[Joseph a. Castellano] Liquid Gold the Story of L(BookZa.org)

About the Author

Joseph A. Castellano (Ph.D.1 was born in Manhattan and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Castellano began his professional career in 1959, and in 1965, joined RCA Laboratories where he performed pioneering research in liquid crystal materials and displays. He is the founder of Stanford Resources where, as President and CEO, was responsible for grow-

ing the company into a world leader in market research and analysis of the rapidly growing electronic display industry over a 25-year period. He has managed numerous major custom market research projects and multi-client studies, which often involved visits to the major LCD manufacturers throughout the world. Castellano is author and co-author of more than 50 scientific/ technical papers, and is the holder of 12 US. patents. He continues to be active in several international scientific and trade associ- ations. In 2000, following the merger of Stanford Resources with isuppli Corporation, he became a Senior Executive Advisor to the newly formed iSu pplihtanford Resources.

Castellano retired in 2003 and currently resides in San Jose, California with his wife Rose.

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LiquidGOLD

The Story of Liquid Crystal Displaysand the Creation of an Industry

Joseph A. Castellano, Ph.D.

World ScientificWeNEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI

Published by

World Scientific Publishing Co. Re. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA ofice: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK ofice: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

LIQUID GOLD The Story of Liquid Crystal Displays and the Creation of an Industry

Copyright Q 2005 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereoj m y not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechunical, including photocopying, recording or any information storuge and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.. 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

ISBN 981-238-956-3

Typeset by Stallion Press E-mail: [email protected]

Printed in Singapore by Mainland Press

DEDICATION

To Rose, my lifelong partner who stood steadfastly beside me through all of my years in the display industry

Preface

Jt was late October in the year 2000 when I stepped out from the lobby of the Grand Intercontinental Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, to walk across the large outdoor plaza that connects this modern high rise hotel to Pacifico Yokohama, a sprawling two-story exhibit hall where the LCIYPDP Inlernational bkbibition was being held. This was my second trip to this popular annual show in the beautifully redeveloped and revitalized section of the port city of Yokohama along the southern shores of Tokyo bay. As I walked through the exhibit hall to view the various electronic displays, I paused to stop at a booth where a 20-inch diagonal, full-color liquid crystal display (LCD) was in full view showing a World Series game between the New York Yankees and New York Mets being held nearly 10,000 miles away. A number of Americans were gathered around the display, more to catch a glimpse of the game than the display, I suspected. As I admired the high quality o f this display, its high contrast, excellent color fidelity, and high brightness, I could not help thinking how technology had progressed so rapidly during my adult life. Moreover, I concluded that the development of the flat panel display was perhaps one of the most important technological achievements of the 20th century.

My thoughts then focused on how the huge liquid crystal display industry developed over the four decades that elapsed since I first prepared a vial of the turbid liquid in the unique medium that exists as a hybrid of the liquid and solid states of matter. In a sense, it became “liquid gold” as its value increased by orders of magnitude as the years progressed. Consequently, I thought it was time to tell the story of how and why this interesting science and technoloby developed into a major industry. Since I was involved in this industry from its beginning, I felt com- pelled to tell this story. While there was a fine book, We WereBurning, by Robert Johnstone (Ipasic Books, New York, 1999), its focus was mainly on how various technologies became commercialized by Japanese scientists; LCDs were only a small part of that account. Other books on the subject,

vii

viii Preface

including my own contribution, 7be Hundboob of Display Ykchnology (Academic Press, San Diego, 1992), primarily dealt with technical details. My purpose in writing this book was to give a historical account o f liquid crystal display development and the industry it created.

The motivation for the development of LCIh came from a desire to create a flat, thin replacement for the conventional color picture tulle, which was the only device used for television in the 1960s. David Sarnoff, Chief Executive Officer of KCA Corporation, foresaw the fabled “TV-on-a- wall” that would require a flat, thin display as early as 1956. However, the path t o flat panel television was not a straight one, and it would not be until the 1980s that small televisions would become available. It took yet another 20 years for LCD televisions with larger screen sizes to reach the market in any volume. In 2004, television sets with liquid crystal displays were being sold by mass merchandisers throughout the world.

The development of the LCD coincided with the personal computer revolution and by the mid-1980s, LCDs began appearing in laptop and notebook computers, products that could not have been created without a flat panel display, but are ubiquitous today. In addition, the technology made possible the introduction of a whole host of consumer and industrial products that we take for granted today in household appliances, automo- tiles, airplanes and numerous personal electronic items.

The development of LCD technology from simple laboratory samples to the more than 40-billion dollar industry that exists today, i s a story that goes well beyond the technical aspects of the structures and mechanisms of operation. It also involves the ideas, visions, struggles and ambitions of the scientists and engineers who made it possible. This account then is a personal, in-depth look at the evolution of an important high-technology industry and the people who created it, from the eyes of one who watched it grow from inception to ubiquity for more than a third o f a century.

Joseph A. Castellano San Jose, California

March 2004

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The Early Years

Chapter 2 Discovery

Chapter 3 The Gathering

Chapter 4 The Secret Years

Chapter 5 Going Public

Chapter 6 New Explorations

The Search for New I’roducts Spreading the Word A New Breakthrough - The Twisted-Nematic Effect Conclusions and Opinions

Chapter 7 Enter the Japanese

Chapter 8 Risky Business: Spin-offs and New Ventures

The Optel S t o r y Other RCA Spin-offs Texas Instruments and Its Spin-offs Start-lJp Fever Moves to the Midwest Silicon Valley Iliscovers LCDs Conclusions and Opinions

Chapter 9 Silicon Valley Calls

Fairchild Semiconductor Finds LCDs Another New Venture Moving in a Different Direction

Chapter 10

New Materials Emerge

An Industry in Transition

vii

1

14

34

40

48

57 57 67 71 78

82

91

91 95

101 104 105 108

111

112 121 125

127

127

ix

x Contents

The Shift Toward Polymer Sealing The Digital Watch Industry Evolves IHong Kong Manufacturing Expands More American Companies Enter the Dusiness Exit the American Semiconductor Firms European Innovations Korea Begins Development Moving Behind the Iron Curtain

Chapter 11 View from the Sidelines

The First Liquid Crystal Conference in Japan Moving to Market Research Growth o f the LCI) Industry in the 1980s Competing Ilisplay Technology Scrutinized

Chapter 12 The Elusive Transistor

A Thin Film o f Transistors The Shift t o Silicon

Chapter 13 Television Arrives

I’ortable Color LCD Television Debuts The Shift t o MIM Diodes for LCD I-’ortables The Ilrive toward Larger Screens Intensifies Hang-on-the-Wall LCD Television Approaches Reality

Chapter 14 The Personal Computer Revolution

The I-’ortable PC Opens the Way for LCDs 1,aptop Computers I-’rolifcrate Enter the “SuperTwisted-Nematic” LCD and the Notebook Active Matrix LCDs Appear

Chapter 15 Coming of Age

Computer Applications Abound Wdll-MOUntCd LCD Television Finally Realized The Cellular Telephone Explosion ’l’he Age o f Consortia Industry Consolidations Manufacturing Shifts t o Southeast Asia Supplementary LCD Technologies Appear

131 132 136 140 148 149 154 156

164

164 167 170 171

175 176 3 78

190 190 194 196 200

205

208 211 214 216

222

222 224 226 228 230 231 236

Contents xi

Chapter 16 Competition from Other Flat Panel Technologies Plasma Display I’anels Organic Light Emitting Diodes Electroluminescent Displays Field Emission Displays

Chapter 17 Into the Future Creation and Growth of a New Industry The Impact of High-Definition Television The Growth of IX:D Television Manufacturing Probing the Future

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendix I: Program of the First International Liquid Crystal Conference -August 1965

Appendix II: A Chronology of LCD Developments

Index

242 242 247 249 251

255 255 258 259 260

264

266

271

274

287

Chapter 1

The Early Years

“There is a time in every human life when a decision one makes helps carve the path to his destiny.”

Mario Puzo, “The Family, “ 200 1

The history o f liquid crystals began more than 100 years ago in 1888 when liquid crystallinity, also called by the technical term “mesomorphism,” was first observed and characterized by Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer’ in Germany. Reinitzer (1857-1927) observed an unusual melting characteristic in cholesteryl benzoate - although the crystal melted at 145”C, the melt was opaque instead o f clear as a normal or “isotropic” liquid. As he continued to heat the material further, the opacity disappeared sharply at 178°C. Thus, it was apparent to Reinitzer that within this 33-degree range, a unique state o f matter existed. His discovery of an intermediate state hetween a crystalline solid and a normal liquid flew in the face of the centuries’ old concept that matter existed in only three States: solid, liquid, and gaseous. In 21st century parlance, this would be considered a “disruptive technology,” so Reinitzer’s observations were most likely viewed with some skepticism by his peers until the work was duplicated, most notably by Otto Lehmann in 1890.2 It was Lehmann who coined the term “Fliissige Krystalle,” which translates t o fluid crystal or liquid crystal. According to Gray,3 IZeinitzer and Lehmann both laid claim to the discovery of the new phase of matter in papers published in 1908. Apparently, there was some animosity between the two scientists as a result of these exchanges. Ilowever, Reinitzer is generally considered to be the first to observe the phenomenon.

Three years later, Charles 1-1. Mauguin4 discovered and described the “twisted-nematic” structure, which became the basis for mainstream LCI)

1

2 Liquid Gold

technology some 60 years later. Mauguin’s elegant papers, published in both German and French scientific journals in 191 1, detailed his observations o f the optical characteristics of liquid crystals. Mauguin sandwiched a nematic liquid crystal compound between glass plates, which were previously rubbed with paper. He then twisted the front plate 90 degrees to the direction of the hack plate and observed the cell between crossed light polarizing crystals called Nicols. He referred to the rubbed surface as a membrane because he theorized (correctly, as it turned out) that material froin the paper was retained on the surface. He described the effect as follows:

For each homogenous liquid crystal layer there are two marked rectilinear oscillations, which, on penetrating the layer, will actually remain rectilinear, whilst at the same time their direction is altered through the sane angle through which the layers hordering the ineinbranes are twisted from each other. These oscillations, which advance with twisting o f the plane of polarization, have at all times, the direction of the largest and smallest absorption. This last fact leads to the hypothesis that the orientation of the liquid particles changes continually from the lower horder of the orientation t o the upper one; the structure is thus a helical one whose pitch is determined by the twisting of the two membranes against each other.

This landmark paper, published more than 90 years ago, taught one how t o create a twisted-nematic structure and also formed the basis for the contin- uum theory of liquid crystals. However, no mention was made of attempting to use electric or inagnetic fields t o change the orientation o f the liquid crystal molecules.

During the 1920s and 1930s, research work on liquid crystal materials and the electro-optic effects that they produced was conducted in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia (then the 1J.S.S.R.). An important French paper published in 1922 by Georges F r i e d ~ l , ~ reported his detailed optical studies on the new materials and established the nomenclature of the fledgling scientific field, with terms to describe the various types of phases. Friedel liked to use terms derived from Greek to identify the various phases. For example, instead of liquid crystal, Friedel used the word “mesophase,” which was derived from the Greek words me.sos, meaning “intermediate” or “between,” and phasis, a “state” or “phase.” Friedel also identified three distinct mesophase types: “smectic, nematic and cholesteric.” The “smectic” mesophase is a turbid, viscous state similar to that found in soap. The word is derived from the Greek word smectos meaning “soap-like.” The “nematic” mesophase is also turbid, but mobile like any normal liquid. Nematic comes from the Greek word nematos, meaning

The Early Years 3

"threadlike," because under a microscope this phase appears to have threads running through tlie liquid. The "threads" can also be seen when the nematic liqiiicl is spread on a glass plate (see Fig. 1.1). Finally, the "cholesteric" mesophase, which has the same opaque liquid-like properties as the nematic, 1 x i t different optical characteristics, is primarily exhibited by conipoiinds that are esters o f cholesterol. Changes in the color o f light reflected from the surface o f these cholesteric liquid crystals occur with changes in temperature, leading to their iise in today's temperature-sensing devices and clecorative articles such ;IS mood rings.

Important pioneering work on tlie effect of electric and magnetic fields on liquid crystal materials was also uncleway in Germany in the late 1920s. Zocher and Hirstein" were perhaps the first t o examine these effects in great detail. Their 1929 paper concluded that the unsymmetrical liquid crystal molecules with their long, rod-like shape could he oriented with the long molecular axes parallel t o the lines o f force o f electric and magnetic fields. This w;is to liecome very important in later studies that led to the use o f liqiiicl crystals in displays.

In lIiissi;i, Vsevolod Konstantinovich Frederiks (conimonly known ;IS Freeclericksz)-.8 and his colleagues pulilished important papers in the n i id-1~~Os that reported vxious changes in the optical properties o f liquid crystal materials under applied electric fields. Horn in Russia in 1885, Freedericksz otitainecl his graduate education at Geneva llniversity in Switzerland and received his doctorate in 1909. After working f o r nine years in Geneva with some o f the world's most prominent mathemati- cims and physicists, including David Hilbert, lie returned t o Russia where

Fig. 1.1. Large drop o f nematic liquid crystal spreading ;ic'ross a glass plate.

