colors using differences in mobility and acleverly designed controlling waveform.At Display Week, E Ink introduced an

impressive expansion of this approach, inwhich particles of four different colors areincluded within each microcapsule, given different mobilities through different sizing,and driven with a pulsed controlling wave-form that permits the creation of thousands ofcolors, said E Ink’s Giovanni Mancini (Fig. 1).The resulting display showed impressively

bright and saturated colors and drew crowds.When a new image was written, the displaywould flash several times. It took about 10 sec for a new image to build to its finalcolors. One possible application Mancinimentioned is a color E Ink sign powered byphotocells, as shown at the far right of Fig. 1.This is an important development that willsignificantly expand the range of applicationsEPDs can address.In any other year, E Ink’s new electro-

phoretic display, which creates full color with-out the cost and light loss of a matrix colorfilter, would have had no competition as themost exciting and significant electrophoreticstory coming out of Display Week. But thisyear, E Ink had competition.First, some background: Good, very-low-

power monochrome reflective displays withslow redraw times exist, and with the intro-duction of E Ink’s color display, a good low-power color reflective display with very slowredraw times now exists. What we have nothad is a reflective video-rate display, and forgood reasons. The only reflective technologythat has proved to have both broad application

and business feasibility has been electro-phoretic (think E Ink), and electrophoretic displays operate by moving charged particlesslowly through a significant fluid layer. Theredraw time cannot be fast. (Well, it can befaster, but then the charged particles collideviolently and tear each other apart, with unfortunate results.)A development-stage company called

CLEARink, which has an extremely impres-sive technical team, has turned the conven-tional electrophoretic model on its head. TheCLEARink display has a thin optical platewith lenslets on the inner surface. In thewhite state, incoming light experiences totalinternal reflection (TIR) and returns to theviewer. Reflectivity is an impressive 60%.Lurking behind the optical plate is an “ink”

containing black particles that are movedtoward or away from the plate. When the particles touch the plate (actually, when theyget close enough to interfere with the evanes-cent light wave), the TIR is defeated and lightat that point is absorbed.That’s clever, but it’s still electrophoresis,

with a particle being moved through a fluid.How can that produce video rate? Because, inCLEARink’s architecture, the particle onlyhas to move through 0. 5 microns to interruptthe evanescent wave, and that a very small distance can be traversed rapidly (Fig. 2).The technology was announced several

weeks prior to Display Week, but at the conference the company showed technologydemonstrations in a suite. To demonstrate themonochrome video-rate display, CLEARviewengineers had purchased a Kobo eReader andsimply replaced the E Ink imaging film with

Four Materials Stories from Display Week 2016The show in San Francisco highlighted intriguing advances in the areas of electrophoreticdisplays, OLED materials and processing, quantum dots, and glass.

by Ken Werner

Ken Werner is Principal of Nutmeg Consultants,specializing in the display industry, manufac-turing, technology, and applications, includ-ing mobile devices and television. He can bereached at [email protected].


show review: materials

ID Werner p18-24_Layout 1 9/4/2016 4:30 PM Page 18


its own. With the application of a video signal, the display showed very clean, 30-fpsvideo with subjectively good contrast and thatbright 60% reflectivity. CEO Frank Christiaensnoted that the technology is compatible withpretty much any backplane and requires noprecision alignment.As impressive as the monochrome display

is, Christiaens did not want my colleague BobRaikes and me to forget that color via matrixcolor filter (MCF) is part of the company’smid-term road-map, and his demos wereeffective. Using an MCF with an otherwisemonochrome EPD has not been a satisfyingapproach in the past because too much of thereflective light was absorbed. The differencehere is that CLEARink starts out with 60%reflectivity rather than 40%.So, said Christiaens, CLEARink will soon

be providing something that has never beforebeen available: a reflective, color, video-ratedisplay. In either a color or monochrome version, CLEARink’s fast EPD will enablenew applications that cannot be realized byexisting display technologies.

OLED Materials and Processes MakeLarge Steps ForwardA good blue OLED phosphor must do threethings well: It must have the proper colorcoordinates (that is, the right shade of blue) to create a wide color gamut; it must beenergy-efficient; and it must have a long lifetime. Currently, OLED panel makers usephosphorescent OLED phosphors for red and


Fig. 1: E Ink’s new color technology uses particles of four different colors within each microcapsule (left) that are controlled in such a way as tocreate thousands of colors for an unusually vibrant electrophoretic display (right).

Fig. 2: CLEARink’s innovative electrophoretic architecture enables a much faster response time– even supporting video imagery.


green, which do a good job of balancing allthree requirements, and fluorescent phosphorfor blue, which provides good color coordi-nates, poor efficiency, and just acceptable (or, depending on who you talk to, not-quite-acceptable) lifetime for television. Incidentally, “lifetime” does not mean time

until death; it means time until the initialluminance drops to a particular percentage.For instance, T95 is the time it takes for display luminance to drop to 95% of its origi-nal value. At T50, the display has dropped to50% of its original output. (When companiestalk about lifetime, it is prudent to make surewhich “lifetime” they are specifying.) The chemistry of blue OLED phosphors has

made it impossible until now to optimize thethree characteristics simultaneously. How-ever, at Display Week we saw two companies –KyuLux and Cynora – that are exploring aquantum-mechanical mechanism called ther-mally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF),which is perhaps a way of combining for bluethe benefits of fluorescence (good color co-ordinates and better lifetime) with phospho-rescence (efficiency). As explained by Cynora’s Thomas Baumann,

in TADF the singlet and triplet states are ener-getically very close to each other, which per-mits thermal energy to cause the triplet statesto migrate to the singlet state. After a delay of a few picoseconds, fluorescent emissionoccurs from the singlet state with an internalquantum efficiency of 100%, since the (origi-nally) triplet state and the singlet state are both captured. Color coordinates and efficiencyare good, said Baumann, but material lifetimestill needs work. Baumann anticipates cus-tomer qualification in 2017, and the first com-mercial panel incorporating the material inlate 2018 or early 2019. But that assumes thelifetime issues are resolved in the next year.Baumann tried to sound optimistic about that,but this is the kind of material developmentissue that has not always yielded to optimism.My colleague Bob Raikes reports that in

the Business Conference, Junji Adachi, CTOof year-old Kyulux, described his company’sversion of TADF, which Adachi called “hyperfluorescent” technology. The light output of normal TADF has a fairly widespectrum, Adachi said, which limits color saturation. Kyulux claims to have solved thisproblem, hence the name “hyperfluores-cence.” The technology is based on fluores-cent materials that have a narrower spectrum,

with 4 times the light output. Using evapora-tion, it is a simple matter to combine theTADF and host materials, Adachi said.At an investor’s meeting, Kyulux CEO

Christopher Savoie showed data indicating alifetime (unspecified in this presentation) of1600 hours at an initial output of 1000 cd for TADF green. The company will announce blue lifetimes in September, said Savoie, but he claimed the latest blue materials have 20% exter-nal quantum efficiency (EQE) and long life.According to the company, its materials

have long life, high brightness, and low cost,and Kyulux wants to work with other compa-nies that make materials. Kyulux believes itsmaterials can help panel makers move backfrom Pentile structures to RGB. (There wasno comment about why this might be a goodthing.) Kyulux is working with Kyushu University, which has a research cluster inFukuoka, Japan. Companies involved in thelatest investment round include Samsung Display, LG Display, Japan Display, andJOLED, said Savoie. This could be animpressive endorsement of the Kyuluxapproach or it might be an example of placing stakes in the ground just in case.Given that neither Kyulux nor Cynora has

yet to demonstrate long life for blue, it isunclear whether we should be optimistic that acommercially suitable TADF blue will cometo market before a phosphorescent blue does.Since UDC has been working on the phospho-rescent-blue problem for years, and to datehas not suggested it is making significantprogress, perhaps TADF can win this horserace after all. Kyulux’s strong technical teamof ex-Sony, Samsung, Sharp, and Fuji Filmpersonnel is presumably trying hard.Other than OLED front-plane materials, a

huge challenge has been a manufacturablepixel-switch backplane that can drive OLEDpixels with economy, stability, and long life.Samsung, and now others, solved that prob-lem with low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS)for small- and medium-sized displays. How-ever, the LTPS process is difficult to scale tolarge sizes, in addition to having issues ofmaterial waste and acceptable but less-than-ideal uniformity. LG uses an amorphousmetal-oxide backplane, which has had yieldand stability problems when used withOLEDs. The ideal would be using single-crystal silicon for the backplane, if anybodycan figure out (1) how to do it technically and(2) how to do it economically.

Now, a Canadian team from the Universityof Waterloo, Christie Digital Systems, andDifTek Lasers is reporting “single-crystaldevice mobility >300 cm²/V-sec in a scalableprocess suitable for electronic backplanes forlarge-area OLED displays.” This report wasmade in a Display Week late-news posterpaper entitled “Device Mobility >300 cm²/V-secUsing Planarized Single-Crystal-SiliconSpheres for Large-Area-Display Backplanes,”by R. S. Tarighat and colleagues. The authorsembedded single-crystal-silicon spheres in aceramic substrate and planarized the surface,and they suggest this approach can be used tomake large-area substrates with high mobility(Fig. 3).The authors developed a method for fabri-

cating transistors on their backplane, and theperformance results look very good indeed;just what you would expect from single-crystal silicon. However, the backplane fabri-cation process requires grinding and etching.The authors performed these steps on a silicon-wafer-sized substrate because grindingand etching equipment for such sizes is readilyavailable. However, it remains to be seenwhether a panel maker could implement agrind and etch process on a Gen 8 or Gen 10substrate uniformly. If that can be done, andthe process can be scaled up economically,this could be an important development. A more comprehensive approach to the

backplane and phosphor problems was putforth by nVerpix in its Innovation-Zone booth,an approach that won the company SID’s BestPrototype Award. nVerpix is developing whatit calls CN-VOLET technology, a new archi-tecture that incorporates the OLED layers inthe transistor stack, creating what can beviewed as a light-emitting transistor. (For moreabout nVerpix, see the I-Zone review article inthis issue.)Samsung Display introduced a display with

the industry’s highest OLED pixel density yet:806 pixels per inch (ppi) in a 5.5-in. panel targeted at virtual-reality applications. Samsung claimed 306 nits and 97% colorgamut (the gamut was not referenced) for this3840 × 2160-pixel panel.The company also waded into the “unhealthy

blue display light” discussion by demonstratingits “Bio Blue” display, which adds a light-bluephosphor to the existing RG(darkB) pixel struc-ture. Samsung’s explanation was not entirely clear, but I assume the light blue is used as a primary for those colors that can be made




with a light blue, and that this blue light hasan increased percentage of its spectral outputoutside of the biologically problematic range.A company statement said, “Of the total

blue spectrum, the proportion of blue lightharmful to the human eye is 66% for LCDsand 32% for AMOLED displays.” Samsungadded that AMOLED displays will be able toreduce this figure to 6% in the future. I suppose it is understandable that Samsung did not discuss the fact that LCD designers can selecttheir blue LEDs and quantum dots such thattheir blue light, too, is largely outside the biologically sensitive range. Samsung alsoshowed a 5.7-in. rollable OLED display. (Tianma showed a 5.5-in. flexible display.) Other thanbend-once applications such as the SamsungGalaxy S7 Edge, I am still waiting for a con-vincing usage case for 5-in. rollable displays.Finally, there was a lot of discussion of

Samsung’s pre-SID announcement that it was discontinuing its plans for developingcommercial OLED TV. There were lots ofrumors and lots of competing interpretations.For now, let’s just say it will be interesting to see what TV technology the company promotes in 2017. (For about TVs, see thereview article by Steve Sechrist in this issue.)

