3D Keeps a Low Profile

The first words uttered about 3D at Display Week this Tuesday (May 21) were negative. Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research said in his keynote address, "3D [television] was a demonstrably bad idea before it even started." He was referring to the industry's hope and plan that 3D could enable a new generation of high-margin products that would induce customers to replace the largely commoditized 2D LCD and plasma TVs they had already bought. Said Buxton: "It didn't work out that way."

Indeed, there wasn't much in the way of large-screen 3D to be seen on the show floor outside of LG Display's now-familiar 55-inch AMOLED. But there was an assortment of small- to medium-size auto-stereoscopic 3D screens, some of which were actually interesting. We'll have more to say about those shortly. – Ken Werner

There’s Still Money in (Replacing) CCFLs

If you’re willing to take on work that others have overlooked, and you do that work well, you might just make a nice business for yourself. Endicott Research Group (ERG) in New York State is doing just that. ERG specializes in power conversion products for LCD backlights, including DC-AC inverters and LED drivers. ERG also does a brisk business in CCFL to LED replacements. Plenty of legacy CCFL products are still out there, especially in medical or industrial settings where equipment tends to have a longer life span. ERG’s Ron Evancho says the company does so much CCFL legacy work that it accounts for about 50% of its business. Such products include drop-in LED drivers and LED rails designed to slide into existing older displays. The other 50% of business involves creating plug and play solutions for new displays that often don’t come with drivers. The company supports more than 300 panels from most major manufacturers.

LED drivers may not capture the public imagination like big colorful TVs do, but they are viable products that companies really need. With regard to the CCFL replacements: “There are not a lot of people who are willing to do that,” says Evancho. “This part of the business is actually picking up.” –Jenny Donelan

A Big Step for e-Paper

Today was an exciting day for e-Paper technologies, both in terms of symposium talks and significant advances found in the exhibition hall. Clearly, the big news was a new product line by E Ink (announced in this press release) that was not incremental and not an R&D demo that would never turn into product.

The reflective market right now is dominated by simple and dim reflective liquid-crystal displays, with at best poor color that is relegated to only sub-sections of the display. Now with the new E Ink Spectra technology, any part of the display can provide a deep black, a brighter and more paper-like white, or a red color to highlight sales or promotions. This is significant for two reasons. First, it shows a significant investment and advance toward capturing market share in the electronic-shelf label market.

The second reason for excitement steps us back to last year‘s breakthrough reported by Fuji-Xerox on full-color electrophoretic displays based on cyan/magenta/yellow switchable particles. We wondered, could more than 2 particles (black-white) ever be commercialized? The answer is now yes, and it should be interesting to see just how far this type of technology can continue to advance for signage. Don't expect this to lead to color e-Readers anytime soon, though, because each time you add another colored particle, the switching speed slows dramatically. None the less, it is great to see a significantly new and visibly compelling product from E Ink. Credit should be given also to the researchers at the former SiPix Corp, which was acquired by AUO and then E Ink, which developed the technology that underpins this new E Ink product. –Jason Heikenfeld

Giants to Miniatures: Exciting OLED Displays

At this year’s Display Week are several OLED products -- some brand new and others introduced earlier this year -- that are all very stunning, whether in large or small screen sizes.

In the Monday business conference and also during the keynote address by Samsung Display Co. CEO and President Dr. Kinam Kim, it was emphasized that AMOLED is driving revolutionary changes in the display world. With the opening of today’s exhibition, visitors can see for themselves what these displays look like.

LG Display is attracting a lot of attention from visitors with its full HD AMOLED TVs -- extremely large objects of desire for end users. LG's 55-in. curved 3D OLED display is just 4 mm thin. With this product demonstration, LG illustrates what is possible with OLEDs in terms of shape and design freedom. The company's flexible OLED screen likewise illustrates these design possibilities.

What is feasible in miniature is being demonstrated by eMagin, with its OLED microdisplays that are smaller than a stamp yet have a resolution of 1944 x 1224. These microdisplays can be used for virtual reality headsets employed in computer based 3D simulation and training, medical imaging, night vision imaging devices, and more. --Sven Murano

Flowers without Bees

"You can't just make displays or you are going to be like a flower without the bees," said Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher with Microsoft. Buxton's message to the display community on hand to listen to his keynote speech at Display Week this morning came through loud and clear: It doesn't matter how great an individual device is if it doesn't work with other devices. What's more, it has to work seamlessly, and appropriately. An example of non-seamless technology Buxton offered is the multitude of remote control devices the average household is required to use in order to watch TV or play a game. Inappropriate technology, or perhaps inappropriate use of technology, includes texting while driving. A device that allows such unsafe communication can be considered inappropriate (in addition to its user!).

If designers, display and otherwise, do not consider the role of a given device in relation to other devices, humans, and overall usage "flow," that device may well contribute to the ever-confusing buildup of interactive devices that do not interact with each other. The future health of the industry, said Buxton, depends on designers recognizing the necessity of "cross-pollination" among myriad devices. --Jenny Donelan

The Battle between the Display Makers and the Touch-Module Makers Intensifies

Bob Mackey, Principal Scientist at Synaptics, highlighted the Huawei Ascend P2 smartphone as one of the newest examples of in-cell touch during his Monday Seminar M8 (“Touch + Display, Any Way You Want It”). The Ascend P2 uses a 4.7-inch, 1280 x 720 (HD) LCD with 315 pixels per inch. “In-cell” was used by Bob as a generic term to describe touch integrated into a display and supplied by the display maker rather than a touch-module maker. As Bob explained, the actual construction of the touch screen in this case should more accurately be described as “hybrid in-cell/on-cell”, where the touchscreen’s drive electrodes are integrated into the IPS display’s TFT array and the touchscreen’s sense electrodes are placed on top of the color filter glass – i.e., outside of the LCD cell.