4 Liquid Gold

he began research on piezoelectricity and liquid crystals at the Polytechnical and Optical Institute in Petrograd (later to be called Leningrad, but known today as St. Petersburg).

In 1031, Freedericksz began to study the behavior of liquid crystals in magnetic and electric fields. He was probably the first to discover the appearance o f periodic hydrodynamic domains when liquid crystals were subjected to electric fields.8 This effect became known as the Freedericksz transition and was later investigated further by Richard Williams, A.P. Kapustin and George Heilmeier. Unfortunately, at the height of his career in 1936, Freedericksz was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for allcgcd terrorist attacks against the Soviet regime and Josef Stalin, the Communist Party’s General Secretary at the time. While in prison, he continued to write letters to his colleagues in support o f their continued work on liquid crystals. However, he was never able to return t o his laboratory and in 1944, Freedericksz died in prison of pneumonia, a lxilliant scientific career tragically cut short by a political regime’s mis- guided agenda. Fortunately, Freedericksz’s reputation was restored in 1956 when his innocence was officially declared by the High Court of the [J.S.S.R. He remains as one of the most important contributors to the development of liquid crystal devices.

The first patent issued on an application of liquid crystals was a light valve device that operated at about 50 volts and at elevated temperatures using polarized light.9 The patent was awarded to Barnett Levin and Nyman Levin of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in England in 1936. The specification states: “The invention rehtes to light vulves and has

I ftir its object, to provide improved light valves of greut sensitivity suitable for use us optical trunshting devims in lekevision, .facsimile tekgraph and other systems. ” It is interesting that television was envisioned as an application for liquid crystals as early as 1934 (the original filing date), although it would be nearly 50 years before a commercial product would l x developed. Marconi’s laboratories in Chelmsford later became a major research center for liquid crystal display development in Great Britain.

Then came a major war and the end of much of the research in this field. However, some work did continue in France by Pierre Chatelain,lo who did a great deal of work studying the orientation of liquid crystals on rubbed glass surfaces using magnetic fields. Chatelain also believed that the alignment of liquid crystal molecules was due to impurities or residues deposited on the supporting surface as a result of the rubbing with paper.

The Early Years 5

Shortly after World War I1 ended, research work in liquid crystals was again begun in earnest at university research bdboratories all across Europe. George W. Gray, who was to become one of the most important figures in liquid crystal material research in the 20th century, began investigating these materials in England during the late 1940s. George Gray was born in 1326 and graduated from the IJniversity of Glasgow in 1946. In 1947, he was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer at University College, London, where he went on to receive his Ph.L>. working on liquid crystals under the guidance of Sir Hrynmor Jones. While working on his doctorate at London, he was also teaching at the University of Hull and later took a permanent post at I-Iull where he became a full professor. He and his students synthesized many new materials that exhibited the liquid crystalline state. Most importantly, however, his work led to a better understanding of how to design molecules that exhibit the state as well as how to increase the “thermal stability” o f the compounds. Thermal stability relates to the temperature at which the material loses its liquid crystalline properties and is transformed into a normal or “isotropic” liquid; the higher this temperature, known as the “transition temperature,” the higher the thermal stability.

According to his own account,l’ financial support for liquid crystal research in England was practically nonexistent in the early 1960s. For several years in fact, Gray worked alone in developing new compounds and studying their structure-property relationships. I-Ie felt that his work in liquid crystal research might indeed come to an end due to a lack of support, so he decided to write a hook on the subject and in 1962, Molecular Structure and the Properties of Liquid Cy.Ytu1.s was published by Academic

This excellent book quickly became the definitive work on the subject and opened the world’s eyes to this fascinating topic. George Gray went on to perform a great deal o f important research including the development of the very stable cyanobiphenyl compounds, which became the mainstream material for LCns starting in the mid 1970s. He remained at Hull for over 40 years rising to head of the chemistry department and publishing some 360 papers. He received many awards for his contributions including the prestigious Queen’s Award and the Kyoto Prize.

It was not until the 1960s that serious studies of the materials and the effects of electric fields on them were carried out in the United States. One reason for this was that liquid crystals were little known materials. However, as mentioned previously, Gray’s book stirred a renewed interest in the materials. Before its publication, students of organic chemistry in

Press.3

6 Liquid Gold

most U.S. universities were not taught about liquid crystals. One exception was the IJniversity of Cincinnati, where a young chemistry professor, Glenn FI. Brown, became fascinated with the study of liquid crystals.

Glenn H. Brown was born in Logan, Ohio, in 1915 and was educated at Ohio University where he graduated with a B.S. in chemistry in 1939. After receiving a Master’s degree from Ohio State [Jniversity in 1941, he went on to teach at the LJniversity of Mississippi during the war years. After the war, he attended Iowa State University, receiving his doctorate in 1951. After teaching for two years at the University of Vermont, he moved to the University of Cincinnati as an associate professor, where he taught chemistry and began his work on liquid crystals.

In 1960, he joined Kent State [Jniversity as a professor and head of the chemistry department where he successfully built a 1’h.n. program. He served as Chairman from 1960-1965 and Dean of Kesearch from 1963-1968. He became Kent’s only Kegent’s Professor in 1968. In 1965, he founded the Liquid Crystal Institute and served as its director from 1965 through 1983. The institute, which now bears his name, started with one graduate student and a budget of $21,000 per year. Other scientists at Kent soon joined Hrown in seeking funding for liquid crystal research. Major grants came from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army and Air Force.

This early funding helped establish the reputation of the Institute, but Mity to attract world-class scientists such as Alfred Saupe, James Pergason and William Doane to its staff greatly enhanced the high international standing it enjoys today.

Glenn 13rown wrote numerous review articles, many of which were particularly helpful for new researchers. His own research interest was first in the structures o f liquid crystalline phases as determined by X-ray crystallography. Later, he became convinced that the most exciting topics were lyotropic and biological liquid crystals, with DNA being a prominent example. However, he continued to be interested in display applications as exemplified by the two papers on liquid crystal applications that he and I co-authored . l2 He also hecame editor-in-chief of Molecular Cy.stals and Liquid Cy.stuls, the leading scientific journal in the field. He edited a series of six volumes of Advances in Liquid Crystals (Academic Press).

As Brown stimulated interest in liquid crystals among scientists, it soon became apparent that a forum was needed in order to exchange ideas and information. Perhaps Brown’s greatest contribution was his successful effort t o establish an International Liquid Crystal Conference. In 1965, he

The Early Years 7

organized the first conference, which was held in Kent with about 100 o f the world's top liquid crystal scientists in attendance. While the number o f attendees seems small hy today's standards, this conference marked the heginning o f a worldwide effort t o perform research in these unique materials, which soon led to the development of LCI>s. A photo o f Glenn 13rou.n presiding ;it the Fourth International Liquid Crystal Conference in 1972 is shown in Fig. 1.2. Unfortunately, hrkinson's disease prevented I3rown from continuing t o work on liquid crystals; he reluctantly retired in 19% and passed away in 1995. The Glenn €1. Brown Award from the International Liquid Crystal Society recognizes his contrilxitions and the support and eiicoul'agenient lie extended to young scientists.

Meanwhile, in the late 1950s. James Fergason and his colleagues at the Westinghouse liesearch Labordtories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were working on cholesteric liquid crystals for use ;IS temperature sensors. James Fergason was born in 1934 and received ;I B.S. in physics from tlie IJniversity of Missouri in 1956. He began his career at Westinghouse in 1957. Due t o tlie helical structure that these materials adopt, Fergason's team studied the changes in the wavelength o f light reflected from thin layers of these materials 21s the temperature was increased o r decreased. This group

Fig. 1.2. Glenn H. Hrown, o n the right, presiding over the Fourth International Liquicl Crystal Conference, Kent. Ohio, August 1972. George H. Heilmeier, on the left. ~ v a s taking questions f r o m the auclience. Photo taken from the author's collection.

8 LiauidGold

prepared various mixtures o f cholesteric esters that essentially changed color with temperature. This led them to investigate various applications Ixsed on this temperature ~ensitivity.l~,~* In the days before computer-aided tomography became available, it was possible t o detect cancerous tumor cells, which are always warmer than normal cells, by observing the color changes in the material coated on the skin.15 The technique was particularly effective for breast cancer diagnosis and Fergason spent several years working on materials that could be used for this application. However, he also began t o investigate the effects of electric fields on liquid crystals leading to his role as a major figure in the development of 1,CDs.

James Fergason went on to obtain over 500 patents, numerous awards, and ekction into the prestigious National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

Gray and Fergason will be discussed in more detail later; their contributions to the advancement of liquid crystal science and technology were quite significant. 1 will further explain the differences among the various liquid crystalline states, but it is important at this point simply t o understand that there are many types o f mesophases, each having a specific function and application.

In order to understand the reasons why LCII technology developed as it did, it is important t o recognize that technology in general advanced rapidly during the second half of the 20th century and this advance had a pro- found effect on development of the technological infrastructure needed for liquid crystal science t o progress beyond the laboratory stage and into practical applications. To put this into perspective, consider the type of equipment that was available to the scientist working in the early 1950s. Transistors had just been invented, so solid state electronics was in its i n h c y . A typical electronic device consisted of vacuum tubes, hand- wound transformers, capacitors made with rolled paper, and other components, all wired and soldered by hand t o a circuit board. The most popular electronic device of that era was the radio; black-and-white television was just beginning to appear. Computers were electro-mechanical behemoths; it took a room full of equipment to perform computations that can now be done with a computer that can fit in the palm of one hand. Test equipment, to the extent that it existed, used numerous needlepoint gauges, rotary rheostats and toggle switches. Integrated circuits and digital electronics were dreams of the future. Chemical laboratory equipment was likewise rudimentary by today’s standards. I remember that the chemical laboratory at the college I attended in the mid 1950s looked remarkably similar to that adjoining Thomas Edison’s winter home in Fort Myers, Florida, a laboratory

The Early Years 9

that he used 50 years earlier! Consequently, it took a great deal of effort and dedication to perform scientific experiments during that time period. The scientist had t o design and build the equipment as well as to tediously measure the key parameters and finally write down his observations, results and conclusions in a notebook.

The concept of interdisciplinary research and development was just beginning to take hold during the early 1950s. The Manhattan Project, the national effort to develop and Iluild the first nuclear weapons during the period from 1941 through August of 1945, was probably the first time that physicists, chemists and engineers worked together toward a common goal. An excellent account of this effort, Atomic Qumt, was written by Arthur Holly Compton, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who was an early manager o f the project.16 By the 1950s, it became clear that major scientific projects required the close cooperation of scientists and engineers from many scientific disciplines; the emerging space program was a major driver of this interscientific team concept. The development of LCD technology was the result of such interdisciplinary research.

At about the time when Gray’s hook was published, I was a 25-year-old research chemist developing exotic rocket propellants at the Reaction Motors Division (KMI)) of Thiokol Chemical Company in Denvik, New Jersey, a small town in the western part of the state about 30 miles from New York City. While the parent company was building the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICRM), MI) was primarily engaged in the hsiness of building small rocket engines, known as the Bullpup, for U.S. military air-to- ground missiles that were being used in the rapidly escakating Vietnam war. The other part of its business was performing classified contract research for various military agencies seeking new, more powerful, and more efficient rocket propellants; this was the area that I worked in. We worked with such exotic materials as difluoramine, tetrafluorohydrazine and perfluoroguani- dine in an attempt to synthesize organic compounds with a large number of difluoramino groups. The higher the number of these groups per molecule, the more “energetic” the material became. In other words, the materials could explode with little provocation, so most of the experiments were conducted behind thick plastic shields using remote controlled handling devices.

During my tenure with RMD, I also attended graduate school at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn during the evening. This school (now known as the Polytechnic University of New York) was world-renowned lor its research in polymers. At that time, the university’s Polymer Research Institute was headed by Herman Mark, who was world-famous as a

10 Liquid Gold

pioneer in polymer chemistry. Professor Mark worked as a chemist for I.G. Farben in the 1920s, but was also a guest lecturer in the newly emerging field o f quantum mechanics in 1928 at the Karlsruhe Technical Institute. According to Edward Teller,I7 it was Mark who sparked Teller’s interest in quantum mechanics. I was privileged to take Professor Mark’s introductory course in polymer chemistry in 1962. Ilis dynamic lectures prompted me to take polymer chemistry as my Master’s degree major. His lectures were so popular that you had to arrive early; it was the only time I ever took a class where there was standing room only!

I was also fortunate t o have Charles G. Overberger as my Master’s thesis advisor. Overberger, an excellent teacher and mentor, already had established himself as one of the world’s leading polymer scientists, having developed numerous techniques for co-poIymerization that altered and improved the properties of many plastic materials. He was also President of the American Chemical Society (ACS) at that time. My research was geared toward the synthesis o f divinyl carbonate, a monomer that could be used to prepare a cyclopolymer, and I received the Master of Science degree in 1964 for my efforts.