Quantum Dots – Startling Progress onMajor IssuesIn addition to the major introduction (Hyperionquantum dots, discussed below) Nanosysplanned to make at Display Week, it added

another when CEO Jason Hartlove apparentlywent “off the script” at the Business Conferenceand announced the development of quantumdots that are stable in air thanks to individualencapsulation.Quantum dots are sensitive to oxygen and

moisture, and commercially available quantum-dot products, such as QD Vision’s thin glasstube and Nanosys/3M’s QDEF film, have elements that protect the dots from air andmoisture. To prove that the company’s air-stable QDs are indeed stable in air, NanosysCorporate Communications Manager JeffYurek provided a lab-bench-style technicaldemo behind closed doors. With each dotsnug and cozy in its individual encapsulation,significant new uses become possible: electrical,instead of just optical, excitation; ink-jet print-ing; and even gravure printing, according toHartlove.Think of making a color “filter” by ink-jet-

ting patterns of red- and green-convertingquantum dots on a film that sits in front of ablue direct-addressed backlight. Instead ofinefficiently blocking light with a conven-tional color filter, you would be convertingthe blue light to red and green where youwanted it to make full-color pixels. Yureksuggested a possible efficiency improvementof 2–3 times.Yurek said there is a “huge pull” from a

customer who would like to go to market withan air-stable-based product in 2018, butNanosys thinks 2019 is more likely.

Nanosys’s scheduled announcements andbooth demonstrations were also exciting. Thecompany’s Hyperion quantum-dot systemmatches the performance of cadmium-selenide quantum dots while being officially“cadmium free” under RoHS regulations, saidYurek. The Hyperion approach combines acompletely cadmium-free red quantum dotwith a green dot that contains very little cadmium. A QDEF sheet using the new formulation has a cadmium level less than the 100 parts-per-million limit set by theEuropean RoHS Directive, so no exemption isrequired.In a paper delivered at the SID symposium,

Nanosys R&D VP Charlie Hotz said an Hyperion QDEF sheet provided over 90% ofthe BT.2020 color gamut, just as conventionalcadmium-selenide (CdSe) quantum-dot sheetsdo. This was supported by a side-by-sidedemonstration in the Nanosys booth. So, ifthere are no unforeseen difficulties, panelmakers and TV manufacturers (such as Samsung) will not have to choose betweenhigh-performing and more efficient CdSe dotsand the less effective but RoHS exemption-free indium-phosphide (InP) dots. Nanosyssays QDEF manufacturing partners will beevaluating the new materials in Q3’ 16, withvolume production of Hyperion QDEFexpected in early 2017. Hartlove said there is no cost differential between Hyperion andCdSe dots, and that the manufacturing costs of Hyperion are actually lower.


Fig. 3: Single-crystal-silicon spheres are embedded in a ceramic substrate that is then planarized at the surface in an approach that could beused to make large-area substrates with high mobility. Source: R. S. Tarighat et. al.


The attentive reader may have noticed theuse of the plural word partners in the precedingparagraph, and that was the subject of anotherNanosys announcement. Nanosys has nowadded Hitachi Chemical as a partner fordeveloping QDEF films for display applica-tions, in addition to 3M. In a press releaseissued in May 2016, Hiroyuki Morishima, the GM of Hitachi Chemical’s R&D Head-quarters, was quoted as saying “We plan tobegin shipping product in mass-productionvolumes during the second half of 2016.”During a booth tour for institutional investorssponsored by Sanford C. Bernstein (HongKong) Limited, Hartlove said “[Total marketsize] should hit 200 million square metersover the next couple of years; this year weexpect [QD market penetration] to be roughly5% of that.”Finally, Nanosys was promoting President

Obama’s award of the National Medal of Science to company co-founder PaulAlivisatos for his work on quantum dots.Given the transition from edge lighting to

direct backlighting in TVs, it came as no surprise that QD Vision is working on a film-based approach with a partner, but the company’s emphasis at Display Week washow cost-effective the company’s ColorIQthin-tube quantum-dot optic can be in smallerdisplays. (For additional coverage of QD-enhanced TVs, again see Steve Sechrist’s TVreport in this issue.)In its booth, QD Vision was introducing the

Philips 276E7 27-in. 1920 × 1080 monitor tothe U.S. market. The monitor displays images with 250-nits luminance and 99% of the Adobe RGB gamut. The Philips monitor brand,which is controlled by TPV, has been sold pri-marily in Europe and Asia, but TPV plans tomake a marketing push in North America, too.Also announced was a 27-in. monitor from

TPV-owned AOC, which has specs similar tothe Philips 27 in. It will be available in NorthAmerica Q3 at a price that will probably beclose to $300 (Fig. 4). The LEDs, and the ColorIQ optic, are on

the bottom edge in these monitors. QD Visionexecutives stressed that ColorIQ can be verycost-effective for consumer monitors andsmaller TVs.Other ColorIQ monitors and small TVs

being introduced in the booth were a 24-in.AOC monitor, a 24-in. Philips monitor, and32-in. Philips and AOC monitors currentlyavailable in China.

QD Vision execs said the company continuesto work on QLED (a structure in which thequantum-dot material is electrically ratherthan optically excited and is therefore suitablefor an emissive display that could competedirectly with OLED). The company believesthat QLED is the ultimate display, and itexpects to be making product in 2 years. Thecompany continues to develop the demandingdot-on-chip, “if not for LCD then for lighting.”Quantum dots for mobile-phone displays willhave to be dot-on-chip, an executive said,since there is no room for anything else.QD Vision had a side-by-side comparison

(using the outdated NTSC color gamut, butstill providing a helpful comparison) of fourTVs: QD Vision CdSe film (105%), InP film(91%), OLED (82%), and standard white-LED-lit LCD (72%). It is no longer a surpriseto anyone that CdSe quantum dots outperformInP dots, and the difference is easy to see.The very poor showing of the OLED TV wasmore surprising. In a recent Display Daily,OLED Association Managing Director BarryYoung suggested that an older model OLEDTV was being used for the comparison.Roughly spherical dots are not the only

form in which quantum particles come. Thedirectional characteristics of quantum rodsopen new applications in color filters andother products, said Bob Miller of Merck

affiliate EMD. In an invited paper entitled “Quantum-Rod-Containing Film Develop-ment for Display Applications,” MerckJapan’s Masayoshi Suzuki discussed some ofthe details. Among them is that Q-Rods havea smaller overlap between the absorption andemission spectra than Q-Dots, which meansthere is less quenching of the output when theQ-structures become more concentrated.There is also a higher out-coupling efficiencybecause the distribution of emitted light isdirected more toward the normal to the filmplane. As influential as quantum dots have already

been, we saw dramatic technical developments at Display Week that herald further significantmarket growth. One somewhat surprisingtakeaway is that cost-effective quantum-dotconsumer monitors are here, and with TPVsupplying about half of the world’s monitors,we are likely to see a lot more of them.

Glass and Films: More Interestingthan You May ThinkGlass is essential to the display and lightingworlds, but it is hard to make it as exciting as,for example, a big bright TV. Still, makers ofglass and associated materials were doingtheir best to stir the crowds.Corning was showing LCD modules with

its Iris Glass, which won a Display Component



Fig. 4: AOC has introduced a quantum-dot-enhanced 27-in. monitor that should sell forapproximately $300.


of the Year Award from SID. (AGC won thesame award for its similar technology). Irisglass was designed to replace acrylic andother polymers as the light-guide plate (LGP)in edge-lit LCDs. Using glass instead of polymer provides greater dimensional stabilityand a thinner LGP without sacrificing per-formance, a Corning representative said.Although transmissivity was a problem, Corning says it has now been overcome. IrisGlass is being used in edge-lit TVs that areavailable today, and more seem to be underdevelopment in China and elsewhere. Sets were being shown in Corning’s booth

that measured only about 5 mm thick, andthicknesses less than 4 mm are possible, aCorning rep said. That is not too much morethan the 2.57-mm thickness of LG’s top-of-the-line OLED TV. Not far from the Corningbooth, BOE was showing a 65-in. 8K × 4K10-bit-per-channel module using Iris glass andmeasuring only 3.8 mm thick. Corning was also promoting both its Lotus

and Eagle high-stability NXT glasses. Thereis significant interest in NXT glass for thecoming generation of 8K LCDs, Corningsaid, because display drivers get hot enoughfor the stability of normal glass to be anissue. But that issue is not limited to TV-sized displays. Since last August, SamsungDisplay has been using Lotus NXT for theLTPS OLED display in the Samsung GalaxyNote 5, which packs Quad-HD pixel contentinto a 5.7-in. display.

Particularly for automotive applications,Corning was showing anti-glare Gorilla Glasswith different amounts of haze. Samples with3%, 10%, and 20% haze were shown. AGC was showing its award-winning XCV

extremely transparent glass for LGPs. Asahiwas demonstrating the improved inner trans-mittance of XCV compared to conventionalextra-clear glass, showing a significant difference, especially at longer wavelengths.Asahi also compared the properties of XCVwith those of poly(methyl methacrylate), better known as PMMA, acrylic, or Lucite,which is a very common material for LGPs.The thermal conductivity of XCV glass is fivetimes that of PMMA, its water absorption is0.0% versus 0.3% for PMMA, and its thermalexpansion coefficient is 84 × 10-7 × K-1 com-pared to PMMA’s 700. AGC will supply XCVwith a light-extracting dot pattern but did not say when it would be available to panel makers or what the maximum available size will be. (Corning has Iris Glass available up to Gen 10.) AGC also showed its Glascene glass

projection screen that retains its transparencyduring image projection. The company alsoshowed its Infoverre smart glass windows thatchange from transparent to highly diffusive.Merck/EMD was also demonstrating smart

windows using the company’s guest-host liquid crystal, which it calls Licrivision. Thewindow can turn from clear to diffuse and canalso change from clear to a color with theappropriate guest material (Fig. 5).

The technology is well-developed, saidMerck/EMD, and the company is now work-ing with architectural glass makers on high-volume production. Interest from architectsand builders is high, said EMD’s Bob Miller.3M showed its Advanced Light Control

Film (ALCF) family. The polycarbonate filmscontain internal optical louvers for controllingthe direction of light. 3M sees the primaryapplication as reducing windshield reflectionsin automotive displays. The film can beincluded in the LCD’s optical stack. A hard-coated version can be the top film over thefront polarizer. Luminit was showing its well-known

light-control films. New are products basedon computer-generated holograms. One customer is using the technology to create an automobile welcome application, which projects the brand’s logo on the ground towelcome the owner to his car. Luminit would not reveal its customer, but Lincoln is known to offer such a feature. Global Lighting Technologies (GLT) has

been a master of precision light guides andlight-guide-based lamps for years. Anunusual addition to GLT’s technological portfolio this year was an extremely thin andflexible light guide that can be sewn intoclothing. In the photo in Fig. 6, a GLT repwears a flat lamp based on the light guidebehind the cut-out Los Angeles logo on thefront of his baseball cap. (The lamp is not litin this photo.)


Fig. 5: Merck demonstrated smart windows that could turn from clear (left) to diffuse (right), courtesy of the company’s liquid-crystal-materialLicrivision.