Photo source: www.digitaltrends.com

The thickness of the Ascend P2 smartphone is 8.4 mm (0.33 inches); this is slightly thicker than the Samsung Galaxy S4 at 7.9 mm (0.31 inches) and the Apple iPhone 5 at 7.6 mm (0.30 inches). Note that in consumer terms rather than display-engineer terms, we’re talking about differences of hundredths of an inch here – not a heck of a lot. The iPhone 5 uses “true” in-cell (both touchscreen electrodes are in the TFT array; the Galaxy S4 uses on-cell (both touchscreen electrodes are on top of the OLED encapsulation glass). The difference in thickness between any of these touch configurations supplied by a display maker versus the latest touch configuration supplied by a touch-module maker (touch on the underside of the cover-glass, known as OGS or “one glass solution”) is only around 100 microns (0.1 mm). Bob said during his seminar that “Some [smartphone] OEMs would sell their mother for 100 microns [reduction in product thickness].” In reality, 0.1 mm is a small portion of the difference in thickness between the Ascend P2 and the iPhone-5. The real battle isn’t about the thickness of the touch-display; it’s about who supplies the touch functionality.

According to DisplaySearch, the total revenue produced by touch-module makers in 2007 was $1.3 billion while in 2013 it will be $21.4 billion. The size of the touch market has become significant relative to the ~$100B display market, so the display-makers want a piece of the action. That’s the real driving force in in-cell, not technology or thickness. There’s beginning to be a strong possibility that over the next five years, the display industry will become the preferred touch-supplier for most high-volume consumer-electronics devices. Again using DisplaySearch numbers, revenue for mobile phones and tablets alone will account for 74% of the total touch market in 2018. If the display industry were to take all of that revenue, the touch-module industry would shrink to less than 40% of its current size. The battle is just beginning. –Geoff Walker

A Clear-eyed Look at Obstacles to OLED and Oxide TFT Success

The Business Conference is a mainstay of the Display Week tradition. Analysts and industry representatives gather to give attendees a top-level overview of key aspects of the display industry, from global market forecasts to previews of innovative technology advances. This naturally involves a lot of predictions and promotions, often viewed through rose-colored glasses. And while there were plenty of those in evidence at this year’s conference, there were a number of refreshing insights presented. Perhaps the most refreshing of these was from SID Fellow Jun Souk of Hanyang University, formerly EVP of Samsung Electric. Some of the most compelling current technologies in the display industry are touch, oxide TFT, flexible OLED, and OED TV. Rather than focus on the compelling aspects of these advances, Professor Souk took some time to point out some of the obstacles that stand in the way of success.

For example, the ultimate solution for touch screens is to eliminate the separate touch module and integrate it into the display panel. But as Prof. Souk pointed out, there are plenty of barriers to adoption of this strategy. Bringing touch technology in-house can result in additional supply chain complications and reduced yields by adding complexity to the production processes. At the current time, it can make more sense to outsource the touch component, and let suppliers take on the risk and compete to provide the modules.

As for oxide TFTs, the technology offers some attractive potential in terms of improved electron mobility compared with the incumbent amorphous silicon (aSi), at a lower cost than the laser-annealed low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS). It has the potential to transform not only the large-format LCD industry, but may make the large OLED TV products feasible. Unfortunately, several problems remain before oxide TFT is truly ready for prime time, according to Prof. Souk. For example, as a semiconductor backplane, the material still has problems with stability in terms of the voltage threshold (Vth) and Vth uniformity across large areas. In addition, the planarization of the metal oxide surface is not as smooth as it needs to be; thin film devices such as OLEDs are adversely affected by relative small variations in thickness which in turn can affect performance.

Prof. Souk also addressed the OLED TV market. In addition to the oxide TFT problems described above, there are significant challenges involved in fabricating these large display panels. Small mask scanning (SMS) is the traditional approach to depositing the OLED emissive materials, but it is difficult to use successfully for large panels. Not only is the process very slow, it also has low yield ratios and there are problems with the materials mixing along their boundaries. Other deposition methods are under development, such as a vertical linear source, laser-induced thermal imaging using transfer from a carrier film, and nozzle printing of solution-based materials, but these have limitations of their own.

Some of these problems for large format OLED panels for TVs can be addressed by using color filters over a white-emitting OLED material. One problem with this approach is that the white OLED “backlight” relies on a tandem device that emits yellow and blue light, which mixes to produce white light. The red, green, and blue (RGB) filters then extract the desired light to create a full-color image. Since the backlight has spikes in the blue and yellow parts of the spectrum, however, it is not able to produce the required red and green parts of the image adequately.

None of this is to say that these technologies won’t eventually come to market at competitive price points with high quality performance. However, it was refreshing to hear about some of the shortcomings and bottlenecks standing between these technologies and commercial production. It is good to hear about future answers to our display problems, but it is also important to hear from knowledgeable sources who can describe the realistic obstacles that stand in the way of such success.--Alfred Poor