One of Overberger’s postdoctoral students was Helmut 1lingsdorf, a German national who taught me how to handle phosgene, a highly toxic gas that was the starting material for the compounds I worked with. Ironically, Ringsdorf would later go on t o become one o f the world’s leading developers of liquid crystal polymers. At the time, however, neither of us knew anything about liquid crystals. Strangely though, I never again met Helmut Ringsdorf after that instructional session in 1962.

In April o f 1964, I traveled to Philadelphka to attend the annual ACS convention, a mandatory symposium for research chemists. During that trip, 1 ran into Joel E. Goldmacher, a former classmate from my college days at the City College of New York (CCNY). We first met in 1956 in a general chemistry class. Both of us had taken chemistry in high school and found the material t o be quite easy. Despite the fact that our personalities were different, I being rather introverted at the time and him being quite gregarious, we became fast friends with our love of organic chemistry being one common bond. In addition, there were other commonalities - both of us grew up in 13rooklyn, we were both from ethnic backgrounds (he being Jewish and I of Italian descent), and we both came from the lower middle class. Since we were both chemistry majors, we attended many of the Same classes, so our friendship strengthened throughout those college years.

The Early Years 11

After graduation from CCNY, Goldmacher went on to Purdue LJniversity for graduate work and was awarded the Ihctor of Philosophy degree in 1963. I lost contact with him until he showed up for an interview at the Reaction Motors Division laboratories shortly before receiving his doctorate. He mentioned at that time that he was going to accept a position in the electronics industry with KCA kdh0rdtC)rieS. When I met Goldmacher again at the ACS meeting in 1964, he was working on organic materials for electronic devices and was very favorably impressed with the scientists and engineers that he worked with on a daily basis. We traded business cards and vowed to keep in contact with each other.

Despite the Fact that I enjoyed the rocket propellant research work, my future at IWI> was looking dim in the spring of 1965. The war in Vietnam was intensifying and the company was issuing press releases touting its role as the main supplier of engines for the air-to-ground missiles k i n g used t o destroy bridges in North Vietnam. I recall seeing one of these press releases on a bulletin board in the laboratory one day and thinking, “Why am I supposed to be proud that my company’s products are being used. for destructive purposes?” I certainly did not feel good about it. At the Same time, government funds were being diverted from contract research to material and equipment for the war effort. Consequently, our company’s contracts were not being renewed, new projects were not being funded, and a small number of people were released. As someone with a wife and two young children to support, I could not envision being out of work, so it was clearly time to look for another job.

One o f the first things I did was to contact Goldmacher to find out what he was doing and to ask if there were any employment opportunities at RCA Laboratories. As luck would have it, there was indeed an opening for an organic chemist to work in the newly emerging field o f liquid crystals. I was certainly interested, but 1 still had no idea what liquid crystals were all about. Goldmachcr was very excited about the work he was doing and encouraged me t o apply. He also mentioned that the company had a full doctoral fellowship program for qualified employees who could earn their doctorate while working at the laboratory. At the time, I had already passed my doctoral qualifying exams, so I was very interested in this fellowship program. With his encouragement and support, I applied and was granted an interview.

Meanwhile, I was also looking at other opportunities. Fortunately, the economy in 1965 was quite good so numerous job openings for chemists were available in various locations throughout the state of New Jersey, which was home to both the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.

12 Liquid Gold

Consequently, I was able to obtain interviews at such pharmaceutical companies as Ciba and Sandoz as well as Union Oil Company and Shell Oil Company. The Shell interview went so well that I was offered a job right on the spot. However, the job was not in research, but in the technical service laboratory working directly with customers to solve technical problems. This was quite different from the research work I had been doing at RMD, but not unlike the work I did in my very first job at Witco Chemical Company during the years 1959-1962. I asked for and was granted a week t o make a decision, but it put me in a quandary. I really wanted the job at KCA because it would enable me to continue working in research as well as t o complete my doctoral work. Fortunately, I received a call from IiCA at the end of that week with a job offer, which I quickly accepted. This was the decision that carved a path to my destiny.

REFERENCES

1. I:. kinitzer, Monatsh. 9, 421 (1888). 2. 0. Lehniann, Z. Krist. 18, 464 (1890). 3. G.W. Gray, Molecular Structure and the Properties ofliquid Crystals (Academic

Press, New York, 1962). 4. C. Mauguin, “ S i r les cristaux liquides dc Lehmann,” Bull. Soc. Fr. Min. 34, 71

(1911); C. Maugnin, PhysikZeitschriji 12, 1011 (1911). 5. G. Friedel, Ann. Pkysique 18, 273 (1922). 6. H. Zochcr and V. Birstein, “Contribution to the knowledge o f mesophases V.

Influence o f electric and magnetic fields,” Z. Physik. Cbcwz. 142A, 186 (1929). 7. V. Fredcrilts and V.N. Tsvetkov, “Orienting effects of electric fields on

anisotropic liquids,” Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. USSR 4, 131 (1935); V. Frederiks and V.N. Tsvetkov, “Infliience of electric fields on anisotropic liquids I. Motion o f liqiiids in electric fields,” Acta Physichem. 3, 879 (1936); V.N. Tsvetkov, Acta Z%y.sichem. ILSR 6, 865 (1937).

8. V.G. Chigrinov and V.V. Delyaev, Liquid Cy.stals Toduy 6(4), 11 (1996). 9. 1Varnet-t Levin and Nyman Levin, Marconi Wireless lelegraph Company, British

Patent 442,274 (19361, applied for July 13, 1934. 10. I? Chatelain, Compt. Rend. 204, 1352 (1937); Compl. Rend. 213, 875 (1941);

Cornpt. I&nd. 214, 32 (1942); Bull. Soc. Fr. Min. 66, 105 (1943). 11, George W. Gray, “Reminisccnces from a life with liquid crystals,” Liquid

Cy.sta1.q 24(1), 5 (1998). 12. J.A. Castellano and G.H. Brown, “Thermotropic liquid crystals,” Chemical

’lkchnology, Part I, January 1973; Chemical Technology, Purt II, April 1973.

The Early Years 13

13. J.L. Fergason and Okwa Hanson, “Display of infrared laser patterns by a liquid crystal viewer,” Appl. opt. 3, 8 (1964).

14. J.7’. Crissey, E. Gordy, J.L. Fergason, and R.B. Lyman, “A new technique for the demonstration o f skin temperature patterns,” Journal of Investigative Uermalology 43, 89 (19641.

15. J.L. Fergason and J.M. Ikttenhausen, “Cutaneous thermography with liquid ciystals,” Journal oflnvestigative Dermatology 45, 320 (1965).

16. Arthur H. Compton, Atomic Quest (Oxford University Press, New York, 1956). 17. Edward Teller, Memoirs (Perseus I’ublishing, Cambridge, MA, 2001), p. 45.

Chapter 2

Discovery

"It wi l l also give us brighter and bigger TV pictures, and ultimately replace the TV tube altogether with a thin, flat-surface screen that wi l l be hung like a picture on a wall."

David Sarnoft 1956

The idea of building a television set with a thin, flat display was a dream that David Sarnoff, Chairman of the Hoard of RCA, had for many years. In fact, he had a conventional television set installed within the wall of his office at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City with the screen flush with the wall to show how a wall-mounted television might appear. I saw this when I was privileged to tour the corporate offices in 1969. The above quotation was taken from a speech he gave on September 30, 1956, at a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of his tenure at RCA.l" He was actually referring to electroluminescence, which at that time was believed t o be the technology that would emerge to accomplish his objective. In the rnid-1c)bOs, there were a number of technologies that were being investigated at RCA Laboratories to create a flat panel television display, and electroluminescence was one of them. Researchers were also looking at light emitting diodes, various cathodoluminescent concepts (flat, thin cathode ray tubc4ke devices), and liquid crystals.

When I first arrived at RCA Laboratories in the late spring of 1965, r was truly impressed with both the size and ambience of the Facility, which was established in 1942 to consolidate all research activities in a central location. This was done not only t o make the research more efficient, but primarily to maintain security for many of the government-classified projects that were underway for the war effort. The complex, which was renamed the David Sarnoff Research Center in 1951, was situated just off Route 1 in Princeton, New Jersey, a short distance from the university, which formed

14

Discovery 15

the centerpiece of the historic town. It was designed as a university cam- pus much along the lines of Hell Telephone Laboratories located about 35 miles north in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The complex was situated on numerous acres of land with well-manicured lawns and large shade trees. The main building was a three-story structure with long corridors leading to hundreds of laboratory bays. Each bay had laboratory benches and desks to accommodate two or three persons. A fully illustrated history of the David Sarnoff Research Center was recently published by Alexander

In those days, the organizational structure was quite simple - there were some four hundred scientists, all classified as members of the technical stdf (MTS). Nearly all held a doctorate degree, although there were some who were at the Master’s level and others who were working on their doctorate as part of a doctoral study program. In ad.dition, there was a support staff o f about three hundred consisting of technicians, machinists, draftsmen, clerical workers and maintenance personnel. The management structure was designed to reduce bureducrdcy, so there were only a small number o f laboratory directors and group heads, who were selected from among the members of the technical staff. However, many projects were managed by MTS personnel who acted as project leaders and who would often assemble the needed experts to work on a particular project that might lead to important products of the future for KCA.

In 1965, the research center was a Mecca for worlddass experts in electrical engineering, optics, acoustics, optoelectronics, solid-state physics, and the other physical sciences and engineering disciplines. For example, James Hillier, who co-invented the electron microscope, headed the center. Just down the hall from my lab was Alfred C. Schroeder, who developed the three-electron beam, three-color phosphor element color picture tube along with Edward Herold and Harold Law, both of whom were also still active at the center. Other scientists who could be called upon for advice included Jan liajchman, developer of electron multiplier tubes and magnetic core memories for the earliest computers; Neil Yocom, developer of the color phosphors used in the first color television tubes; Paul Kappaport, pioneer in the development o f solar cells for satellites and later the first Director of the Solar Energy Research Institute; James Tietjen, developer of gallium arsenide and related semiconducting materials who later became head of the research center; George Taylor, world-renowned expert in ferroelectric and piezoelectric devices; Paul Weimer, developer of the first thin-film field effect transistor; Henry Lewis, developer of optoelectronic

Magoun. ’1’

16 Liquid Gold

devices; Alex Ross, developer of electrophotography; Joseph Burns, expert and developer of silicon-on-sapphire semiconductors; Sol Harrison, expert on the physics of electro-optical processes; Zoltan Kiss, developer of electro-optic storage devices and cathodochromics systems; and Albert Rose, developer of the image orthicon tube (a television camera tube) along with Law and Weimer. This is just a sample of the many top scientists who worked at the center in those days, making it an outstanding place to perform both basic and applied research and engineering in a true multi- disciplinary atmosphere.

Research in organic chemistry was relatively new to the center. The importance of organic materials in optoelectronic devices as insulators and active elements was just being recognized; so hiring top notch organic chemists was vital to keeping the center at the leading edge of scientific research. In 1963, Joel Goldmacher was the first organic chemist to join the staff. Others were soon added until there were four at the MTS level when I joined in 1965. Goldmacher designed the first organic chemistry laboratory and fully equipped it with the latest instruments and apparatus. It consisted of three rooms, which included numerous exhaust hoods for conducting chemical reactions and performing various analytical operations. However, the lab had room for only two desks, which were used by Gcjldmacher and his technician Leonard Korsakoff. Consequently, my desk was in an adjoining lab, which was occupied by two solid-state physicists who constantly argued about the nuances of tunneling in diodes. Since the conversations were made using mathematical formulas on a blackboard, I initially had no clue as to what the arguments were all about. One of these physicists was John Shewchun, who would take time to explain the concepts to me in physical rather than mathematical terms, so I had some early lessons in solid-state physics. John left RCA about one year later and went on to become a professor of physics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The story of how liquid crystals became a topic of research into the development of flat panel displays at RCA began in the summer of 1962 when Richard Williams began searching for a physical phenomenon that could eventually lead to a flat panel display not involving a vacuum tube concept.l According to Williams, there was no other work on liquid crystals going on at RCA Laboratories at the time and he was not aware of similar work being done at other labs. The idea of using liquid crystals was entirely his own; he knew the general properties of liquid crystals and believed they might be the right materials for a display.