Finally, a company called Redux was show-ing a glass panel with transducers that createda very sophisticated, adjustable, and localizedhaptic experience. Virtual controls – such assliders, knobs, and pushbuttons – could beestablished anywhere on the panel, and theyfelt much like the mechanical controls theymimicked. Adjustments could be made forbutton resistance, button edge sensation, friction, and clicks in a rotary control, etc.The same transducers can make the panel,which can be a separate panel or the frontglass of a display, act like a loudspeaker (or astereo pair). If the audio part of the Reduxtechnology sounds a lot like that of thedefunct company NXT, it’s because Reduxacquired NXT’s IP and hired some of its former employees. There was nothing wrongwith NXT’s technology, said Redux ChiefCommercial Officer John Kavanagh, just itsproduct strategy. But Redux is adding its verysophisticated haptics to NXT’s audio-on-panelapproach. These Display Week exhibitors

have not been sitting on their glasses.In materials and devices, this was an

unusually exciting Display Week. It will beinteresting to see what structures the compa-nies build on the foundations laid in San Francisco this year. n



Fig. 6: Logowear outfitted with GLT’s lightguide lamps has been a big seller for the company,according to its representatives.




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THE mobile and wearable display tech-nologies showcased at the booths of the majordisplay makers at Display Week 2016 exhib-ited clear improvements that will serve endusers well over the coming few years. Whilethere were no radical departures from thesteady path of innovation, the improvementsin form factor and advances toward low-power dissipation in wearable designs wereamong the highlights of the show. Theseimprovements, described below, were alsoemphasized in the symposium keynotes aswell as in the Market Focus Conference presentations.

Edge-to-Edge Mobile DisplaysIncorporate a Plethora of SensorsEven before Display Week opened, the symposium keynotes provided some insightinto what the exhibitors on the show floor hadin store for attendees. Hiroyuki Oshima fromJapan Display Inc. (JDI) gave a keynote onmobile displays, highlighting JDI’s strategy ofconcentrating on core technologies. One ofthese is its in-cell touch-based user interface.Other core technologies, LTPS and IPS, support touch functionality in the displayitself that may take on new capabilities inmore generalized input devices. As the mobile-phone market saturates, JDI

sees the future growth for the display business

in new applications that will be enabled byadvanced sensor technologies such as edgeand hover touch, fingerprint sensors, andphysiological sensors that will be incorporatedin display modules. As a result of new sensingtechnologies, the mobile-phone display willbecome the main input device as well as themain output device for the phone, as thesenew sensor technologies can be leveraged inlight-based sensing and imaging in addition tofinger-based touch applications.

And with the increasing pixel density inmobile screens, stylus-based input becomesmeaningful once again, allowing for higherdefinition in character input as well as in artisticapplications. The increased pixel density, inturn, will be enabled by higher-pixel-densityLTPS processes as well as by the IPS LCmode applied as the electro-optical modula-tion medium in these displays.The new touch-technology landscape was

also broadly outlined by Calvin Hsieh from

Better Form, Lower PowerDisplay Week 2016 offered an inside look at the state of the art for mobile and wearable displays.

by Jyrki Kimmel

Jyrki Kimmel is a Distinguished Researcherat Nokia Technologies in Tampere, Finland.He has been investigating new display tech-nologies in the mobile domain for over 20 years. He can be reached at +358-50-4835484 or [email protected].


show review: mobile and wearable displays

Fig. 1: The inactive space at the edges of JDI’s super-narrow-border display module (right) isonly 0.5 mm wide. The difference from the conventional example (left) is noticeable. Photocourtesy Jyrki Kimmel.

ID Kimmel p26-29_Layout 1 9/4/2016 4:41 PM Page 26


IHS, who gave the lead presentation in theMarket Focus Conference on Touch. In IHS’sforecast, in-cell touch for AMLCDs and on-cell touch for AMOLED displays play a largerole, as shown in strong projected growth forthese technologies. For touch in general, aswell as for mobile-display technologies, newapplications drive the growth of the business.Many of these rely on sensors that are beingintegrated into the module itself. These sensors give the mobile display capabilitiesfor multimodal user interaction, from finger-print and proximity sensing to hover touch.These interaction modalities can then beleveraged over a wide range of applicationareas, even for automotive use.JDI’s strategy was demonstrated by its

exhibit lineup of mobile AMLCDs. One IPS-based product family, for instance,sported WQHD screens from 5.2 to 5.7 in., all at a luminance level of 500 nits. Thismakes it possible to pick and choose a display

based on product form factor. One concepthelpful in improving mobile-device integra-tion was JDI’s 5.2-in. super-narrow-border0.5-mm-bezel screen in FHD resolution. Thisdevelopment will become a necessity forhigh-end design, once the resolution can bebrought on par with mainstream display modules (see Fig. 1).There were many examples of innovative

integration in mobile displays on the showfloor. The LG Display booth, for example,was featuring an interesting concept with dualdisplay drivers. This product had a low-power information screen at the top of the 6-in. dual 513-dpi display, with a normal-looking smartphone display at the bottom (seeFig. 2). This concept enables the idle screento operate on a transmissive LCD, a featureseen only on AMOLED display screens today. Another interesting mobile display from

LG had an 806-ppi 5.5-in. screen. This samepixel density was achieved by JDI on its 5.46-in. 4K × 2K display. The “ppi race” wastrumped by Sharp, however, which showedextremely high-pixel-density examples fromits collaboration with Semiconductor EnergyLaboratory (SEL). One Sharp IGZO-basedpanel was optimized for use with VR goggles,and the display was in fact shown under magnifying optics. The 2.5-in. panel had apixel density of 1210 ppi, with a resolution of2560 × 1600 pixels.

In the AMOLED technology space, Samsunghad an interesting showcase lineup of itsdevelopment in this area (not including TVsthis year), starting with small-form-factorscreens from 2007 and culminating with themost recent curved-edge Samsung Galaxy S7Edge phone. This lineup showed the develop-ments in AMOLED technology thus far in avery concrete and understandable way.According to the AMOLED developmenttimeline Samsung was displaying in its booth,1-billion AMOLED screens had been sold byFebruary 2016.One surprising innovation – again from JDI

– involved power savings. A 10.2-in. panel inJDI’s booth had an RGBW matrix with localdimming. The increased white transmissioncombined with the local-dimming schemeimproved the power characteristics by 15–20%,which is a significant improvement for anLCD module. The local-dimming feature wasthe first demonstrated on a mobile-sized tabletdisplay, and JDI claimed it increased the perceived contrast 100-fold, over a conven-tional globally dimmed RGB module (see Fig. 3).

Curves AheadAnother trend in the mobile space is the proliferation of organic form factors. Sharpcomes into this area from another direction,taking the form language from its automotive


Fig. 2: LG Display’s 6.0-in. dual-driverQHD+ mobile display had a 160-pixel extrascreen strip at the top, leaving the bottom asthe “normal” smartphone screen. Photocourtesy Jyrki Kimmel.

Fig. 3: JDI’s local-dimmed 10.2-in. tablet display module had a CR of 110,000:1 or above,according to the company. Photo courtesy Jyrki Kimmel.


curve-edged displays and transforming mobile-sized displays from rectangular-shaped objectsto round- and oval-shaped objects. Theseaffordances to form factor, combined with

curved-display integration, led by Samsung,open a way for totally new device classes,beyond the mobile phone and rectangular passive information screens in automobiles.

Despite this evident progress, judging fromthe presentations in the conferences and themodules shown in the exhibition booths, itseems that the predicted curved and flexibledisplays are still as far in the future asroadmaps depicted a few years ago. Manycompanies, including new entrants such asJDI, showed very similar curved AMOLEDscreens, and also similar dynamically foldableor rollable demonstration prototypes. Samsung seems to be leading the develop-

ment toward mass-producible flexible-displaytechnology, with its Galaxy Edge displaysalready on the market. At Display Week,Samsung showed a 5.7-in. 518-ppi curved display in a demonstrator mockup (see Fig. 4).Sensor and system integration as well as touchuser-interface evolution will play a major roleas constituent technologies in this development. Until we get to see mass-produced flexible

display modules, there will be many advance-ments in “classic” mobile-display technologiesthat are extremely useful, if not as exciting as foldable and rollable. These advancements can, in turn, propagate to other application areas,making developments in mobile displays thevanguard of evolution in display technology.

Wearable Displays Sport ClassicDesignsIn the last couple of years, “connectedwatches” or “smartwatches” have become awearable part of the mobile ecosystem, andtheir design has approached that of classicwristwatches. The intuitively designed

show review: mobile and wearable displays


Figs. 5 and 6: At left, JDI’s demonstrator was a 1.2-in. round MIP display. At right, Sharp’s round 128 x 128 pixel display featured ultra-lowpower. Photo courtesy Jyrki Kimmel.

Fig. 4: Samsung showed a 5.7-in. curved demonstration display. Photo courtesy Jyrki Kimmel.


round-face interface has pulled through onceagain, creating a new customer demand fordesign-driven smartwatches that can do muchmore than the single-purpose timepieces ofthe 20th century. Health and fitness applica-tions, in particular, are being integrated intothe smartwatch oyster shell, as well as theability to interface with the user’s smartphoneto receive alerts and messages conveyed to thewatch by the mobile terminal. Even more than in mobile displays, power

dissipation in wearable devices is a criticalfactor in user adoption. As is customary inwatch form-factor devices, the user preferenceis not to have to charge the battery every dayor, as has been the case in some early smart-watches, even a couple of times a day. Thedemand for low-power LCDs in wearableform factor is already being served by JDI’sround 1.2-in. 218 × 218 and 0.99-in. 180 ×186 and rectangular 1.39-in. 205 × 148 reflec-tive color displays with memory-in-pixel(MIP) function, all at 182 ppi (see Fig. 5). There were other small-form-factor low-

power displays at the show, including some in black and white with dithered gray scalesfrom Sharp (see Fig. 6). Kyocera also showeda round 128 × 128-pixel display.

Another approach toward low power is withbistable e-paper displays, as shown in the EInk booth. One such product on the market,the Withings activity monitor, was featured. It sported a reflective e-paper display in around design (see Fig. 7). Sony’s wrist-bandform-factor activity monitors also had e-inkscreens, as did the Wove wrist-band deviceshown at the Canatu booth (see Fig. 8). The Wove/Canatu carbon-nanobud touch

panel was assembled in an “on-screen” touchfashion to make a complete integral structurewithout any separate outside encapsulation.The entire module thickness is only 0.162 mm.Assuming that customer demand drives the

adoption of consumer devices, once the tech-nology to realize these is available, we caninfer from the exhibits shown that there is ademand to minimize the bezel and dead spacein a round watch form-factor display. Compa-nies are striving to provide a bezelless designsimilar to those that have become possible inmobile-phone displays. This is a much moredifficult feat using a round shape. AUOptronics (AUO) showed in two symposiumpresentations how this can be done using aplastic-substrate display. Instead of placingthe driver chip on the face of the display, in aledge, or using a TAB lead, AUO bends theflexible substrate itself to place the driver atthe back side of the display. In this way, abezel of 2.2 mm can be achieved, with clever

gate-driver placement and bringing the powerlines into the active area from the oppositeside of the display face.

The Way ForwardBased on the mobile- and wearable-displayofferings at Display Week, as well as the presentations given by display manufacturersand analysts, it seems that the small-form-factor displays are leading the advances inmany display technology areas. Whereasbefore, the development cycle in flat-paneldisplays entered the mobile-display spacewith a few years’ delay, now mobile- andwearable-display manufacturers are leadingthe way in innovation, as is demonstrated bythe advances in pixel density, substrate mate-rials, narrow bezel designs, decreasing powerdissipation, sensor integration, and organicform factors. In the coming few years, theseinnovations enabled by new mobile- andwearable-display technologies will benefit theusers of smartphones, connected watches, andother devices yet to be designed. n


Fig. 7: The Withings activity monitor deviceuses an electronic-ink screen. Photo courtesyJyrki Kimmel.

Fig. 8: The Wove wrist device prototype features an electronic-ink screen integrated withCanatu’s carbon-nanobud touch screen. Photo courtesy Jyrki Kimmel.