Discoverv 17

Born in 1927, Richard Williams earned the A.B. degree in chemistry from Miami University of Ohio in 1950 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University in 1954. Following graduation, he served in the U.S. Army for one year before joining the faculty of Harvard where he taught chemistry for three years. In 1958, he joined KCA Laboratories and worked on semiconductor-electrolyte interfaces, internal photoemission, properties o f electrons on the surface of liquid helium, and crystallized sus- pensions of polystyrene micro spheres, in addition to liquid crystals. Fluent and self-taught in Portuguese, he was appointed as a Fulbright lecturer at the Engineering School in S i b Carlos, Brazil in 1969. While teaching in Brazil, he discovered a previously unknown meteorite crater. He also wrote the first book on solid-state physics in Portuguese, now used as a textbook in Brazil, and translated into Spanish for use in Mexico. In 1972, he became a Fellow of the Technical Staff, the highest technical position available at the Ihvid Sarnoff Research Center. Richard Williams published more than 120 technical papers and holds 14 patents. In addition to the Cullinan Prize for insulator physics from the Electrochemical Society, he received numerous honors and awards for his scientific contributions. He was a co- recipient of the David Sarnoff Team Award in Science in 1969. Richard Williams retired from the research center in 1991, but he continues to live in Princeton, New Jersey, where he works as a consultant and lecturer.

The most readily available nematic liquid crystal material in 1962 was pazoxyanisole, which had a melting point of 116°C. Consequently, Williams needed to set up his experiments on a heated microscope stage. He sandwiched the liquid crystal between transparent tin oxide electrodes coated on glass plates and placed the cell on a microscope stage held at 125°C. When he applied an electric field of about 1,00Ovolts/cm, he observed the formation of a regular pattern of long parallel stripes, which he called “domains.”3 These domains, shown in Fig. 2.1, were clearly visible to the naked eye. Researchers would later refer to these as “Williams domains.” When the field was turned off , the original structure was reformed and the domains became invisible again. This suggested the idea to Williams that this electric field ordering of a liquid crystal could be used in a display or light modulation device, so he quickly filed a patent application on the ~ o n c e p t . ~ To my knowledge, this was the first invention to describe the basic structure of a liquid crystal display device, a configuration that has been used ever since. It also shows the structure of an X-Y matrix of electrodes that became the basis for future LCDs. The key features that made displays possible were there: low voltage, rapid response

18 Liquid Gold

Fig. 2.1. Williams doni;iins in pazoxyanisole at 125°C. ’I’he vertical line is the edge o f the transparent concliicting film. The electric field is applied t o the material o n the left o f [his line; no field is applied t o the right o f the line.

and good contrast. However, Williams did not actually h i l d o r demonstrate 21 clisplay.

Kichard Williams was aware that it would take a long time to develop a television display using the concept. There were no room temperature materials; thin-film transistors were just beginning t o be studied, and integrated circuits were in the conceptual stage. Consequently, he turned t o other projects, but continued t o maintain a keen interest in liquid crystals. He introduced George Heilnieier t o the field o f liquid crystals and they collaborated on the researchi while Williams worked on other projects. Hut Willimis remained 21s a valuable advisor t o those o f CIS who worked on the fledgling liquid crystal display project, which Heilmeier decided t o pursue full-time instead o f the work he had previously heen doing on solid-state microw;ive devices.

George I-Ieilmeier was horn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1936. He received a txichelor o f electrical engineering degree from the IJniversity o f Pennsylvania in 1958 and upon graduation was recruited by KCA to join the company‘s cloctol.al study award program in conjunction with I’rinceton IJniversity. In the 196Os, scientists and engineers were in great deniand as the world o f high technology evolved to meet the needs of both the cold w i r and the space r x e . Talented indivicluals from top schools were actively p~irsued by IiCA and given full graduate school fellowships. This enabled Heilmeier t o complete his 1’h.D. at Princeton in electrical engineering in

Discovery 19

1962, while earning two master’s degrees along the way. His education prepared him to tackle the challenge of developing a new technology, but his inherent leadership abilities would enable him to assemble a multi- disciplinary team and direct it toward the technical goals that were accomplished. These leadership qualities served him well in subsequent jobs as Assistant Director of Research in the Defense Department, Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Texas Instruments, President and CEO of Bellcore, and finally Chairman Emeritus of Telcordia. He has received numerous awards including the David Sarnoff Team Award in Science, Industrial Research Institute Medal, the National Academy of Engineering Founders Award, two Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Medals, and the prestigious National Medal of Science presented by President George H. Bush for contributions to national security and competitiveness. He currently sits on numerous boards and committees including the Defense Science Board, the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the National Security Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, as well as the board of directors of TRW.

In the fall o f 1964, Heilmeier, working in collaboration with Louis Zanoni, began experimenting with methods to produce a color display using liquid crystak It was Heilmeier’s idea to “dope” nematic liquid crystals with what were known as “pleochroic dyes.” These dyes were called pleochroic because crystals of the material would show two or more colors depending upon their orientation with respect to the direction of polarized light. The concept was to use the alignment characteristics of liquid crystals to cooperatively align the dye molecules using an electric field. The most effective dyes were dichroic dyes; these would show one color in one orientation, but be colorless in another. The optical absorption spectrum (a graphic that shows the amount of light absorbed as a function of wavelength) of a dichroic dye molecule is a function of its molecular orientation with respect to the polarization of the incident light. Materials that exhibit dichroism are usually long, cylindrical molecules containing groups of atoms known as chromophores, which give the molecule an ability to absorb specific wavelengths of light. Thus, if the dichroic molecule is oriented with its long axis parallel to the electric vector of the incident polarized light, absorption of light by the molecule occurs and the characteristic color of the dye is observed. Conversely, orientation of the molecule with its long axis perpendicular to the electric vector results in little or no absorption by the visible transition, and the incident light is transmitted

20 Liquid Gold

unchanged. It is fascinating to look at a blue dichroic crystal on the stage o f a polarizing microscope. As you rotate the polarizer, the color of the crystal changes from colorless to blue and kack to colorless again when the polarizer returns to its original position.

In order to prove the concept, Heilmeier turned to Louis Zanoni to construct experimental cells using the materials. Zanoni was one of the laboratories’ top technical staff associates and he worked closely with Heilmeier on the liquid crystal research project. Zanoni, born in 1933 in ‘I’renton, New Jersey, served in the 17,s. Navy from 1951 to 1955 as a radio operator and base communications supervisor at the 1J.S. Naval base in Naples, Italy. Upon his honorable discharge, he attended RCA Institutes where he graduated with honors in 1957 and joined KCA laboratories as an associate member of the technical staff. He also continued his education with evening classes at Trenton Junior College, Rider College and Rutgers University. During his 13-year tenure at RCA Laboratories, Zanoni received two Industrial Research magazine IR-100 awards and was co-recipient of the David Sarnoff Outstanding Team Award in Science. In 1970, Zanoni left RCA to help form Optel Corporation where he worked on the world’s first LCI> digital watches. He also developed instruments for in-process and final inspection of the products. Zanoni left Optel in 1976 and formed Zantech, to provide parts and service for digital and andlog electronic watches. Eventually, Zantech became the leading [J.S. company for training electronic watch repair professionals and it remains so to this day. Zanoni sold his interest in Zantech and went on to establish a local IJHF television station in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1993. Although Zanoni is officially retired, he continues to participate in the growth and development of the station. He has published a variety of scientific and technical articles, papers and books. Zanoni has also been issued numerous patents in the field of electro-optic devices and circuits. He has been a member of several community service organizations and is currently on the board of the David Sarnoff Collection.

In 1964, Zanoni fabricated a cell in the form of a parallel plate capacitor with transparent electrodes and the liquid crystal material sandwiched between the plates. The nematic liquid crystal material, which Heilmeier called the “host,” contained a small amount of dichroic dye, known as the “guest.” Alignment of the molecules with their long axes parallel to the electric vector of the polarized light was achieved by rubbing the tin oxide- coated surface prior to cell fabrication. (This was a very important, but complicated process that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 10.)

Discovery 21

This alignment procedure therefore resulted in a cell that had the color characteristic of the dissolved dye. The very strong permanent dipole moment operating along the long molecular axis enabled the molecules to align in the direction of an applied electric field and in turn, to orient the dissolved dye molecules with their long axes perpendicular to the electric vector of the incident polarized light (Fig. 2.2). This experiment led to the discovery that color could be “turned on and off” with an electric field. Heilmcier clearly understood and explained the mechanism of this electro- optic effect in his paper. Trnagine the excitement of being able to electronically control the color of light in a flat, thin display cell for the very first time. Other staff members who were called over to see the demonstration were equally impressed. Was this a breakthrough? Could this be the way to fabricate a flat panel color television display? George Heilmeier certainly felt that it had that potential, although much more work was clearly needed. Heilmeier quickly coined the term “Guest-Host Effect”6 to describe the phenomenon.

After the effect was demonstrated to William Webster, the laboratory director, it was determined that a larger effort to further develop liquid crystal displays would I x undertaken. Because of the possibility that the devices could indeed be used to produce a flat panel television display, the project

Nentatic Llquld Crystal Mnleailes

Crystd Field

Alignel in Field FIELDOFF FIELD ON

Fig. 2.2. Operation of “Guest-Host” liquid crystal display.

22 Liquid Gold

was t o he considered company confidential for the foreseeable future o r at least until patents had heen applied for. This meant that no papers could be pu tdished reporting on any o f the developments relating t o liquid crystals. This explains why the first puhlications did not appear until 1968.

Soon after the discovery of the Guest-Host effect, Heilmeier, Zanoni, and Lucian “Luc” Barton discovered7,H that a cell containing a liquid crystal material sandwiched txtween tin oxide transparent electrodes on glass could he made t o electrically switch from a transparent state to a highly scattering, opaque state. In the first experiments, a black background was ~ised so that the cell appeared Mack with no field applied. When a field of the order o f 5,000 volts/cm (corresponding to six volts fo r a 12-micron thick sample) was applied, the liquid tiecame turbulent and scattered light, nuking the cell appear white. It was also found that by increasing the field, the brightness o f the cell increased, indicating that a gray scale could be ol,tained. Furthermore, the bulk of the scattered light was forward scattered rather than hack scattered (see Fig. 2.3). Thus, by using a specular reflecting hack electrode, such as an aluminum mirror, the forward radia- tion could he directed back through the liquid t o the viewer t o obtain the

Fig. 2.3. Operation o f dynamic scattering mode in a nematic liquid Crystal.

Discovery 23

Fig. 2.4. George Heilmeier holding :I dyn;imic scattering liquid crystal disp1;iy dio\\.ing :I static test pattern image. Photo taken in I>ecemlxr 1966.

tiiaxiniuiii contrast in ;I reflective type display. Heilmeier understood the mechanism o f this effect and clescrihed it in the puldished paper. An exmi- ple o f one o f the first reflective liquid crystal clisplays is shown in Fig. 2.4. Again, this was very exciting Ixcause it offered yet another way t o build a flat pmel display. Heilmeier dul>l>ed the phenomenon "dynamic scattering" and recognized the possitility that it could Ile ~ised to display information for ;I variety o f applications, not only television. Thus, Heilmeier and his group kil,ricated and demonstrated the first working liquid crystal display.

As the project leader, Heil~iieier was given the authority to bring in other staff memhers in addition t o Zanoni and Barton t o help with the project. Initial studies o f the Guest-Host phenomenon were conducted with

24 Liquid Gold

pbutoxybenzoic acid and pmethoxycinnamic acid, but the high operating temperatures required by these nematic compounds prompted a search for other materials with lower melting points. Consequently, Heilmeier called upon Joel Goldmacher to help develop liquid crystal material that could operate at room temperature and over a wide temperature range.

Goldmacher was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937 and received a 13,s. degree in chemistry from the City College o f New York in 1959. He then attended I’urdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, where he was awarded a P1i.D. in organic chemistry in 1963. Upon graduation, he joined RCA Laboratories and began working in the then-emerging field of organic semiconductors. This involved complex, multi-step synthetic routes as well as sophisticated purification processes leading to porphyrin and metallo- porphyrin compounds. He also worked on other materials used to stabilize metal oxide semiconductors, devices that were just beginning to be developed. In addition, he was involved in the synthesis of liquid crystal materials and he prepared the first materials that Heilmeier and Zanoni used in their experiments. As mentioned previously, he was responsible for recruiting me t o join his research group and together we developed the world’s first room temperature nematic liquid crystal^.^ In 1970, Goldmacher left RCA t o help form Optel Corporation, where he served as Vice President o f Research and Development working on the first LCD watches, calculators and digital instruments. After seven years at Optel, Goldmacher co- founded Springwood Electronics with two other principals. Springwood was a rnarketing organization that was involved in the sales and distribution o f various consumer electronic products that used LCDs. He has pulilished numerous technical papers and holds 29 patents in the fields of liquid crystals and optoelectronics. He is also a co-recipient of RCA’s highest award, the David Sarnoff Team Award in Science.

In 1965, Goldmacher began looking at ways t o synthesize liquid crystals that could operate at room temperature. After the discovery of the Guest-Host effect, this effort expanded and other chemists, including myself, joined the team. In addition to us, this group of chemists also included Jean Kane, Leonard Korsakoff, Frank Allan, and LUC Barton, who had been working with Heilmeier and Zanoni, as mentioned previously.

Barton was an important member of the team; he was also the oldest and most experienced. His legal name is Lucian Anthony Barton, but his original name from birth was Lucjan Bartoszewicz. He was born in 1921 in Warsaw, Poland. As a young man, he fought with the Polish Amy in 1939-1940 against the invading Nazis, who executed his Father. Barton was

Discovery 25

captured by the Nazis and placed in a forced labor camp, where he nearly died o f stamation; prisoners resorted to eating grass in order t o survive, according t o his account.'" Fortunately, the Russian Red Army on their relentless march through Eastern Europe liberated him, He was transferred to Lithuania where he went underground and eventually fought with the British against the Nazis. Barton was awarded three medals from Poland and four medals from Great Britain for his bravery during the war. He left the army in 1948 and went to Italy where he enrolled at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin to pursue a doctorate in chemistry, although he did not complete all the 1'h.D. requirements. Barton moved to the 1J.S. in 1951 and attended Rutgers Liniversity. From 1952 to 1955, he worked for the Thiokol Chemical Corporation. He started working at RCA Laboratories in 1955 where he first worked on photoconductors for military research programs, solar cells, electroluminescent materials, and penetration phosphors for television tubes. Following his work on LCIls, for which he was a co-recipient o f the David Sarnoff Team Award in Science, he worked on the video disc program, developing improved storage media for high- density-recording. Barton retired in 1981 and moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where he currently resides.

The chemistry team's strategy was twofold: (1) add small amounts o f organic compounds to nematic materials to lower its melting point, and (2 ) synthesize individual compounds that had the potential to show nematic mesomorphism at room temperature. Barton, who made numerous mixtures of nematic and smectic compounds as well as other mixtures that had low melting materials added to nematics with high thermal stability, was pursuing the former strategy. While the melting points were indeed reduced, the nematic-isotropic temperature also decreased dramatically. In other words, the mixtures had short nematic ranges. My job was to investigate the latter strategy.

When I joined the team, I had very little knowledge of liquid crystals; whatever I did know was what Joel Goldmacher had told me. I can still remember the amazement of seeing crystals held in a capillary tube, which was immersed in hot oil, melt to form a turbid liquid that then became clear sharply at a higher temperature. In my previous experience, crystals always melted to form a clear liquid; the higher the melting point, the purer the material. It was a well-known scientific fact that adding small amounts of extraneous materials to a pure compound would lower its melting point. Now I was looking at a material that was indeed pure, but it exhibited this unique state of matter between the crystalline solid and

26 Liquid Gold

isotropic liquid states. Thus, I was anxious to learn as much as possible ahout these fascinating materials.

It has always been my philosophy that one must learn as much as possible about a field before embarking on any research projcct that involves some aspect of that field. For example, when I started working in rocket propellant research at Thiokol, I read everything I could about rocket propulsion and space flight to understand all the important factors and parameters that determine the suitability of material for that application. ’l’his philosophy has served me well through the years, and I continue to believe in it to this day. Consequently, my first task was to read Gray’s book from cover to cover, as well as all other relevant papers and review articles on the subject before doing anything else. The more I read, the more I learned how the structural features o f a molecule determined whether a specific compound would or would not exhibit liquid crystallinity. Soon I became excited about going to the kdbOrdtOIy and synthe- sizing some o f these materials, which I proceeded to do.

A l t h ~ ~ g l i nematic mesomorphism had been observed in a variety of molccular structures, the large majority of compounds that exhibited the phase at that time were known as aromatic Schiff base derivatives. Aromatic compounds are based on benzene, which has a very distinctive aroma, hence the name. The Schiff bases we used were prepared by con- densation of benzene ring-substituted aldehydes with similarly substituted amincs. These benzylidene aniline compounds were also referred t o by the shorter name “anil.”

Our initial work involved the preparation of anils substituted with a variety o f groups in the para positions of both rings.” However, only nine o f the 21 new compounds exhibited nematic behavior. Another idea was to substitute fluorine atoms for hydrogen atoms.12 Several compounds showed very high nematic thermal stability, but the melting points were also very high. IJnfortunately, the fluorine atoms in these molecules create increased lateral interactions between nearest neighbors, which tend t o impart smectic mesomorphism instead. of the nematic state that we sought.

On the basis o f a comparison with three-ring anils, it was concluded that a critical balance of lateral and terminal intermolecular attractive forces must be attained in order for mesomorphism to occur in two-ring anils. A PdVordbk balance is created by the presence of alkyl (carbon and hydrogen atoms), alkoxy (carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom), and acyloxy (carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms) groups in the para positions of the rings, and a number of compounds containing

Discovery 27

these groups were therefore prepared. Thus, all of the experiments pointed us in the direction of smaller molecules, such as the two-ring anils, as a way to achieve both low melting point and high nematic thermal stability, that is, a wide nematic operating range that included room temperature. This led to the synthesis of two-ring anils with the alkoxy and acyloxy groups having different numbers of carbon atoms. This strategy was successful and led to one compound that had a melting point of 50°C and a nematic range that extended to 133OC. The structural formula of this compound is shown in Fig. 2.5A. Two other compounds in this series (Figs. 2.513 and 2.5C) had high nematic thermal stability, but their melting points were higher.

These experiments, which took place in August and September of 1 c)65,'3 led me to the conclusion that in order to maintain high nematic thermal stability while at the same time reducing the melting point, it would be necessary to make mixtures of nematic compounds that differed only in the number of carbon atoms in the terminal side chains. In this way, I theorized that the disruption of the critical balance of lateral and terminal intermolecular forces would be minimized. Consequently, I started a systematic series of experiments that involved making binary mixtures of compounds that

A Nematic Range: 50- 113OC

Nematic Range: 81 - llO°C

C Nematic Range: 82-113OC

Fig. 2.5. Structural formulas of two-ring a d s used to make the first room temperature nematic liquid crystal mixtures.

28 Liquid Gold

exclusively exhibited the nematic state and differed only by having one or two more carbon atoms in the side chains. This concept worked and I was excited to discover that while the melting point was significantly reduced, the nematic-isotropic transition temperature of the mixture was only slightly reduced from those of the individual compounds. I also discovered that some of these mixtures would remain in the nematic phase at room temperature for many hours in the so-called “supercooled” state. I felt I was now on the right track, although I still had not achieved true room temperature operation, which we defined as a material having a melting point below 25°C.

If binary mixtures worked, why not try mixing three or more compounds? Sure enough, in March of 1966,14 I discovered that a ternary mixture of compounds with the formulas shown in Fig. 2.5 resulted in a material that had a nematic range of 22-105”C3 Operation at room temperature was finally achieved and practical display devices would soon he possible. Our team then proceeded to prepare numerous mixtures of nematic compounds, many of which had even lower melting points. By building three-dimensional phase diagrams, such as the example shown in Fig. 2.6, one could calculate the exact composition that would give a specific temperature range. This technique o f mixing nematic compounds t o obtain wide operating temperature ranges eventually became the industry standard and is used to this very day to tailor materials to meet specific applications.

4 0 % C

Fig. 2.6. Illustration o f a ternary phase diagram.

Discovery 29

I always believed we were the first t o conceive the idea of mixing individual nematic compounds t o obtain materials with wide nematic temperature ranges. We were certainly the first to prepare materials that were liquid from below 25°C and to use such mixtures to make liquid crystal displays. However, as mentioned previously, we were not permitted to publish ou r results. Several years later,15 Dietrich Demus, working at the LJniversity of H a k , in what was then East Germany, published a paper on the concept of mixing two nematic compounds to obtain the same effects that we observed in 1965. Demus is a very talented chemist who worked on liquid crystals for many years at Halle, a place that was world-renowned for liquid crystal research dating back to the early part of the 20th century. A few years ago, I k r n ~ s ' ~ told me that he had been working on mixtures of various types of liquid crystals since 1958. The relevant comments from his message are as follows:

I ' . . . l'hank you for telling the story of the mixture development with many details, which I did not know. The H a k story is different. We investigated the phase diagrams of many binary systems, and in few cases ternary systems, in order to achieve the now well-known classification o f liquid crystals (smectic A, U, C . . .>. In 1958, this work started and was continued using a broad substance basis. From these phase diagrams we knew very well, that in general, the melting temperatures can be non-linearly decreased in mixtures specially when eutectics are formed, but the clearing temperatures in most cases showed nearly linear dependence from the clearing temperatures o f the components. From 1959 to 1965, we have published a lot o f examples showing this behavior. I already kiad experience with say 150 or so phase diagrams of liquid crystals, when in 1965, colleagues making NMR investiga- tions asked me if I would be able to produce liquid crystals for room teinperature use. I checked the available materials and found some binary mixtures, which could l x supercooled t o room tcinperatiire and I)elow, for very long periods without crystallization. Part o f this work was published in January 1967, and I remenilier having sent a sample t o Prof. Luclihurst in England, who used it for NMR investiga- tions. From our side there was no more interest in low melting mixtures until 1969, when we started the development of materials for displays. In the beginning, we ~ ised the stock of old inaterials stemming from Vorllnder, and step by step, we developed o u r own materials. Because Schiff's tmes seemed to tie too unstatde, we concentrated on the synthesis o f esters. Tlie first members of the series o f Schiff's bases, which you used in your patents h d been synthesized already by Vorknder about 60 years ago."

Dietrich Demus August 16, 2000

30 Liquid Gold

Therefore, according to Ikmus, the research group at H a k had been investigating liquid crystal mixtures for several years prior to the work we conducted in 1965. However, none of that work appeared in any publication that we were aware o f at the time, although we were certainly aware of the &as- sical work on smectic materials that Dietrich Demus and Horst Sackmann had done. Also, it is not completely clear from the Ilemw letter that the Halle group was working on mixtures of nematic compounds prior to 1965. In a more recent communication, Demus mentioned that most o f their applied research results were hidden in patents and never published elsewhere.

There is a myth that has been around for many years proclaiming that these early Schiff base materials were somehow “unstable,” implying a rapid breakdown of the structure. The fact is that pure Schiff bases are quite stable as long as they are kept away from basic reagents und water. The same is true of any compound that contains an ester linkage as part o f its chemical structure. We tried to use esters to make LCDs in the early 1970s, but found them t o be more susceptible t o base-catalyzed hydrolysis than Schiff bases.’8 A mixture of pure Schiff bases in a closed Pyrex vial will retain its properties for many years at room temperature. Open to the air, however, the compounds will oxidize slowly just like nearly all other organic compounds. Also, moisture from the air can slowly cause hydrolysis o f the material if small amounts of base are present in the material or enter from an adjoining source like so& lime gla In addition, Sorkin and Denny’” found that small amounts of base and water can cause a mixture of Schiff bases t o undergo “transanilization,” whereby the free amines and aldehydes reform new liquid crystal compounds, changing the nematic- isotropic transition temperature slowly over time.

For these reasons, it was so important to develop sealing techniques that prevent air and water from entering the cell. This is as true today with the current liquid crystal materials being used as it was in the mid-1960s. Initially, we used epoxy sealing since these materials provide an excellent harrier to moisture and air. Later, when the first 1,CDs were inanufactured in high volume, the fledgling industry shifted over to all-glass sealing in order t o obtain a true “hermetic seal.” However, the industry eventually returned to epoxy seals because it afforded a much lower manufacturing cost and higher production volume.

This will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters, but the point is that Schiff bases were very successfully used in early manufacturing of L U I S . The trick was to have a “passivating” layer o f material between the soda lime glass and the surface alignment material. This

Discovery 31

passivation prevented the migration of sodium and hydroxide ions from the glass surface into the liquid crystal material even at elevated temperatures. In the 1970s, Balzers in Liechtenstein produced glass that had indium-tin oxide, the transparent electrode material, deposited over a layer o f silicon dioxide, which coated the raw glass and acted as the passivating layer. In the mid-l970s, this glass was the standard material used at Fairchild Semiconductor’s LCD manufacturing plant in Palo Alto, California. The display cells used Schiff base mixtures along with glass-to-glass seals t o produce hundreds of thousands of reliable digital watches. I still have the 100,000th watch made with these materials.

By the time epoxy sealing came into wide use, the world shifted over to the biphenyls, which were much superior to Schiff bases because they were not affected by hydroxide ions (unless they had ester groups present), although sodium ions that migrate to the surface cause misalignment by disrupting the attractive forces between the LC molecules and the surface alignment material. Consequently, passivating layers are still in use today for passive LCDs using current liquid crystal materials that are not Schiff bases. However, displays based on the use of thin-film transistors (‘FTs), known as “active matrix LCDs,” use sodium-free glass because sodium ions play havoc with the transistors’ operation.

Additional discoveries and refinements were made at IKA in subsequent ycars and they will he discussed in the next few chapters. What I have tried to convey in this chapter is that an atmosphere of high creativity and excitement existed at the David Sarnoff Research Center during those early years. We were a young group of scientists and engineers, all in our late 20s or early 3Os, seeking t o make our mark in the world of new materials and technology. It seemed as though each week we would uncover some new physical phenomenon or new material that led us on the path of accomplishing our goals, which were to develop new forms of displays for television and other applications. It was truly an exciting and rewarding experience.