For daily display industry news, visit




IN recent years, virtual-reality (VR) andaugmented -reality (AR) technologies havemoved from the realms of science fiction andimagination to advanced research in academiclaboratories, to product development in theindustry, and, finally, into the hands of consumers in the real world. A number of marquee VR devices have been launched, alongwith compelling immersive applications. Afew AR devices and developer kits have beenreleased as well. The pace of progress in bothVR and AR technologies has been rapid.

So, in line with this fast-emerging trend inthe ecosystem, the Society for InformationDisplay (SID) decided to create a special trackon AR and VR for Display Week 2016. Therich lineup at Display Week in San Franciscoincluded a short course, a seminar, and a number of invited and contributed presenta-tions in the technical symposium, and demon-strations on the exhibit floor.

It is clear that the display industry is on the verge of another exciting phase of rejuvenation. Displays are the face of some of the most usedelectronic devices in our daily lives – such asthe smartphone, tablet, laptop, monitor, andTV, among numerous examples. As such, thehealth of the display industry rises and fallswith the growth and saturation of thesedevices. Take the exciting phase of innova-

tion in LCD-TV technologies as an example.Screen sizes went from 24 to 32 in., to 40 in.,to 55 in., to 80 in., and above. The pixel reso-lution went from 720p to full-HD and then to4K, and frame rates went from 60 to 120frames per second (fps). There were manymore advances – contrast, brightness, color,etc. However, it gets to a point where furtheradvances in display technology provides onlysmall incremental benefits to the consumer.This often leads to a reduced demand for newfeatures and a slowdown in development.

Let us now turn to virtual reality. It is acompletely different story at the moment. The displays on the best state-of-the-art VRdevices today fall way short of the specifica-tions required for truly immersive and respon-sive experiences, despite the dizzying pace ofdevelopment. The pixel density needs toincrease significantly and latencies must bereduced drastically, along with many otherimprovements such as increased field of view,lower screen-door effects with reduced non-emitting spaces between active pixels,

Advances in Augmented- and Virtual-RealityTechnologies and Applications The first wave of AR and VR devices has reached the marketplace, but much work needs to bedone in order to provide immersive and life-like experiences to mainstream users.

by Achintya K. Bhowmik

Achintya K. Bhowmik is the Vice-Presidentand General Manager of the Perceptual Computing Group at Intel Corp. He can bereached at [email protected].


show review: AR and VR technologies and applications

Fig. 1: Humans use both oculomotor cues (vergence and accommodation) and visual cues(binocular disparity and retinal blur).3

ID Bhowmik p30-34_Layout 1 9/4/2016 4:56 PM Page 30


reduced pixel persistence, higher frame rates,etc. Besides the display, the systems alsorequire integration of accurate and real-timesensing and tracking technologies as well asenhanced computation and processing power.AR devices impose additional requirementsrelating to see-through head-worn displaytechnologies.

So, all this is exciting for the researchersand engineers in the industry. We are backto solving some difficult challenges, with apotential for big returns. Judging by theexcellent quality of the papers, presentations,and exhibits at Display Week, it is obvious thedisplay ecosystem is all geared up.

In this article, we present a summary ofsome of the advanced developments reportedin the fields of VR and AR at Display Week2016. For the sake of brevity, it is not a com-prehensive coverage of all the work presentedat the conference, and readers are encouragedto reference the symposium digest for all therelevant papers.

An Immersive Technical ProgramThe Sunday short course “Augmented andVirtual Reality: Towards Life-Like Immersiveand Interactive Experiences” 1 and the Monday seminar “Fundamentals of Head-Mounted Displays for Augmented and Virtual Reality” 2 provided a comprehensive tutorial

on the system-level requirements of VR andAR devices. Topics covered included funda-mental human-factor considerations; a reviewof the advances in sensing, computing, and

display technologies; and a description of theneed for an end-to-end system architecture forseamless immersive and interactive experi-ences. Besides the comprehensive reviews of the technologies and systems, the seminar


Fig. 2: The vergence–accommodation conflict arises from the difference between the pointwhere the two eyes converge and the points to which the eyes focus or accommodate fortraditional stereoscopic 3D displays.4

Fig. 3: Results from an adjustable liquid-crystal lens include a lens image taken with voltageapplied to provide a 400-mm focal length to focus the image (top left), an LC lens image with 0V applied (right), and a glass lens image with a 400-mm focal length for reference (bottom).5

Fig. 4: A prototype light-field stereoscope comprising two stacked LCD panels.3


also reviewed historical perspectives and definitions.

A VR device places the user in a virtualenvironment, generating sensory stimuli suchas visual, vestibular, auditory, haptic, etc., thatprovide the sensation of presence and immer-sion. An AR device places virtual objects inthe real world while providing sensory cues tothe user that are consistent between the physical and augmented elements. A new andemerging class of merged and mixed-realitydevices blends real-world elements within thevirtual environment with consistent perceptualcues. Subsequently, the various presentationsreported developments in display technolo-gies, sensing modules, systems, and applica-tions-level innovations.

A key challenge for the display subsystemin VR and AR devices is to provide the userwith an immersive and life-like 3D visualexperience. While the devices that are currently commercially available providestereopsis cues by presenting a pair of stereo-scopic images to the left and right eyes, theyare not able to provide a number of otherimportant 3D cues that are salient to how weperceive the real world. In Fig. 1 (from asymposium paper titled “Light Fields andComputational Optics for Near-to-Eye Displays”), Gordon Wetzstein depicted anumber of depth cues that we use in 3D visual perception, including the oculomotorand visual cues.

Further, in his paper, “Why Focus CuesMatter,” Martin Banks described the vergence–accommodation conflict experienced in thestereoscopic 3D displays that causes visual

discomfort, which is illustrated in Fig. 2. Byusing an experimental display, Banks et al.investigated how incorrect focus cues affectvisual perception and comfort. The resultsshow that the ability to perceive correct depthordering is significantly improved when focuscues are correct, the ability to binocularly fuse stimuli is improved when the vergence–accommodation conflict is minimized, andvisual comfort is significantly increased whenthe conflict is eliminated.

After establishing the importance of producing the correct focus cues, Philip Bos(in the paper “A Simple Method to ReduceAccommodation Fatigue in Virtal- and

Augmented-Reality Displays”), Banks, and Wetzstein presented various methods to address this issue. Bos et al. reported a simple approach that allows the eyes toaccommodate at the distance to which theyare converging, through using eye-trackingand a variable lens built using liquid crystals.Figure 3 shows the variable focus capabilitiesof the liquid-crystal lens. Wetzstein presenteda prototype display that employs two LCDpanels separated by a small distance (Fig. 4),which is able to present distinct light fieldsonto each eye, thereby creating a parallaxeffect spanning the eye-box areas.

In some of the other developments, ShuxinLiu et al. presented a multi-plane volumetricoptical see-through head-mounted 3D displayusing a stack of fast-switching polymer-stabilized liquid-crystal scattering shutters and implemented a proof-of-concept two-plane prototype.6 Jian Han et al. presented aprototype of a near-to-eye waveguide displaywith volume holograms and optical collimator.7Mitsuru Sugawara et al. described a retinalimaging laser eyewear incorporating a minia-ture laser projector that provides the digitalimage information through the pupil of theuser using the retina as a screen,8 as shown inFig. 5. The authors described the benefits offocus-free image presentation independent ofthe wearer’s visual acuity and point of focus,and the laser safety analyses based on guide-lines and standards.

Beyond the advances in display technologiesfor VR and AR applications, presentations atDisplay Week also covered system-level inno-vations towards immersive and interactive



Fig. 6: The DAQRI augmented-reality smart helmet9 is designed for industrial applications.

Fig. 5: This retinal imaging laser eyewear incorporates an asymmetric free-surface mirror.8


usages. As an example, Philip Greenhalgh et al. presented the DAQRI smart helmet withAR capabilities (Fig. 6) designed to enable itsdeployment into an industrial environment.Greenhalgh’s study showed that overlayingcontextually filtered data in relevant physicalspaces with AR technology yielded significantbenefits. The authors also demonstrated howIntel RealSense embedded camera technologycan further refine the context of data andenable advanced applications such as declut-tering the background for object recognition,real-time sizing and measurements, hands-freehuman–machine interface controls, contentaccess, etc.As another example, at Display Week the

author of this article described Intel’s projectfor integrating RealSense technology intomerged-reality headsets. As shown in Fig. 7,this system adds real-time 3D-sensing capa-bility to VR and AR devices with RGB-Dimaging and visual-inertial motion-trackingtechnologies. As a result, the devices are ableto blend real-world elements into the virtualworld and vice versa, enabling new applica-tions such as natural interactions, multi-roomscale mobility with integrated six-degrees-of-freedom positional tracking, real-time 3Dscanning, and visual understanding. Addition-ally, Fig. 8 shows an application where virtu-ally rendered 3D objects are seamlesslyembedded into the real-world view with cor-rect physical effects such as collision, occlu-sion, shadows, etc.In summary, the special track on AR and

VR at Display Week 2016 prominently featured some of the significant advances inthese fields. While the rapid pace of develop-ment in recent years has brought the first wave of devices to market to enthusiastic reception,much work remains to improve the technolo-gies to where they can provide immersive andlife-like experiences to mainstream users. Asthe papers, presentations, and the discussionsat Display Week indicate, researchers anddevelopers in both the industry and academiaare diligently continuing to enhance the keytechnologies, including sensors, processors, displays, and system integration and applications. The future will blur the border between the

real and the virtual worlds, and we are nearingthat future!

References1A. K. Bhowmik, “Augmented and VirtualReality: Towards Life-Like Immersive and

Interactive Experiences,” Seminar M-9, SIDDisplay Week 2016.2H. Hua, “Fundamentals of Head-MountedDisplays for Augmented and Virtual Reality,”Short Course S-4, SID Display Week 2016.3G. Wetzstein, “Light Fields and Computa-

tional Optics for Near-to-Eye Displays,”Paper 28.3, SID Display Week 2016.4M. Banks, “Why Focus Cues Matter,” Paper28.1, SID Display Week 2016.5P. J. Bos, L. Li, D. Bryant, A. Jamali, and A. K. Bhowmik, “A Simple Method to


Fig. 7: The “merged reality “capability of a device is shown here with integrated IntelRealSense technology.10 The 3D images of the user’s hands as well as a person standing infront of the user are brought into the virtual world. This capability is also used to allow multi-room scale mobility with integrated six degrees-of-freedom positional tracking to help the useravoid colliding with physical objects.

Fig. 8: The real physical world is augmented with virtually rendered 3D objects using a devicewith an embedded Intel RealSense module.10 Here, a digitally rendered car is shown racing ona real table, with realistic physical effects such as collisions with real objects, correct occlusionand shadows, etc.