Some years ago, I read an article in which a Japanese researcher said that RCA did not recognize that liquid crystal displays would be a technology for flat panel television; he apparently assumed that all these developments involved serendipity. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the very beginning o f the research, the goal was to develop a flat panel television and liquid crystal technology was believed to be one possible way to achieve that goal. Science is not about blindly performing experiments and suddenly finding some new discovery. True science is about studying a problem, postulating ways to solve that problem, performing carefully-designed

32 Liquid Gold

Fig. 2.7. The original LCI) clcvelopment team ;it RCA 1alx)rxories. From left t o right: I.ucim Ikulon. Joseph C;istellano, George Hrilmeier, Joel Golclmacher and Louis Zmoni.

experiments that may lead t o the solution, and finally interpreting the results o f the experiments. This may lead t o more theories and more experiments until the problem is solved. This conforms to an old saying, purportedly attrilxited to Confucius,”’ that proclaims. ” N o experiment is a failure until the last experinlent is 21 S L I C C ~ ’‘ We worked the problems until they were solved and I ;in1 proud t o have Iieen part o f that effort.

While it took much longer than anyone would have drearned, you can w d k into ;I store today and lxiy ;i flat panel color television set with ;I liquid crystal display screen. In addition, a huge worldwide industry involving hundreds o f other products Ixised o n liquid crystal displays evolved from the work started at KCA Laboratories.

The research team (Fig. 2.7) that led the way was the most talented, creative and dedicated group of colleagues I was ever involved with, and they hecame lifelong friends o f mine.

REFERENCES

1. ( 2 1 ) Eugene Lyons, Duziid Suvmif’(1’yramid Hooks, New York, 1966), p. 370. (13) Alexander 13. Magom, Duziid Sumc!flReseurch Center: RCA Luhs to Sur?io/f’

2. K. Williams, personal communication, June 2002. 3. K. Williams, “Domains in liquid crystals,” .I. Chcm. 1’h.p~. 39, 384 (1963); ~Vuture

199, 273 (1963).

Coipomtiorr (Arcadia Publishing Company, Charleston, SC, 2003).

Discovery 33

4. I<. Williams, Electro-o$tical Elements Utilizing an Organic Nematic Compound, 1J.S. Patent 3,322,485 (19671, applied for Novemher 9, 1962.

5. I<. Williams and G.H. Heilmcier, “Possilde ferroelectric effects in liquid crystals and rekated liquids,” .I. Chem. I’h-ys. 44, 638 (1966). G.H. Heilmeier, “Transient behavior o f domains in liquid crystals,” J Chern. Ph.y.s. 44, 644 (1966).

6. G.11. Hcilmeier and L A . Zanoni, “Guest-Host interactions in nematic liquid crystals, a new clectro-optic effect,” Appl. Pby.7. Lett. 13, 91 (1968).

7. G.H. Hcilmeier, L A . Zanoni, and L.A. I3arton, A Flat Liquid Cystal KcfZectiue Disp1a.y L3ase.d on Dynamic Scattering, RCA Laboratories Company Report, dated Ikxember 1966.

8. G.H. Heilmeier, L A . Zanoni, and L A . I3arton, “Dynamic scattering in nematic liquid crystals,” A]pL Phys. Lett. 13, 46 (1968); Proc. ZIEE 56, 1162 (1968). G.H. Heilmeier and LA. Zanoni, Ikctro-opLical Devices, U.S. Patent 3,499,112 (1970), applied for March 31, 1967.

9. J.E. Goldmacher and J.A. Castellano, Electro-optical Cornposilions and Lleuicm, U.S. Patent 3,540,796 (‘1970), applied [or June 9, 1966.

10. Lucian A. IVarton, personal communication, January 2003. 11. J.A. Castcllano, J.E. Goldmacher, L A . I3arton, and J.S. Kane, “Liquid crystals 11.

Effects o f terminal group substitution on the mesornorphic behavior o f some benzylideneanilines,” ,I. Org. Chem. 33, 3501 (1968).

12. J.R. Goldmacher and L.A. Barton, “Liquid crystals I. Fluorinated anils,” .I: Org. Chern. 32, 476 (1967).

13. KCA Laboratories, David Sarnoff Kesearch Center, Progress Report, October 1965. Ihvid Sarnoff Library, Princeton, NJ.

14. IiCA Laboratories, David Sarnoff Research Center, I’rogress Report, April 1966. Ihvid Sarnoff Library, Princeton, NJ.

15. I). Demus, “Some near room temperature stable nematic liquids,” Zeitschrzft ,fur Natwfcmchung 22a(2) (1967).

16. 1). Demus, personal communication, August 2000. 17. I). Demus, personal communication, July 2002. 18. J.A. Castellano and M.T. McCaffrey, 1973, unpublished results. Work done at

I’rinceton Materials Science. 19. I-Ioward Sorkin and Arthur F. Denny, “Equilibrium properties of Schiff base

liquid crystal mixtures,” Proceedin<qs of the Wurth International Liquid C‘yslal Conference, Kent, OH, August 1972, paper 140.

20. This quolation, preceded by “Confucius says . . . , ’ I was spoken by the actor Sidney Toler in his role as Charlie Chan in a motion picture (circa 1942) that I saw on television as a 15-year-old budding chemist. I doubt that Confucius actually said this, Ixit I was so impresscd by this line that I pinned it up almve the bench of the “lab” I set up in the cellar of my Brooklyn home in 1952. Today, 1 use this quotation as ii screen saver.

Chapter 3

The Gathering

”They (colleagues) do not share with one in the steps of one’s research, but they can read the results, tell in a general way if they have been soundly reached, and profit by them.”

Oliver La Forge, renowned ethnologist, 1942

The most important reason for attending international conferences is the exchange of ideas, as so aptly expressed above by La Forge. Less than four months from the time I began working on liquid crystal research, I was privileged to be invited by George Heilmeier t o join him, Joel Goldmcher and Richard Williams to attend the First International Liquid Crystal Conference, which was being organized by Glenn Brown of Kent State University. This was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn more about what other scientists were doing in this fascinating field and t o meet George Gray, Glenn Brown and the other top scientists from around the world. Also, I was about to submit my first paper on liquid crystals to the Journal of Organic <:hemistry, and I was hoping t o have it previewed by George Gray, whom I respected as the leading research chemist in the field at that time. In addition, Heilmeier invited George Gray to come to KCA 1,aboratories and provide one day of consulting following the conference, so I was confident that I could get his advice.

The conference was held from August 16 through August 20, 1965 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, which is located about 45 miles southeast of Cleveland. Kent State, which was established in 1910 as a teacher’s college, is part of the Ohio State TJniversity system. In the 1960s it was undergoing a major expansion, so many o f the buildings were modern and well-equipped. Glenn Brown and his staff did an excellent job of providing comfortable accommodation for all the attendees in the

34

The Gathering 35

Korb Hall dormitory building. All o f the sessions were held in a large auditorium in the Speech and Music Building.

There were 129 attendees at this first conference. While a large majority of the attendees were actually performing research in liquid crystals, a small number were interested observers seeking to determine if any useful applications could evolve from these exotic materials. It is interesting that only 16 came from outside the 1J.S. - 14 from Europe and two from India. Any international conference held today on liquid crystals o r displays would be dominated by attendees from Asia and Europe and attendance would be in the thousands. This is a testament to the expansion of science and technology throughout the world as a result of the tremendous advances in global communications and transportation,

The lectures’ were given by the top researchers in the field at that time. After the opening remarks by Glenn Brown and Robert White, then I’resident of Kent State University, George Gray presented the first talk, in which he discussed the influence of molecular structure on liquid crystalline properties. Much of this was a reiteration of the principles discussed in his hook, but nevertheless it was very helpful to me as 1 prepared my first paper on liquid crystals. Later on that week, Professor Gray was kind enough t o read my paper and make some useful suggestions. Gray’s talk was followed by James Fergason’s review of the properties of the cholesteric phase in which he explained how the color of these materials change with temperature.

It is important to mention other notable presenters since they were pioneers in the development of the materials and effects that eventually led t o the industrial development of liquid crystal displays:

J.S. Dave, Ilepartment of Chemistry, M.S. University of Baroda, India, discussed the structure-property relationships among various liquid crystalline compounds. Dave had been working on liquid crystal materials since the mid-1950s.

Jean I3illard, Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, College of France, Paris, described the formation of various patterns in twisted-nematic films.

J.H. Muller, U.S. Army R&D Laboratories, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, presented results on the electric field effects in cholesteric liquid crystals.

George I-Ieilmeier, IiCA Laboratories, Princeton, New Jersey, reported on the transient behavior of domains in nematic liquid crystals.

36 Liauid Gold

Gerhard Meier, Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Materials Research, Freiburg, Germany and Alfred Saupe, Institute of Physics, Freiburg University, Freiburg, Germany discussed the dielectric relaxation in nematic liquid crystals.

Richard Williams, RCA Laboratories, Princeton, New Jersey, presented evidence for possible ferroelectric behavior in nematic liquid crystals.

Wolfgang Elser and Juergen I’ohlmann, 1J.S. Army R&D Laboratories, Fort Helvoir, Virginia, described the mesomorphic behavior of choles-

Horst Sackmann, [nstitute for Physical Chemistry, University of H a k , Germany, discussed the problem of multiple phases within the smectic phase. He had previously identified and classified the various smectic

S. Chandrasekhar, Department of Physics, University of Mysore, India, reported on the surfdce tension o f liquid crystals.

H. Kelker, Parbwerke Hoechst, Frankfurt, Germany, discussed the use of liquid crystals as stationary phases in gas chromatography. Four years later, he and his colleague B. Scheurle synthesized the first single compound to exhibit nematic behavior at room temperature.2

teryl carbonates.

phases.

In addition to the papers on materials and electro-optic effects, there were presentations on the use of liquid crystals for scientific measurements and in biomedical research:

Gordon Stewart, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a physician working in epidemiology and pathology, reported on his analysis of the plaque formed in human arteries. He was one of the first to show that this plaque consisted. pritnarily o f liquid crystalline cholesteryl esters of fatty acids. Stewart also suggested that there were cholesterol esters in ovary and adrenal glands.

Ihnald Small, I3oston University, Boston, Massachusetts, presented work on the liquid crystalline behavior of lecithin and bile salts. At the time, he was interested in understanding the pathophysiology of gallstone disease and how cholesterol was carried in membranes and the b i k 3 However, a few years later, he became interested in atlierosclero discovered that some lesions had crystals of cholesterol monohydrate. This led to his ground breaking research4 on the physical-chemical basis of lipid deposition in atherosclerosis. This was the first major study to explain the physical states in which cholesterol and other lipids are

The Gathering 37

deposited in the arterial wall. A review of his research in this field5 through 1987 is often cited in the biomedical literature.

Kolf I Iosemann, Fritz-Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Society, Ikrlin, Germany, discussed his theory of so-called paracrystals, which are thin, regularly-spaced filaments that are often seen in the cytoplasm of various cells. Paracrystals are generally considered to be liquid crystals.

E.J. Ambrose, Institute for Cancer Research, Royal Cancer Hospital, London, England, described work on the study of liquid crystalline structures in living cells.

Lawrence Snyder, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, discussed his work on the use of liquid crystals as solvents for nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique which he pioneered.

Helena Selawry, Department of Medicine, Roswell Park Memorial Institute, I3ufFdlo, New York, explained how liquid crystals could be used for thermotroprographic measurements of inflammatory lesions in humans. For a time, this was an effective way to detect breast cdn- cer, although it eventually was replaced by X-ray mammography.

Anthony Skoulios, Center for Macromolecular Research, Strasbourg, France, described his group’s studies of the liquid crystalline state in various macromolecular systems.

Conmar Robinson, Courtaulds, Ltd., London, England, discussed the cholesteric mesophase in polypeptides and biological systems. W e suggested that liquid crystals provide a model for investigating self- assembly and replicating structures in living cells.

Most of the scientists who presented papers at this conference spent their entire careers working in the liquid crystal field, although not necessarily in areas related to displays. Nevertheless, they were pioneers in the study of these inaterials for applications that led to advances in electronics, chemistry, and medicine, as well as t o numerous consumer and industrial products that have benefited mankind.

This conference was my first opportunity to interact with scientists from other countries and it gave me a new perspective on how other nations view technological as well as political issues. It also enabled me to develop friendships with many European colleagues; some of these have been lifelong relationships. This is in contrast to the comments made by Johnstone(‘ in which he stated that our small group from RCA was not “popular with

38 Liquid Gold

our peers.” This was apparently based on information he obtained in an interview with one of the attendees. Johnstone also interviewed me and quoted me out of context. I totally disagree with his comment that we “strutted around with a superior air, not saying much and making jokes about the work of other researchers.” Some of us did question several speakers on specific issues raised in their presentations, but this is typical of the peer review done at scientific conferences and in no way involved any personal atVack on any individual. Through the years, I have attended many scientific conferences and. seminars where debate and disagreement on various technical issues were far more rancorous than anything that took place at this liquid crystal conference. In no way do these disagreements diminish the respect that the participants in the discussions have for one another.

In addition to the technical sessions, there were many opportunities for social contact among the various participants. For example, some of us would go t o the local watering hole in Kent or to nearby Akron for pizza and beer. These social gatherings created an opportunity for us to learn more about each other’s personality and character as well as to discuss various technical issues. On several occasions, our group included George Gray, Joel Goldmacher, George Heilmeier, Horst Sackmann, Wolfgang Elser and Juergen I’ohlinann. One evening, a group of us drove to Cleveland where we went to an old-time burlesque show, which included irreverent male comedians as well as female strippers. The show was quite entertain- ing and one of our European colleagues commented that this show was hetter tlian anything he had seen in Paris. In the world of 1965, this type of entertainment was presented only in the big cities and was considered risyut.. Today, this type of inaterial is routinely shown on cable television.

The imporkant conclusion that I reached from attending this conference was that while many tdliant scientists were working in the field of liquid crystals, applications to displays in general and television in particular had not yet become apparent.

REFERENCES

1. I-’rogram o f I’apers, First International Liquid Crystal Conference, Kent State University, Kent, OH, August 1965 (Appendix I>.

2. 11. Kelker and €3. Scheurlc, Angewandte C‘hemie 81, 903 (19691.

The Gathering 39

3. Ilonald M. Small, personal communication, January 2004. Dr. Small is now Chairman of the Ikpartmcnt of Physiology 8: 13iophysics at Boston Iiniversity’s School of Medicine.

4. Ihnald M. Small, “l’hysical-chemical basis of lipid deposition in atherosclerosis,’’ Science 185, 222 (1774).

5. Donald M. Small, “Progression and regression of atherosclerotic lesions,” Arteriosclerosis 8, 103 (1988).

6 . Robert Johnstone, We Were Burning (Basic Books, New York, 1999, p. 98.

Chapter 4

The Secret Years

"For there is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest; nor anything concealed that will not be known and come to light."

Luke 8:17

During the years from 1965 through 1967, research on liquid crystal displays at KCA greatly intensified as it became apparent that this new technology could be useful in many applications in addition to flat panel television, so the company decided that the developments being made should be kept secret. Thus, it was not possible for us to publish the exciting results of experiments that were being carried out during those years. It is important t o emphasize that this was not simply some casual experiments to examine a ldbOI-dtOry curiosity, but instead represented a concerted effort to research all aspects of what was believed to bc a new display technology that might lie practical for manufacturing a flat panel television and other consumer or industrkal products. This work was carried out by some of RCAs top scientists and engineers; it was perhaps the largest group working in the liquid crystal field at the time. This research covered a wide spectrum of technical disciplines including: liquid crystal material development and purification; device fabrication and testing; life testing; mechanistic studies; electrical addressing schemes; diode and thin-film transistor development; product prototype construction; and projection development. Some of these developments were previously discussed in Chapter 2, but other interesting materials, processes and electro-optic effects were also discovered that opened new fields for further research, eventually leading to the development of products that were commercialized many years later.

In the material area, for example, Joel Goldmacher discovered tkat a mixture of cis-trans isomers of undecadienoic acid was nematic at room temperature (a nematic range from 24°C to 49°C). This was probably the

40

The Secret Years 41

first room temperature mixture of nematic material ever made. Unfortunately, the material slowly polymerized at room temperature and was deemed to be impractical for use in LCDS.’ At the same time, George Heilmeier discovered that cholestcric liquid crystals, with their unique property o f changing color with temperature, could be used to detect “hot spots” o r possible failure points in solid-state production devices.’ However, it is not certain if he was the first to conceive of this application since James Fergason was also investigating this approach at Westinghouse2-4 during this same time period..

In order to maximize the electrical performance of liquid crystal displays, it was found early on that the purity and resistivity of the material must be very high. While we used all o f the state-of-the-art methods known at that time to prepare the purest materials, low resistivity was still a problem. However, we soon discovered that microfiltration of the liquid crystal material was necessary in order to remove carbon particles that were introduced into the material during the recrystallization process. This technique enabled LIS to obtain materials with a resistivity that exceeded the desired goal of 10“’ohm-cm at 85°C. Today, the use of this and newer methods of purification result in materials with even higher resistivity.

The examination of field effects in chiral liquid crystals, those which exhibit the cholcsteric mesophase, was first initiated in October of 1965. These experiments used “optically active” compounds to produce an electro-optic effect that made the cell turn from optically opaque to clear by application of an electric field.

Even as early as 1965, Heilmeier and Zanoni were experimenting with line-at-a-time television addressing schemes and demonstrated that they could be used with a IXM-LCD. Ey early 1966, it was recognized that electronic ad.dressing of liquid crystals using an “X-Y” matrix-addressing scheme would require diode isolation for each pixeL5x6 Consequently, additional researchers were needed to further investigate this approach, so one group headed by Bernard Lechner and another under the direction o f I>avid Kleitman were brought into the project.

T3ernard Lechner was a leading RCA scientist who had previously worked on plasma and electroluminescent displays. He was one of the first to conceive of using thin-film transistors to drive liquid crystal displays. At that time, however, TFT performance was not adequate. To demonstrate the concept of using active elements to drive the displays, Lechner’s group, which consisted of Edward Nester, Frank Marlowe and Juri Tults, built a two-line, 18-element dynamic scattering LCD using discrete MOS

42 Liquid Gold

(metal-oxide-serniconductor) transistors and an electromechanical shift register to scan the electrode^.^ Iiow selection pulses were applied to the gate tcrminals of the transistors while the column signals were connected to the drain terminals. The liquid crystal cells, in parallel with storage capacitors, were connected t o the transistors’ source terminals. The display was addressed at television rates to produce a moving halftone image. In addition, worst-case disturb pulses were applied to simulate the environment of a 525-line matrix. This was probably the first time that active elements, although not integrated into the device, were used to drive LCDs. While this work was done in early 1968, it was not published until the secrecy lid was lifted.”) The first demonstration of an LCD using integrated TFTs is attributed to T. Peter I h d y , whose work will be described later in this chapter.

Lechner’s group also built a test chip on a silicon wafer (no circuits, just electrodes) with a liquid crystal sandwiched between the chip and a tin oxide-coated glass plate.’ This was done for live testing to determine if there were any interactions between the liquid crystal material and the silicon over a prolonged period under electrical activation; none were found.

Meanwhile, David Kleitman headed a group in the Display Systems Laboratory directed by Alfred Harco. Kleitmdn was an interesting character who would collect old cars in very poor condition and park them in his front yard, sparking complaints from his neighbors, according to reports. Ihwever, he was very creative and a technology visionary. One of his ideas was a copying device the size of a pen. Another was the use of holograms to create a moving three-dimensional picture. The latter became a reality not long after, and I remember first seeing such a display at Walt Disney World in the 1970s.

Kleitman began expanding his group in the summer of 1964 when he hired five new Ph.11. scientists - Fred Spong, Mike Kaplan, Mike De Meis, Istvan Gorog and John van Raalte - without having a clear idea of what they were going to work on, according to van Raalte.“’ They were sent to the Instrument Center in the basement to check out some “available and useful equipment” and to start doing experiments based on the available equipment. Van Raalte started working on electro-optic crystals and light modulation, which was somewhat related to his 1’h.D. thesis. At Kleitman’s suggestion, he then moved on to work on the problem of addressing liquid crystal displays.

John A. van Raalte was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1938. He lived in several European countries during his childhood, then moved to

The Secret Years 43

the 1 J.S. and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving B.S. and M.S degrees in electrical engineering in 1960 and Ph.D. in solid- state physics in 1964. He joined RCA Laboratories shortly after graduation and rernaincd there for 26 years. By 1970, he took over as head of the Display and Device Concepts liesearch Group. Later, he directed research on video disk recording and ultimately became the Director of the Materials and Process Technology Laboratory.

In 1990, van Raalte joined Thomson Consumer Electronics in Lancaster, I-’ennsylvania, as General Manager of CRT Engineering and two years h e r moved t o Genlis, France, to head up the company’s Electron Optics Laboratory. Van Kaak left Thomson in 1999 and joined LG-Philips Displays in Sitlard, The Netherlands, as ‘Technical Advisor to the General Manager. He helped plan and structure new K&I) activities as well as to define new product and process strategies for this joint venture between I’hilips and LG Electronics. He also helped with the integration of the two companies until his retirement in 2002. Van Wake also served as President of the Society for Information 1)isplay for two years. He has published more than 20 technical papers, holds 16 patents, and has received numerous honors and awards.

It was in early 1966 that van Raalte started working on the addressing problem, building on the earlier work of Bernard Ixchner’s group, which was mentioned above. Van Kaalte also recognized the need for a diode or thin-film transistor (TFT) array to address a flat LCD for television purposes, but TFT work was in its infancy at that time. At IICA, the leading researcher in TFTs was Paul Weimer, who was working on TFT shift-registers using tellurium and cadmium sulfide. With Weimer’s guidance, van Raaltc worked briefly on cadmium sulfide TFTs, but that didn’t seem to work very well, since they were marginally unstable and had rather poor rectifying characteristics. He also made some “diodes” out of zinc sulfide (continuous, evaporated layers) that seemed very promising. The beauty of this approach was that the rectifier (diode-layer) was one continuous film that exhibited strong (sharp) diode-characteristics by virtue of electron injection from the zinc sulfide into the LCD. However, van Kaalte ceased this work when he shifted his emphasis to projection technology.

The idea to use an electron beam to address liquid crystals at television

uum system to test the idea. He used a “wire-glass-mosaic” demountable faceplate, which consisted of a fused glass plate with many thin copper wires going through on 20.1 mm centers. A liquid crystal cell was mounted on one side of this faceplate and the assembly was placed inside the

rates occurred to van Rdte , SO he managed to Set Up a demountable vac-

44 Liquid Gold

v;iciiiim chamber. I t was then possible t o scan the faceplate from the back- side with an electron beam, therehy creating a moving television image in tlie liquid crystal cell. ‘I’liis was the world’s first demonstration o f an off- the-air moving picture on a liquid crystal display. Details o f this device \vere presented two years later.”,” A sketch o f the device and photos o f off-the-air programming are shown in Fig. 4.1,

Excitedly, van Kaalte asked Barco, the Laboratory Director, t o see the demonstration. but Harco had no interest for reasons that van Kaaltc could never unclerstand. Perhaps it was because there was a shift in emphasis at IiCA away from long term research projects t o applied research that would give quicker returns on the investment o f research and development dollars. This was a short-sighted approach that would ultimately lead t o tlie decline o f KCA 21s 21 technology innovator.

Many years later. Tektronix researchers would develop an electron lxm- atlclressecl LCI) using 21 very thin glass plate instead o f van Raalte’s wire-glass mosaic: they achieved impressive results in a television projector that was

Fig. 4.1. Sketch o f electron I,eam-addressetl system with dynamic scattering LCD mosaic faceplate for projection application. I’hotos o f off-the-air programming are also shown.

The Secret Years 45

demonstrated at a Society for Information Display exhibition. However, I'ektronix never commercialized a product based on the technology.

This display showed the potential o f LCDs for television if the addressing prohlem could be solved and showed that one could use LCDs either f o r direct-view o r projection purposes. It would take another 14 years Ixfore Seiko demonstrated a TFT panel o f similar size (-1 sq. inch). The projector van Kaalte used was similar t o the one used for a reflective, on- axis deformal,le film projector. A projected image o f a television test pattern is shown in Fig. 4.2. He later developed and patented an off-axis, reflective optical system with Victor Christiano for a deformable film projector, that had much better contrast, and many similarities to some of the optical systems used by Texas Instruments in their digital micromirror devices. which were cleveloped many years later. Later, van Raalte worked on a Schlieren light valve concept."

Meanwhile, George Heilmeier Ixgan attracting other scientists and tech- nologists from within the Ilavid Sarnoff Research Center t o participate in the research. For example, Philip M.' Heyinan assisted Heilineier in performing detailed studies o f the electro-optic characteristics o f the devices in order t o elucidate the mechanism o f their operation. In xldition, D.M. Perkins and Edw;ird E'. Pasierl, were recruited t o investigate the electrical characteristics

Fig. 4.2. J o h n \':in Ilaalte c1emonstr:iting ;I projected image from the dynamic scattering LCI).

46 Liquid Gold

of various semiconductor and thin-film transistor devices that could ultimately be. used to drive liquid crystal devices in a television display. Perkins and Pasierb tested such materials as thin-film polycrystalline gallium arsenide and cadmium sulfide. Later, Pasierb joined Heilmeier’s group to exclusively investigate the properties of thin-film devices for use with liquid crystals.

Another effort concerned the use of silicon-on-sapphire, an emerging technology that offered much promise for future high performance integrated circuits. Joseph Burns, David Ilumin and li. Silver assisted with the preparation of these devices.