Reduce Accommodation Fatigue in VirtualReality and Augmented Reality Displays,”Paper 28.2, SID Display Week 2016.6S. Liu, Y. Li, X. Li, P. Zhou, N. Rong, Y. Yuan, S. Huang, W. Lu, and Y. Su, “A Multi-Plane Volumetric Optical See-Through Head-Mounted 3D Display,” Paper3.1, SID Display Week 2016.7J. Han, J. Liu, and Y. Wang, “Near-EyeWaveguide Display Based on Holograms,”Paper 3.2, SID Display Week 2016.8M. Sugawara, M. Suzuki, and N. Miyauchi,“Retinal Imaging Laser Eyewear with Focus-Free and Augmented Reality,” Paper 14.5L,SID Display Week 2016.9P. Greenhalgh, B. Mullins, A. Grunnet-Jepsen, and A. K. Bhowmik, “IndustrialDeployment of a Full-featured Head-mountedAugmented-Reality System and the Incorpo-ration of a 3D-Sensing Platform,” Paper 35.3,SID Display Week 2016.10A. K. Bhowmik, “Real-Time 3D-SensingTechnologies and Applications in Interactiveand Immersive Devices,” Paper 35.1, SIDDisplay Week 2016. n



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WITH continued progress in the produc-tion of active-matrix backplanes on flexiblesubstrates and the packaging (in particular,thin-film encapsulation) of flexible displays,the era of volume manufacturing of large full-color flexible flat-panel displays has finallyarrived. OLED displays are in the lead, andthere is continued development of LCDs andEPDs, among others. However, for the mostpart, such “flexible” displays have been usedin rigid formats, such as in smart watches(which take advantage of the fact that flexible displays can be thin and light) and smartphones (which take advantage of curved or angled displays). These form factors do not allow the display to be bent, folded, or stretched in any way.In part, such rigidity reflects the need to

utilize plastic and metal casings, as well asstrengthened cover glass, to protect the flexible displays from damage. In addition, a freely flexible display can in theory be bent,rolled, or folded an unknown number of timesand in unpredictable ways, making it difficultto characterize failure mechanisms or predict

mean time to failure. However, with volumeproduction, it is likely that the ruggedness andlifetime of flexible displays will improve,reducing the need for such protection. Another reason that products with “flexible”

displays are not able to take full advantage oftheir flexibility is that such displays are pack-aged with electronic systems that use metals,hard plastics, and rigid ceramics in componentpackaging, circuit boards, and connectors.Thus, even though it may be possible to produce fully flexible display modules, thesemodules would need to be physically andelectrically coupled to a rigid electronicspackage. Early concept demonstrations offlexible displays in the mid-2000s, includingUniversal Display’s “roll-out” OLED display,in which the display rolled out of a tube thathoused at least some of the electronics, andPolymer Vision’s fold-up reading device, inwhich a flexible EPD unfolded from a rigidhousing, reflected this reality. While neitherof these concepts made it into production,similar configurations would be needed tohouse the circuitry were a product with a fullyflexible display to come to market today.

Breaking Out of the Rigid BoxIn order to unleash the full potential of flexible-display technology, electronics will also needto become flexible. This could potentiallyinclude logic, memory, power, sensing, and

communications functions, as well as circuitboards and batteries. Broadly speaking, thereare two ways to accomplish this – eitherreplace devices that are currently made inbulk form (semiconductors and passive components) with devices manufacturedthrough printing or other additive manufacturingprocesses onto flexible substrates or integratethinned chips or other bulk devices withprinted devices on flexible substrates. Printing or other solution-processing

deposition techniques are critical for flexibleelectronics, due to their ability to deposit electronic materials at low temperatures overlarge areas of flexible substrates such as plastic and polymer. In the near term, replac-ing large-scale logic, memory, and processorsemiconductors with printed versions is notfeasible because printing techniques are notcapable of depositing millions of transistors inan integrated device. Thus, a combination ofprinted and semiconductor devices – referredto as flexible hybrid electronics – is the most likely path. While such systems are not yet inproduction, presentations at Display Week2016 indicated a breadth of research aroundcreating flexible electronic devices using avariety of deposition techniques and materials.

State of the ArtMuch of the effort on flexible electronics hasbeen motivated by the desire to create active-

Flexible Displays Require Flexible ElectronicsDisplay Week 2016 provided numerous examples of advancements in flexible-display technologies. But even though flexible displays are now in production, they are used in fixed formats encased in rigid packaging, so users have not experienced the actual physicalflexibility. In order for truly flexible displays to emerge, flexibility of the electronics isrequired, beyond the backplane and display driver electronics. Clues to such developmentscould be found in many presentations at the annual event.

by Paul Semenza

Paul Semenza ([email protected]) isDirector of Commercialization at theNextFlex Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manu-facturing Institute. From 1997 to 2014, hemanaged market research and consulting forDisplaySearch, Solarbuzz, iSuppli, and Stanford Resources.


display marketplace

ID Semenza p36-37_Layout 1 9/4/2016 5:01 PM Page 36


matrix backplanes for flexible displays, partic-ularly OLED displays and EPDs, as well asfor thin-film PV and sensor arrays, usingprinting, coating, or other deposition methodsfor solution-based semiconductor materials.Historically, the focus has been on organicsemiconductor materials because they aresuitable for low-temperature deposition andperform well under bending conditions. As demonstrated by papers presented at

Display Week, materials suppliers continue todevelop organic semiconductors suitable forTFT-backplane fabrication through spin coating. Merck reported on materials suitablefor integration of spin-coating and photo-lith-ography in a paper titled “PhotolithographicIntegration of High-Performance PolymerTFTs” and has been working with flexible-electronics company FlexEnable to demon-strate full-color flexible LCDs, while BASFpresented on the direct patterning of organictransistors through spin coating, but withoutthe use of photoresist. NHK described thefabrication of organic TFTs using coating andself-assembly, including the use of TFTs onthin paper substrates. As an indication ofadditional applications for organic TFTs,researchers at the University of Tokyo andJST/ERATO reported on their use as flexiblesensors in wearable and human-monitoringapplications, in a variety of digital and analogcircuit designs.The application of alternative deposition

techniques in conjunction with developmentsin soluble organic and inorganic semiconductor

materials has expanded the potential produc-tion space for flexible electronics. At DisplayWeek, UC Berkeley presented results of workusing gravure printing to create organic andtransparent oxide-semiconductor TFTs as well as MEMS devices (Fig. 1), and NHK discussed using sputtering to deposit oxidetransistors using tungsten and tin instead ofgallium on a cured polyimide substrate. In addition to organic and oxide semicon-

ductors, single-walled carbon nanotubes(SWCNTs) have also shown promise for flexible-display applications. Researchersfrom Seoul National University presentedprogress in ink-jet printing of SWCNT TFTson polyester substrates with good perform-ance under conditions of bending and illumination.

Flexibility Beyond the DisplayPresentations at Display Week also includeddevelopments in flexible and stretchable electrodes, as well as integration of printedand bulk devices. Work done at PARC withUC San Diego demonstrates the capability tocombine silicon ICs (microcontroller andNFC) with printed components (photo andtemperature sensors) with extrusion-printedinterconnects. Meanwhile, advances in thedevelopment of stretchable electrodes, whichcan connect to rigid devices, continues.IMEC, Ghent University, Holst/TNO, andPanasonic reported in a joint paper on com-bining stretchable metallic electrodes withrigid LEDs (Fig. 2), and X-Celeprint, spun off from work done at the University of Illinois, presented a seminar on transferringmicro-LEDs to flexible substrates using anelastometric stamp. Other research points to using some of

these techniques to create new electronic systems. Corning and ITRI reported usinggravure printing to fabricate metal-mesh grids on thin glass for antennas. Finally,researchers at the Swiss research lab EPFLshowed the use of stretchable metallization to create electronic skin.

Getting to FlexibleThe momentum in flexible-display technologysuggests that there will be growing productionof such displays, if for no other reason thanthat they offer thin, light, and rugged formfactors. However, in order to realize the fullpotential of the flexible display – the ability to bend, roll, stretch, and, in general, conform

to a wide variety of use cases, there is a needfor flexibility in the associated electronics,whether it be in a wearable device, a smart-phone, or a variety of devices envisaged aspart of the Internet of Things. It is likely thatwe will see increasing adoption of flexibleelectronics close to the display – driver electronics, communications, and graphics –and also in sensors designed for human orindustrial monitoring. Fully flexible electronicssystems allowing the flexible display toescape the rigid packaging of the present willlikely require hybrid approaches combininghigh-performance silicon devices with flexibledisplays and other components. n


Fig. 1: In this conceptual view of gravureprinting, ink is dispensed to fill wells in thegravure cylinder. Excess ink is wiped using adoctor blade. Ink is transferred to a passingsubstrate; the ink subsequently spreads anddries. Source: UC Berkeley; 2016 SID Digestof Technical Papers.

Fig. 2: This conformable 64 × 45 RGB LEDmatrix is integrated into the sleeve of a t-shirtthat is mounted on a mannequin. Source:IMEC, Ghent University, Holst/TNO, andPanasonic; 2016 SID Digest of TechnicalPapers.




ID Semenza p36-37_Layout 1 9/4/2016 5:01 PM Page 37

IN the first of our two-part series on a newbackplane technology for flexible and rollableAMOLED displays, we reviewed a bulk-accumulation (BA) amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film tran-sistor (TFT) with 3–5 times the drain currentof a comparable conventional single-gateTFT. The advantages of BA TFTs includeexcellent performance from circuits such asring oscillators and gate drivers, and alsohigher robustness under mechanical bending.

The TFT backplane necessary for flexibleOLEDs can be realized with low-temperaturepolycrystalline silicon (LTPS) or oxide semi-conductors because of the high performanceof these materials. Currently, all AMOLED products manufactured on polyimide substrates use LTPS with excimer-laser annealing.

Another material with promise for use as TFTs on flexible substrates is amorphousoxide. For the last 10 years, a huge number of research groups have been working onamorphous-oxide-semiconductor (AOS) TFTsboth on glass and plastic substrates. The

first AOS TFT product was introduced in2003, and since then many LCD andAMOLED-display products with a-IGZO TFT backplanes have been launched.

However, a-IGZO TFTs also have challenges.The low yield, non-uniformity, and bias insta-bility of oxide TFTs limit their wide applica-tions to commercial products. In part one ofthis article, we explained how our university’sresearch teams have made significant progressin overcoming some of those limitations bydeveloping a bulk-accumulation TFT, whichemploys an n-type a-IGZO as its active material, a silicon-dioxide layer as both

gate-insulator and passivation layer, andmolybdenum as its metal electrodes. In theremainder of this article, part two, we willdescribe a flexible AMOLED display withintegrated gate drivers using BA oxide TFTsthat is demonstrated with a carbon-nanotube/graphene-oxide (CNT/GO) buffer embeddedin a plastic substrate.

Flexible AMOLED Display with BAOxide-TFT Backplanes with CNT/GOBuffer via Non-Laser Detach TechnologyCarrier glass is usually used for plastic AMOLEDdisplays where the plastic polyimide (PI) is

Bulk-Accumulation Oxide-TFT BackplaneTechnology for Flexible and RollableAMOLED Displays: Part IIIn the second of a two-part series on a new backplane technology for flexible and rollableAMOLED displays, the author describes a system built on a bulk-accumulation (BA) amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) TFT.

by Jin Jang

Jin Jang is the Director of the Advanced Display Research Center and Department ofInformation Display at Kyung Hee Universityin Seoul, South Korea. He can be reached [email protected].


frontline technology

Fig. 1: A plastic AMOLED display with gate-driver–in–panel (GIP) is depicted in severalviews: (a) cross-sectional view, (b) CNT/GO TEM image at the back side of PI substrate, and(c) green AMOLED image on PI substrate with pixel size of 30 um x 30 um and integrated gatedriver using BA a-IGZO TFTs. An AMOLED display driven by a 30-µm-pitch integrated gatedriver is shown.1,2

ID Jang p38-41_Layout 1 9/4/2016 5:17 PM Page 38


coated first and then cured before the TFTprocess is carried out. The schematic view ofthe plastic TFT backplane is shown in Fig. 1(a),where the CNT/GO buffer layer is coated firstbefore the PI. After the whole AMOLED process, the carrier glass is separated from theAMOLED display by a detach process. The CNT/GO image can be seen in Fig. 1(b), which was taken at the back surface of the PI substrate.

The conventional method for the detachprocess uses excimer-laser exposure, whichbreaks the bonds of the PI to the carrier glass.

The cost of excimer-laser exposure is high,and a non-laser detach technology offers alower-cost alternative. We have developed anew technology that uses carbon nanotube(CNT) and graphene oxide (GO), which iscoated on the carrier glass first. Then the PIprocess is carried out.1 The green AMOLEDwith an integrated gate driver is depictedusing the CNT/GO buffer in Fig. 1(c).

A very thin solution-processed CNT/GObackbone is first spin-coated on the glass todecrease adhesion of the PI to the glass; the

peel strength of the PI from the glass thendecreases, which eases the process of detach-ment after device fabrication. Given that theCNT/GO remains embedded under the PIafter detachment, it minimizes wrinkling anddecreases the substrate’s tensile elongation.Device performance is also stable under electrostatic-discharge exposures of up to 10 kV, as electrostatic charge can be releasedvia the conducting CNTs.1

The TFT transfer characteristics are measured with tensile bending down to 2 mm,


Fig. 2: The robustness of the SG and BA a-IGZO TFTs under mechanical strain are demonstrated. In 2(a), left, a schematic cross section of BATFTs with top-gate offsets of 1 μm on each side is shown. In 2(a), right, an image of the flexible sample being rolled to a cylinder while bent to aradius of 2 mm is shown. 2(b) shows the evolution of the transfer characteristics as a function of bending radius for SG (left) and BA (right) TFTswith channel lengths of 4 μm. 2(c) shows a simulation using TCAD: (c1) a-IGZO density-of-states (DOS) model used in simulation. Simulatedtransfer curves (solid lines) in flat condition and under a mechanical bending radius of 2 mm for (c2) SG and (c3) BA a-IGZO TFTs. The experi-mental data (symbols) is also shown.3


demonstrating that a BA TFT is robust againststrain. This is due to the fast filling of thedefects generated in the gap by the strain andby the induced charges in the gap by bulkaccumulation. This was confirmed by technology computer-aided design (TCAD)simulation for the transfer characteristics withthe same amount of generated defects bystrain.

Figure 2(a) left depicts a flexible a-IGZOTFT with an inverted staggered structure fabricated with a BCE process. The sampleswere first fabricated on polyimide (PI) onglass substrates, then mechanically detachedto yield standing-free flexible devices. Theperformance of the TFTs is initially checkedin the flat state, and then while the TFTs arebeing wound around rods of varying radius(from 10 to 2 mm) to induce tensile strain inthe direction parallel to the TFT channel [Fig. 2(a) right]. Figure 2(b) shows the varia-tions in the characteristics of SG (left) and BA(right) TFTs with decreasing bending radii.The SG TFT shows an obvious negative shiftof VON, increased off-state leakage currents(IOFF), and on-state currents, while no signifi-cant change in performance occurs in any ofthe bending radii investigated in the case ofthe BA TFTs. Mechanical strain is reported toresult in a change in the value of the Fermifunction of the semiconductor, causing anincrease in the channel conductivity.4 BAdevices are less affected by these smallchanges in carrier concentration than SGdevices, due to the strong gate drive (bulkaccumulation/depletion).

Figures 2(c1) through to 2(c3) show thatthe simulation results using TCAD (solidlines) fit well with the experimental results(symbols).3 A density-of-states model isextracted from the numerical fitting to theelectrical performance of the a-IGZO TFTs.An increase in carrier concentration, which isrepresented herein by the increase in the

donor bump, is more representative of theeffect of tensile strain. The increase in ion-ized oxygen vacancies and, as a result, thedecrease in deep neutral oxygen vacancies(acceptors) is presented by decreasing NGA.It is interesting to note that although the samedensity of states (DOS) profile was adoptedfor single-grain (SG) and BA TFTs, both inthe flat and bending states, the simulatedtransfer characteristics of the SG TFTs shiftsignificantly to the negative VGS direction,whereas those of BA TFTs barely shift. Thisconfirms that BA TFTs are immune to slightchanges in the DOS, whereas SG TFTsundergo substantial shift. Given the closematching between simulation and experimen-tal results [Fig. 2 (c3)], it is reasonable to conclude that the high gate drive of BA TFTsindeed makes them immune to slight varia-tions in the density of states that may becaused by application of tensile strain in flexible devices.

A comparison between poly-Si and IGZOTFTs for AMOLED displays is shown inTable 1. The effective mobility of a BA TFTcan be 90 cm2/V-sec because the drain currentof a BA TFT can be 3–5 times that of an SGTFT. Therefore, a BA-TFT backplane can be

frontline technology


Table 1: The above comparison of poly-Si and IGZO TFTs for flexibleAMOLED displays shows that the BA-TFT backplane is essentially the sameas IGZO-TFT backplane, with bottom and top gates connected via holes. The top gate has an offset with source/drain electrodes to reduce the overlapcapacitance.

Poly-Si Oxide TFT Oxide TFT(ELA) (Single Gate) (Bulk Accumulation)

Materials Poly-Si IGZO IGZO

Channel Mobility (cm2/V-sec) >100 10–30 30–90*

TFT Type CMOS NMOS NMOS

TFT Photo-Mask 5–11 4–5 5–6

Cost/Yield High/High Low/Low Low/High

Process G6 G8 G8

*Effective Mobility.

Fig. 3: The schematic illustrates a comparison among LTPS, oxide, and BA-oxide TFTs forflexible-display applications. The BA-TFT backplane has the advantages of manufacturingcost, flexibility, leakage current, and transparency compared to that of LTPS TFTs.


used for high-resolution AMOLED displaysfor mobile applications because the display-driving ability can be similar to that of anLTPS TFT. A flexible 4-in. AMOLED display with an integrated gate driver has beendemonstrated.5

The comparisons among poly-Si, IGZO,and BA IZGO TFTs are also shown in Fig. 3.In summary, BA-TFT backplanes have theadvantages of manufacturing cost, flexibility,leakage current, and transparency comparedwith that of LTPS-TFT backplanes for displayapplications. These capabilities make thetechnology ideal for supporting future genera-tions of flexible and rollable AMOLED displays.

References1M. Mativenga, D. Geng, B. Kim, and J. Jang,“Fully transparent and rollable electronics,”ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 7, 1578−1585(2015).2D. Geng, H. M. Kim, M. Mativenga, Y. F.Chen, and J. Jang, “High Resolution FlexibleAMOLED with Integrated Gate-Driver UsingBulk-Accumulation a-IGZO TFTs,” SIDSymp. Digest Tech. Papers, 423–426 (2015).3X. Li, M. M. Billah, M. Mativenga, D. Geng,Y. H. Kim, T. W. Kim, Y. G. Seol, and J. Jang, “Highly robust flexible oxide thin-film transistors by bulk accumulation,” IEEEElectron Device Lett. 36, No. 8, 811–813(2015).4N. Münzenrieder et al., “The effects ofmechanical bending and illumination on theperformance of flexible IGZO TFTs,” IEEETrans. Electron Devices 50, No. 7, 2041–2048(2011).5J. G. Um, D. Geng, M. Mativenga, and J. Jang, “Bulk Accumulation Oxide TFTs forFlexible AMOLED Display with High YieldIntegrated Gate Driver,” SID Symp. DigestTech. Papers 47, No. 1, 872–875 (2016). n


JOIN SIDWe invite you to join SID to participate in shapingthe future development of: display technologies anddisplay-related products; materials and componentsfor displays and display applications; manufacturingprocesses and equipment, and new markets andapplications. In every specialty you will find SIDmembers as leading contributors to their profession.


Information Display welcomescontributions that containunique technical, manufactur-ing, or market research contentthat will interest and/or assistour readers – individuals

involved in the business or research of displays.

Please contact Jenny Donelan, Managing Editor,at [email protected] withquestions or proposals.

Turn to page 9 for a list of 2016 editorial themes, withapproximate dates for submitting article proposals.

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Jenny DonelanInformation Display Magazine

411 Lafayette Street, Suite 201, New York, NY 10003Fax: 212.460.5460 e-mail: [email protected]







Our next offering, “Better Form, LowerPower” by Jyrki Kimmel, covers the world ofmobile and flexible displays. I can rememberthe days when we thought this category wasmore about novelty than substance, but we allknow how much a part of our lives mobiledisplays have become. And it isn’t just aboutdisplays but rather how they are being devel-oped to integrate optical and electrical sensingfor a wide range of expanded interaction para-digms. Low power, enhanced optics, uniqueform factors, and enhanced durability were allhallmarks of this year’s demonstrations.However, what continues to elude us are thetruly foldable and rollable displays of ourimagination. There were good examples ofthese to be seen, but they were still not readyto go beyond the world of prototypes. Some-day, yes, it will happen, but what form andfunction they will take is yet to be seen. Achin Bhowmik is not just an enthusiast of

augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR); he’san active participant in its creation through hisleadership role at Intel and as special-topicprogram chair for the SID Symposium. So, he was uniquely qualified to provide us with a comprehensive survey in his contributiontitled “Advances in Augmented- and Virtual-Reality Technologies and Applications.”Achin starts off by explaining, “In recentyears, virtual-reality (VR) and augmented-reality (AR) technologies have moved fromthe realms of science fiction and imaginationto advanced research in academic laboratories,to product development in the industry, and,finally, into the hands of consumers in the realworld.” And so true it is with both conceptproducts already on the market and a wealthof new building blocks rapidly coming available. These include development plat-forms such as Intel’s RealSense and several commercially available head-worn displays. I have not yet found someone to take mydeposit on a Holodeck for my house, but I doexpect to be seeing some really cool helmetand eyeglass systems coming to market realsoon.Within the DW exhibition, there was no

shortage of cool demos in the I-Zone and that included a completely new concept forsomething called a “Carbon-Nanotube Vertical Organic Light-Emitting Transistor”(CN-VOLET). Maybe you do not know whatthat is? Neither did I until I saw it. SteveSechrist and Ken Werner explain it in the I-Zone review “nVerpix Takes Best Prototype

Honors in the I-Zone.” The headline is in thetitle but the story includes Steve’s take onmany additional worthwhile I-Zone demos. Also at the show this year was frequent

contributor and market expert Paul Semenza,who gives us this month’s Display Market-place feature, “Flexible Displays RequireFlexible Electronics.” As the title suggests,Paul expands on my earlier comment aboutthe lack of truly flexible display products bydiscussing the role flexible electronics willneed to play to make these products a reality.We have covered a number of differentaspects of flexible electronics in ID in recentyears, and, clearly, exciting progress is beingmade. But as Paul explains, there is muchmore work to do in the areas of materials andprocess. Meanwhile, he shows us some greatexamples from DW 2016 of how these concepts are coming to fruition.One very important aspect of flexible

electronics is the actual materials chosen tofabricate the semiconductors, and there hasbeen no shortage of research in this area inrecent years. We have published several articles on oxide TFTs and their role in rigidglass displays, but earlier this year we broughtyou a story from Dr. Jin Jang at Kyung HeeUniversity in Seoul, South Korea, about a newflexible backplane technology using bulk-accumulation (BA) amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) TFTs. The firstpart covered the details of how this backplanecould be fabricated, and its associated performance advantages. In the second part,appearing this month and titled “Bulk Accumulation Oxide-TFT Backplane Tech-nology for Flexible and Rollable AMOLEDDisplays,” he describes how this technologywas used to build a working flexible AMOLEDdisplay, its performance as a semiconductormaterial compared with poly-Si and single-gate oxide TFTs, and its future potential tohelp achieve the goal of truly flexibleAMOLED displays. Before I close, I want to take a moment to

acknowledge the truly exceptional executiveand program committees that made DisplayWeek 2016 such a success. Under the leader-ship of General Chair Hoi-Sing Kwok andProgram Chair Cheng Chen, the event metevery expectation we could have imagined,and the numbers prove it. Attendance overallwas up 5%, with more than 7,000 individualregistrations, and Symposium registrationstopped 1900. The great lineup of speakers

and topics delivered on its promises, and nextyear in Los Angeles will surely be anothergreat event. And so, with those comments I wish every-

one a prosperous and peaceful fall season. n

continued from page 2


editorial

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DISPLAY ON-LINEFor daily display

industry newswww.informationdisplay.org








ID Editorial Issue5 p2,42_Layout 1 9/4/2016 7:31 PM Page 42


http://www.sid.org//Membership.aspx

traditional display technology areas. SID willcontinue to develop a strong conference andexhibition based on flexible displays, vehicu-lar displays, and AR/VR displays and relatedtechnologies. In addition, SID will developspecial tracks for new technologies includingprinted electronics and next-generationinput/output devices in our technical confer-ences. In order to achieve this goal, SIDneeds many volunteers to invite new peoplefor the special tracks and to organize theevents. I would like to welcome all our mem-bers to participate and help expand the scopeof SID.

Secondly, the Journal of the SID is our keyarchival journal, and for many years SID lead-ership has been trying to improve and expandits quality and quantity. Especially, we havetried hard to achieve SCI status for the journal,but with only limited success. It is imperativeto improve the citation of the journal toachieve SCI status. To that end, we willestablish a procedure to publish the distin-guished papers from the Technical Symposiumin JSID instead of the Display Week TechnicalDigest, for increased citations of the papers.

Lastly, the society’s new governance struc-ture approved in this spring’s ballot will beimplemented to streamline the administrationstructure of our society. This will speed upthe decision-making process and help thesociety adapt to a rapidly changing world.

I would like to take this opportunity tothank outgoing President Amal Ghosh and theentire SID leadership team for doing an out-standing job of improving the society in various aspects. The financial health of oursociety has been vastly improved underAmal’s leadership, membership in China hasincreased under his China initiatives, andimproved programs and events at DisplayWeek are attracting more people. DuringAmal’s presidency, the society has stabilizedand set the foundation for growth in futureyears.

Finally, I hope you had an enjoyable summer vacationing with family and friends.I look forward to serving you in the comingyears. n

In addition to pure colorimetric binning,measurements can be analyzed relative toother substrate positions for uniformity andcolor-difference judgement criteria. By utiliz-ing these reflectance measurements results –together with the system’s integrated filmthickness analysis tool – directly into the pro-duction-line feedback control, higher yieldsand more consistent coating uniformity on theglass or other substrates can be achieved. n



industry news


president’s corner

Submit Your News ReleasesPlease send all press releases and newproduct announcements to:

Jenny DonelanInformation Display Magazine411 Lafayette Street, Suite 201

New York, NY 10003Fax: 212.460.5460

e-mail: [email protected]

Fig. 2: Gamma Scientific’s Dual AngleReflectance Measurement System is designedfor high-speed automated reflectance measurements of glass for display and architectural uses.

EXH IB I T NOW AT

EXHIBITION DATES:May 23–25, 2017Los Angeles Convention CenterLos Angeles , CA, USAEXHIBITION HOURS:Tuesday, May 23 10:30 am – 6:00 pmWednesday, May 249:00 am – 5:00 pmThursday, May 259:00 am – 2:00 pm

CONTACTS FOR EXHIBITS ANDSPONSORSHIPS:Jim BuckleyExhibition and Sponsorship Sales, Europe and [email protected] +1 (203) 502-8283Sue ChungExhibition and Sponsorship Sales, Asia [email protected] +1 (408) 489-9596


Display Week 2017SID International Symposium,

Seminar & ExhibitionMay 21–26, 2017

Los Angeles Convention CenterLos Angeles, California, USA

SAVE THE DATE

ID Industry News Issue5 p3,43_Layout 1 9/4/2016 6:29 PM Page 43





http://displayweek.org

SID 2017 honors and awardsnominationsOn behalf of the SID Honors and Awards Committee (H&AC), I am appealing for youractive participation in the nomination ofdeserving individuals for the various SID honors and awards. The SID Board of Direc-tors, based on recommendations made by theH&AC, grants all the awards. These awardsinclude five major prizes awarded to individu-als, not necessarily members of SID, basedupon their outstanding achievements. TheKarl Ferdinand Braun prize is awarded for“Outstanding Technical Achievement in, orContribution to, Display Technology.” Theprize is named in honor of the German physi-cist and Nobel Laureate Karl Ferdinand Braunwho, in 1897, invented the cathode-ray tube(CRT). Scientific and technical achievementsthat cover either a wide range of display tech-nologies or the fundamental principles of a specific technology are the prime reasons forawarding this prize to a nominee. The JanRajchman prize is awarded for “OutstandingScientific and Technical Achievement orResearch in the Field of Flat-Panel Displays.”This prize is specifically dedicated to thoseindividuals who have made major contributionsto one of the flat-panel-display technologies or,through their research activities, have advancedthe state of understanding of one of those tech-nologies. The Otto Schade prize is awardedfor “Outstanding Scientific or TechnicalAchievement in the Advancement of Func-tional Performance and/or Image Quality ofInformation Displays.” This prize is namedin honor of the pioneering RCA engineer OttoSchade, who invented the concept of the Modu-lation Transfer Function (MTF) and who usedit to characterize the entire display system,including the human observer. The advance-ment for this prize may be achieved in anydisplay technology or display system or maybe of a more general or theoretical nature.The scope of eligible advancement is broadlyenvisioned to encompass the areas of displaysystems, display electronics, applied visionand display human factors, image processing,and display metrology. The nature of eligibleadvancements may be in the form of theoreti-cal or mathematical models, algorithms, software, hardware, or innovative methods of display-performance measurement and image-quality characterization. Each ofthese above-mentioned prizes carries a $2000


NEWSSOCIETY FORINFORMATION

DISPLAY

Nominations are now being solicited from SIDmembers for candidates who qualify for SIDHonors and Awards.

• KARL FERDINAND BRAUN PRIZE.Awarded for an outstanding technicalachievement in, or contribution to, displaytechnology.

• JAN RAJCHMAN PRIZE. Awarded for anoutstanding scientific or technical achieve-ment in, or contribution to, research on flat-panel displays.

• OTTO SCHADE PRIZE. Awarded for anoutstanding scientific or technical achieve-ment in, or contribution to, the advancementof functional performance and/or imagequality of information displays.

• SLOTTOW–OWAKI PRIZE. Awarded foroutstanding contributions to the educationand training of students and professionals inthe field of information display.

• LEWIS & BEATRICE WINNER AWARD.Awarded for exceptional and sustained service to SID.

• FELLOW. The membership grade of Fel-low is one of unusual professional distinc-tion and is conferred annually upon a SIDmember of outstanding qualifications andexperience as a scientist or engineer in thefield of information display who has madewidely recognized and significant contribu-tion to the advancement of the display field.

• SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARDS.Presented to members of the technical, scientific, and business community (not necessarily SID members) for distinguishedand valued contributions to the information-display field. These awards may be madefor contributions in one or more of the following categories: (a) outstanding technical accomplishments; (b) outstandingcontributions to the literature; (c) outstand-ing service to the Society; (d) outstanding entrepreneurial accomplishments; and (e) outstanding achievements in education.

Nominations for SID Honors and Awards mustinclude the following information, preferablyin the order given below. Nomination Tem-plates and Samples are provided at www.sid.org/awards/nomination.html.

1. Name, Present Occupation, Business andHome Address, Phone and Fax Numbers, andSID Grade (Member or Fellow) of Nominee.

2. Award being recommended:Jan Rajchman PrizeKarl Ferdinand Braun PrizeOtto Schade PrizeSlottow–Owaki Prize Lewis & Beatrice Winner AwardFellow*Special Recognition Award

*Nominations for election to the Grade of Fellow must be supported in writing by at leastfive SID members.

3. Proposed Citation. This should not exceed30 words.

4. Name, Address, Telephone Number, andSID Membership Grade of Nominator.

5. Education and Professional History of Candidate. Include college and/or universitydegrees, positions and responsibilities of eachprofessional employment.

6. Professional Awards and Other Pro fessional Society Affiliations and Grades of Membership.

7. Specific statement by the nominator con-cerning the most significant achievement orachievements or outstanding technical leader-ship that qualifies the candidate for the award.This is the most important consideration forthe Honors and Awards committee, and itshould be specific (citing references when necessary) and concise.

8. Supportive material. Cite evidence of tech-nical achievements and creativity, such aspatents and publications, or other evidence ofsuccess and peer recognition. Cite material thatspecifically supports the citation and statementin (7) above. (Note: the nominee may be askedby the nominator to supply information for hiscandidacy where this may be useful to establishor complete the list of qualifications).

9. Endorsements. Fellow nominations mustbe supported by the endorsements indicated in(2) above. Supportive letters of endorser willstrengthen the nominations for any award.

SID honors and awards nominations

E-mail the complete nomination – including all the above material by October 15, 2016 –to [email protected] with cc to [email protected] or by regular mail to:

Shin-Tson Wu, Honors and Awards Chair, Society for Information Display,1475 S. Bascom Ave., Ste. 114, Campbell, CA 95008, U.S.A.

ID SID News Issue5 p44-47_Layout 1 9/4/2016 5:29 PM Page 44

http://www.sid.org/awards/nomination.html



stipend sponsored by AU Optronics Corp., Sharp Corporation, and Samsung Display, respectively.

The Slottow–Owaki prize is awarded for “Outstanding Contributions to the Educationand Training of Students and Professionals in the Field of Information Display.” This prize is named in honor of Professor H. Gene Slottow, University of Illinois, an inventor of the plasmadisplay and Professor Kenichi Owaki from theHiroshima Institute of Technology and an earlyleader of the pioneering Fujitsu Plasma Displayprogram. The oustanding education and train-ing contributions recognized by this prize is not limited to those of a professor in a formaluniversity, but may also include training givenby researchers, engineers, and managers inindustry who have done an outstanding jobdeveloping information-display professionals.The Slottow–Owaki prize carries a $2000stipend made possible by a generous gift fromFujitsu, Ltd., and Professor Tsutae Shinoda.

The fifth major SID award, the Lewis andBeatrice Winner Award, is awarded for“Exceptional and Sustained Service to theSociety.” This award is granted exclusively to those who have worked hard over manyyears to further the goals of the Society.

The membership grade of SID Fellow is one of unusual professional distinction.Each year the SID Board of Directors elects a limited number (up to 0.1% of the member-ship in that year) of SID members in goodstanding to the grade of Fellow. To be eligi-ble, candidates must have been members atthe time of nomination for at least 5 years, with the last 3 years consecutive. A candidatefor election to Fellow is a member with “Out-standing Qualifications and Experience as aScientist or Engineer in the Field of Informa-tion Display who has made Widely Recog-nized and Significant Contributions to the Advancement of the Display Field” over a sustained period of time. SID members prac-ticing in the field recognize the nominee’swork as providing significant technical con-tributions to knowledge in their area(s) ofexpertise. For this reason, five endorsementsfrom SID members are required to accompanyeach Fellow nomination. Each Fellow nomi-nation is evaluated by the H&AC, based on aweighted set of five criteria. These criteria andtheir assigned weights are creativity andpatents, 30%; technical accomplishments andpublications, 30%; technical leadership, 20%;service to SID, 15%; and other accomplish-ments, 5%. When submitting a Fellow award

nomination, please keep these criteria withtheir weights in mind.

The Special Recognition Award is givenannually to a number of individuals (member-ship in the SID is not required) of the scien-tific and business community for distin-guished and valued contribution in the infor-mation-display field. These awards are givenfor contributions in one or more of the follow-ing categories: (a) Outstanding TechnicalAccomplishments, (b) Outstanding Contribu-tions to the Literature, (c) Outstanding Service to the Society, (d) Outstanding Entrepreneurial Accomplishments, and (e) Outstanding Achievements in Education.When evaluating the Special RecognitionAward nominations, the H&AC uses a five-level rating scale in each of the above-listedfive categories, and these categories haveequal weight. Nominators should indicate the category in which a Special RecognitionAward nomination is to be considered by theH&AC. More than one category may be indicated. The nomination should, of course,stress accomplishments in the category or categories selected by the nominator.

While an individual nominated for anaward or election to Fellow may not submithis/her own nomination, nominators may, ifnecessary, ask a nominee for information thatwill be useful in preparing the nomination. The nomination process is relatively simple, butrequires that the nominator and perhaps somecolleagues devote a little time to preparationof the supporting material that the H&ACneeds in order to evaluate each nomination forits merit. It is not necessary to submit a com-plete publication record with a nomination.Just list the titles of the most significant half a dozen or less papers and patents authored by the nominee, and list the total number ofpapers and patents he/she has authored.

Determination of the winners for SID hon-ors and awards is a highly selective process.On average, less than 30% of the nominationsare selected to receive awards. Some of themajor prizes are not awarded every year dueto the lack of sufficiently qualified nominees.On the other hand, once a nomination is sub-mitted, it will stay active for three consecutiveyears and will be considered three times bythe H&AC. The nominator of such a nomina-tion may improve the chances of the nomina-tion by submitting additional material for thesecond or third year that it is considered, butsuch changes are not required.

Descriptions of each award and the lists ofprevious award winners can be found atwww.sid.org/Awards/IndividualHonorsandAwards.aspx. Nomination forms can bedownloaded by clicking on “click here” at the bottom of the text box on the above sitewhere you will find Nomination Templates inboth MS Word (preferred) and Text formats.Please use the links to find the Sample Nomi-nations, which are useful for composing your nomination since these are the actualsuccessful nominations for some previous SID awards. Nominations should preferablybe submitted by e-mail. However, you canalso submit nominations by ordinary mail ifnecessary.Please note that with each Fellow nomina-

tion, only five written endorsements by five SIDmembers are required. These brief endorse-ments – a minimum of 2–3 sentences to a maxi-mum of one-half page in length – must statewhy clearly and succinctly, in the opinion of theendorser, the nominee deserves to be elected toa Fellow of the Society. Identical endorse-ments by two or more endorsers will be auto-matically rejected (no form letters, please).Please send these endorsements to me either by e-mail (preferred) or by hardcopy to theaddress stated in the accompanying text box.Only the Fellow nominations are required tohave these endorsements. However, I encour-age you to submit at least a few endorsementsfor all nominations since they will frequentlyadd further support to your nomination.

All 2017 award nominations are to be submitted by October 15, 2016. E-mail your nominations directly to [email protected] with cc to [email protected]. If that is not possible,then please send your hardcopy nomination by regular mail.

As I state each year: “In our professionallives, there are few greater rewards thanrecognition by our peers. For an individual inthe field of displays, an award or prize fromthe SID, which represents his or her peersworldwide, is a most significant, happy, andsatisfying experience. In addition, the overallreputation of the society depends on the indi-viduals who are in its ‘Hall of Fame.’

When you nominate someone for an award or prize, you are bringing happiness to an indi-vidual and his or her family and friends, and you are also benefiting the society as a whole.”

Thank you for your nomination in advance.— Shin-Tson Wu

Chair, SID Honors & Awards Committee



http://www.sid.org/Awards/IndividualHonorsandAwards.aspx



IDW and Asia Display JoinForcesThe 23rd Annual International Display Workshops (IDW), held for the first time inconjunction with Asia Display, will take placeDecember 7–9, 2016, in Fukuoka, Japan. The workshops, sponsored by the Institute ofImage Information and Television Engineersand the Society for Information Display, feature specialized content that plays animportant role in information-display activities.

This year’s special topics include oxide-semiconductor TFTs, AR/VR and hyper reality, lighting, quantum-dot technologies,printed electronics, and automotive displays.Keynote addresses will include “FutureTrends of Display Technology” by Chung-Chun Lee, BOE, China, and “Breaking theBarriers to True Augmented Reality” byChristian Sandor, NAIST, Japan. The eventwill include an exhibition and invited talks aswell as scheduled technical sessions.

The city of Fukuoka is located in the north-ern part of Kyushu Island and is WesternJapan’s most active city in terms of business,culture, and industry (Fig. 1). It is known as aparticularly livable and affordable city.

The Fukuoka International Congress Center, where IDW and Asia Display will be held, is located only 1.5 km from the centerof Fukuoka city. Ferries and jetfoils at the adjacent international terminal of Hakata Portrun routes to Pusan, Korea.

Visit www.idw.or.jp to register and obtainmore information.

Display Week Adds Two NewProgramsDisplay Week 2016 in San Francisco intro-duced two new programs this year that werecreated to enhance the conference experience– the CMO Forum and the New ProductShowcase. The CMO Forum, a 1-hour paneldiscussion moderated by SID head of marketingSri Peruvemba, was designed to give marketing,sales, and supply-chain professionals at Display Week an opportunity to explore whatPeruvemba describes as “the non-technicalaspects of what we do.”

The five panelists were Paul Apen, ChiefStrategy Officer, E Ink Corp.; Jennifer Davis,Chief Marketing Officer, Planar/Leyard International; Albert Green, Chief ExecutiveOfficer, Kent Displays; Greg McNeil, Vice-President of the Innovation Labs, Flex; andStephen Squires, Chief Executive Officer,Quantum Materials. The panelists fieldedquestions such as “What are some of thethings you have done that led to your successin business?” and “How will you make moneyin the display industry two to three years fromnow?” Most of the panelists agreed that thelatter is a difficult question, but some offeredinteresting takes. “We need to consider notonly traditional ROI but user experience. Itmight be interesting technology, but it alsomust answer customers’ needs,” said Davis.“One thing I see happening,” said McNeil, “is that products and ideas are coming from companies you would not have thought of inthe past – manufacturers of windows anddoors, for example. We are now opening upmarkets with companies who have not been‘embedded in the electronics life.’ ”

The New Product Showcase was a specialexhibit-floor program that allowed exhibitorsto show one exciting new product or tech-nology from their booths in a designated areaon the show floor. The purpose behind theshowcase was to make it easy for attendees,including members of the press, to see whatwas “hot” at the show, and also to encouragethem to visit individual booths to learn more.This year’s showcase featured about 50 products. Many more exhibitors showedinterest in participating next year.

Reactions to both the CMO Forum and theNew Product Showcase were extremely posi-tive, and show organizers plan to repeat both events at Display Week 2017 in Los Angeles. n


sid news




Fig. 1: A bridge at Tenmangu Shrine inDazaifu is just one of the many attractive sites to be enjoyed in Fukuoka. Dazaifu isamong the most important of Japan’s shrinesassociated with the legendary SugawaraMichizane, a ninth-century scholar and politician.








VISITINFORMATION

DISPLAY ON-LINEwww.informationdisplay.org


http://www.idw.or.jp




Networking EventsMay 21–26, 2017

Looking to meet up with your colleagues in the display industry

to discuss technology, business, or just socialize? The events below present just that type of opportunity:

Annual Awards Dinner, Monday:Each year, SID recognizes individualsthat have played a critical role inimproving the display industry.This year’s winners will be honoredat an awards banquet taking placethe evening of May 22.Business Conference Reception, Monday: Follows the Business Conference,please note conference attendance isrequired for admission.Annual Award Luncheon,Wednesday: The annual Best in Show and DisplayIndustry Awards Luncheon will take place at noon on Wednesday, May 24. Both awards are peer-reviewed,such that the luncheon is well-attended by captains of industry forhigh-level networking and recogni-tion of the best in the industry overthe last year.Investors Conference: The IC will feature presentationsfrom leading public and private companies in the display technologysupply chain and encourage ques-tions and discussion between pre-senters and participants. Concludeswith Drinks & Displays: NetworkingReception with Presenters andInvestors.Market Focus Conference Reception, Tuesday, May 23: Follows the Tuesday Market FocusConference, please note conferenceattendance is required for admis-sion.www.displayweek.org

SID International Symposium, Seminar & Exhibition

May 21–26, 2017Los Angeles Convention CenterLos Angeles, California, USA

I-ZoneCompetition of live demonstrationsregarding emerging information-display technologies, such as not-yet-commercialized prototypes andproof of concepts. Sponsored by E Ink.

Individual Honors and AwardsThe SID Board of Directors, based on recommendations madeby the Honors & Awards Committee, grants several annualawards based upon outstanding achievements and significantcontributions.Display Industry AwardsEach year, the SID awards Display of the Year Awards in threecategories: Display of the Year, Display Application of the Year,and Display Component of the Year.Best-in-Show AwardsThe Society for Information Display highlights the most significant new products and technologies shown on theexhibit floor during Display Week.Journal of the Society for Information Display ( JSID)Outstanding Student Paper of the Year AwardEach year a sub-committee of the Editorial Board of JSIDselects one paper for this award which consists of a plaqueand a $1000 prize.

Rolling Out the Red Carpet



3LCDAbrisa TechnologiesAcerAdvantechApple, Inc.Applied Concepts, Inc.Applied Materials, Inc.AU Optronics Corp.CASIOCLEARinkCoretronicCynora GmbHDawar TechnologiesDontechE Ink HoldingsEarth LCDEpoxy TechnologyeMagin Corp.Europtec USA, Inc.FocalTech SystemsFUJIFILM Dimatix, Inc.Gigaphoton, Inc.GIS

HenkelIndustrial Technology

Research InstituteInnoluxI-PEXIRTSJapan Display, Inc.Japan Patent OfficeKMTCKuraray Co., Ltd.LXD Research & Display,

LLCMegaChips Corp.Merck Display

Technologies, Ltd.MY Polymers, Ltd.NANOSYSNLT TechnologiesNoritake Itron Corp.NvidiaOculus Panasonic Corp.Pixel Scientific

Power OLEDsRealDRicohRolic TechnologiesSakai Display ProductsSharp Corp.TDMDATeijin Dupont Films

Japan, Ltd.TFD, Inc. TLC International TOUCH TURNSTTLAUniversal Display

CorporationUS Micro ProductsVestel ElectronicsVisionoxWestar Display

Technologies, Inc.YUASA SYSTEM Co.,

Ltd.

Electronic Assembly ....................5Ellsworth Adhesives...................34Instrument Systems ..................C3Konica Minolta ...........................5

Radiant Vision Systems ............C2TFD.........................................C4Vehicle Displays Detroit............35


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Steven JezzardGlobal Advertising DirectorWiley111 River StreetHoboken, NJ [email protected]

Global Sales Office (Except Japan/China)

Roland EspinosaSr. Account ManagerPrint & E Media AdvertisingWiley111 River StreetHoboken, NJ [email protected]

Japan Sales Office

Kimiyoshi IshibashiAssociate Commercial Director – JapanJohn Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd.Frontier Koishikawa Bldg., 4F1-28-1 Koishikawa, Bunkyo-kuTokyo 112-0002, [email protected]

China Sales Office

Ying WangCorporate Sales Manager – ChinaJohn Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd.1402-1404 Cross Tower318 Fuzhou Road, Huangpu DistrictShanghai 200001, People’s Republic ofChina

+86 21 5116 [email protected]

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