Other laboratories, most notably Westinghouse, Bell Telephone Laboratories, General Electric and Hughes were also investigating TFTs. The idea to replace single crystal devices (i.e., silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide), which at the time were limited to a few inches in diameter, with thin-film circuits that could be applied over larger areas, was very compelling.

At Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, T. Peter Brody, encouraged by KCA papers on cadmium sulfide TFTs, began working on these devices in the early 1960s. The story of TFT development and Brody’s pioneering work in using these devices to make LCDs will be covered in Chapter 12.

REFERENCES

1. KCA Laboratories, David Sarnoff Research Center, Progress Reporl, October 1965. David Sarnoff Library, Princeton, NJ.

2. James 1,. Fergason, “Cholesteric structures 111: thermal mapping,” New York Acudemy of Sciences, Series ZI 29, 26 (1966).

3. James L. Fergason, “Liquid crystals plot the hot spots,” Electronic Design 15 (1967).

4. James 1,. Fergason, “Liquid crystals in non-destructive testing,” Appl. Opt. 7, 1729 (1968).

5. KCA T.aboratories, David Sarnoff Research Center, Progress Report, January 1966. 1)avid Sarnoff Library, Princeton, NJ.

6. RCA Laboratories, 1)avid Sarnoff Research Center, Progress Report, February 1966. Ihvid Sarnoff Library, Princeton, NJ.

7. 13ernard J. Ixchner, personal communication, June 2003. 8. 13ernard J. Lechner, Frank J. Marlowe, Edward 0. Nester, and Juri Tults, “Liquid

crystal matrix displays,” Proceedings qf the 1969 IEEE International Solid-Sate Circuits Conference (February 1969), p. 52.

9. 13crnard J. Lechner, Frank J. Marlowe, Edward 0. Nester, and Juri Tults, “Liquid crystal matrix displays,” Proc. Proc. IEEE 59, 1566 (1971).

The Secret Years 47

10. John A. van Kaalte, personal communication, January 2003. 11. John A. van Kaalte, “lieflective liquid crystal television display,” Proc. U?EE 56,

22. John A. van Kaalte, “Reflective liquid crystal television display,” International

13. John A. van liaalte, “A new schlieren light valve for television projection,”

2146 (1948).

I<lectron Devices Meetiq, October 24, 2968.

.I. Appl. O p . 9, 2225 (1970).

Chapter 5

Going Public

"The Radio Corporation of America has announced that i t has developed a new technology - liquid crystals - that could have a major effect on the electronics industry."

Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1968

Sometime in the early spring of 1968, HCA management decided that it was time to reveal the results o f its liquid crystal research to the general public. I3y this time it was clear that building a television set with devices based on these materials would not be forthcoming for many years and, in any case, KCA believed that it had a big lead in the development of the technology. Since KCA's legal staff was processing many patent applications, the company felt safe in "going public" with its developments.

In preparation for the public announcement, Heilmeier, Zanoni and other staff members designed and built prototype displays that would be used t o demonstrate the potential applications for the devices. The idea was to emphasize the fact that the technology could be applied to many different applications, not only television. Among these were a numeric indicator, a small electronic window, a television test pattern, and a fully functional, solid-state digital clock, the first of its kind.

Photos of these early devices are shown in Fig. 5.1 through Fig. 5.4. In addition, a two-line, 18-element dynamic scattering LCD was built by Bernard Lechner's group (see Chapter 4). This device used individual field effect transistors hard-wired to the display and an electromechanical shift register to scan the electrodes.

And so, on T~iesday, May 28, 1968, a press conference was held in New York City at a small auditorium on the ground floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, then known as the KCA Building (now the GE Building). Some 60 reporters from the major newspapers, magazines, and news services that

48

Going Public 49

Fig. 5.1. A seven-segment numeric indicator with ;I dynamic scattering I.CD k i n g held Ronald Friel.

Fig. 5.2. An electronic window that Ixcanie opaque when the author applied an clectric field t o the dynxnic scattering LCI).

had their headquarters located in the New York metropolitan area attended the conference. In addition, top executives from KCA and members of the liquid crystal display research group were present.

After presentations by George H. Brown, RCA’s vice president o f rese:irch and engineering, and James Hillier, vice president o f KCA Lilioratories, George Heilmeier presented the details o f how the devices work and descrilxd some o f the potential applications for the displays. This was followed by an extensive question-and-answer period. At the luncheon reception that followed the formal meeting, some of the

50 Liquid Gold

Fig. 5.3. A television test pattern shown on ;I clynxmic scattering LCI) in reflected light ;IS George Heilmeier activated it.

Fig. 5.4. K o l x r t 120hm:in. KCA Scientist, compares his mechanical \vristwatcli \\it11 an all-solid state clock tha t uses ;I dynamic scattering I,CI).

reporters interviewed inclividual memhers o f the staff. For example, Joel Goldmacher and I spent quite a hit o f time with William K. Stevens, a reporter f o r 7'he IYL'ZL~ York 7imcrs, and David Francis o f the Christian Science Morzitor explaining the operation o f the display as well as its

Going Public 51

potential applications. The article by Stevens was syndicated to many other papers and in the next few days following the press conference, newspapers in more than 30 cities reported the story across the country.l

Nearly all of the stories discussed the possibility of liquid crystal displays being the answer to the long-awaited thin television screen that could be hung on a living room wall like a painting. Also of interest was the application to all-electronic clocks and wristwatches with no moving parts as well as pocket televisions, auto dashboard displays, and electronic window shades. The publicity generated by these stories sparked a flood of inquiries to KCA’s public relations office and within the next few months, a number of major magazines also featured articles about the development.2 Eventually, newspapers in other countries picked up the story. The secret was out - liquid crystals had great potential for use as an electronic display medium.

The impact o f this announcement was truly remarkable. Suddenly, researchers around the world realized that liquid crystals were more than an interesting inaterial to probe in a laboratory - they might indeed he important for advanced electronic display devices. One of these was James Fergason, who was then working at Kent State IJniversity’s Liquid Crystal Institute. On the day following the RCA press conference, The N i York Times reported that he said the RCA disclosure was of practical importance because, to his knowledge, it was the first one showing success at room temperature and the first one suggesting specific devices. Fergason soon shifted his research to displays, leading to the “twisted-nematic display” about 18 months later. The discovery of the twisted-nematic display is a fascinating and controversial story, which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.

Meanwhile, back in Princeton, the RCA liquid crystal group intensified its efforts to further develop the new technology. One of the early developments was that of an optical storage effect, which Heilmeier and Goldmacher discovered in the spring of 1968, just prior to the public announcement.j A device that could store an image indefinitely and change it at Some later time was compelling because it would enable the development of extremely low power displays and perhaps make possible some unique applications. This concept was realized by using a mixture consisting of 90% anisylidene-paminophenykdcetate, a nematic liquid crystal, and 10% cholesteryl nonanoate as the active material sandwiched between two glass plates coated with tin oxide. The researchers found that by applying a DC or AC field less than 100Hz to the cell, the appearance changed from transparent to opaque. The appearance to the naked eye

52 Liquid Gold

was very similar to that shown in DSM cells, but the milky-white opales- cence remained even after the field was removed. The cell could be returned to its clear state by applying a higher frequency (>700 Hz) signal. 1Jpon removal of the high frequency AC signal, the sample remained in its clear state. These early samples were held at 90°C and over several hours the stored image began to fade. However, to my knowledge, this was the first dcmonstration of “histability” (two stable states that could be inter- changed liy electrical activation) in a liquid crystal cell. In later years, improvements in materials and techniques would result in images that could be stored almost indefinitely. Also, the work inspired more detailed studies of the effect by Werner Haas, Joseph Wysocki, and James AddmS at the Xerox Research Center in Webster, New York. Haas gives an excellent review of this early work.4

While histability or optical storage seemed like concepts that would lead to interesting commercial products, the technologies, whether they were 1,CD or others, did not make it much beyond the laboratory stage for many years. Now, more than 30 years later, bistable devices of various types (not necessarily lmed on liquid crystals) are beginning to appear in some commercial products such as electronic window shades and automo- bile rear view mirrors. There is much talk about their use in electronic books, cell phones, and personal digital assistants, but time will tell if these will become major market segments for bistable displays given the low cost of the conventional I,CI>s now being used.

After having developed room temperature mixtures for the dynamic scattering mode (DSM), we turned our attention back to the Guest-Host effect, which we felt would have great potential for color display application. One of my tasks was to prepare dichroic dyes in the primary colors (red, blue, green). These dyes also had to be compatible with the liquid crystal material and they had to show good alignment (a high order parameter) in the medium under electrical excitation. For the dye work, we initially selected dyes with molecular structures that mimicked the size and shape of liquid crystal molecules and were available commercially. Such dyes as methyl red, indophenol blue and isolar green M gave reasonably good results, but we also synthesized other dyes that gave us a variety of colors. In this way, we were able to make high contrast displays in many colors (Fig. 5.5).

The materials used in these color displays had different characteristics than those for the IXM. The DSM material had the technical feature of negative dielectric anisolropy while the Guest-I-Iost effect, which I liked to call

Going Public 53

Fig. 5.5. Panel showing a variety o f small “Guest-Host” color displays Iiacklit by a fluorescent lamp.

electronic color switching, required molecules with positive dielectric anisotropy Liquid crystal molecules by their very nature are long, rod-like in shape making them anisotropic (a perfectly spherical molecule would be called isotropic). When the dielectric constant in the vertical direction is greater than that in the horizontal direction with respect t o the long axis of the molecule, the net dipole moment is at an angle t o the long axis of the molecule (Fig. 5.6A); this is known as negative dielectric anisotropy. However, if the dielectric constant parallel t o the molecular axis is greater than the clielectric constant in the perpendicular direction, then the molecule possesses positive dielectric anisotropy (Fig. 5.6I3).

In order t o obtain the latter feature fo r color displays, we introduced a cyano group (carlmn-nitrogen group) into the para position o f one of the Ixmzene rings in various Schiff base compounds. The initial studies of the effect were conducted with petlioxy1,enzylidene-~’-aminobenzonitrile as the liquid crystal host material. We theorized correctly that the terminal cyano group, ;I strong electron withdrawing group, would give the molecule ;I high positive dielectric anisotropy. ‘This produced the desired result and we achieved room temperature operation by using mixtures of coin- pounds with similar structures.j

This early work was published the following year,6 but first it was presented as a paper at the Second International Liquid Crystal Conference held at Kent State IJniversity during the week beginning August 12, 1968. That the liquid crystal field had attracted much attention from the scientific

54 Liquid Gold

Fig. 5.6. Illustration o f the direction o f the net dipole moment in materials with ( a ) neg:itive dielectric anisotropy ;ind (b) positive dielectric misotropy.

community was exemplified by the significant increase in attendance from the first conference held three years earlier. The 200 attendees at this conference included the world’s top scientists and engineers working in the field at the time. The group o f speakers and attendees were the xime people who participated in the first conference. In addition, however, there were others w h o presented papers o n theories and effects that shaped the technology for the future. Among the more prominent from this group were:

Pierre Chatelain, Institute o f Crystallography, Montpellier, France.

Edward F. Carr, Liniversity o f Maine, Orono, Maine.

Igor G . Chistyakov, Pedagogical Institute, Iwanowo, LJ,.S.S.R.

Frank M. Leslie, [Jniversity o f Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Georges I h r a n d , liniversity o f Paris, Orsay, France.

Geoffrey I<. Luckhurst, LJniversity o f Southampton, England.

Pierre G . d e Gennes, LJniversity o f Paris, Orsay, France, w h o went o n t o receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 for his theories on the structure o f liquid crystals.

In adclition t o myself, the group from KCA Laboratories attending the conference included George IIeilmeier, Joel Goldmacher, Louis Zanoni, Alan Sussman and Wolfgang Helfrich. Both Sussman and Helfrich had recently joined the liquid crystal development group and they both went o n to d o work that c o n t r i h t e d t o the advancement o f the technology. Although I~Ielfrich was primarily ;I theorist, h e uncovered the twisted-nematic effect

Going Public 55

along with Martin Schadt, who was then working at F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Base], Switzerland, at about the same time as James Fergason. The issues of who did what first and where is still a matter of some controversy and will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

The organizers o f the conference arranged for the attendees to be housed in one of the university’s new dormitory buildings. The accommo- dations were quite good, consisting o f suites, so each person had his own bedroom that connected t o a larger, common study area. The group o f Germanhorn scientists who were working at the U.S. Army’s Night Vision Laboratory in Fort Iklvoir, Virginia, set up their study room as a reception area where beer was served. Wolfgang Elser, one of the NVL’s top chemists, invited Joel Goldmacher and me t o attend the evening “meetings” where we met with the NVI, group as well as the prominent German scientists who came over from Europe for the conference. It was strictly a social event, but it enabled us t o become familiar with some of Europe’s top liquid crystal chemists. And, I must say, the beer was also quite good!

In my view, the year 1968 marked a clear turning point in the development of liquid crystal displays for useful applications. l’rior t o the press conference in May of that year, liquid crystals were a fascinating laboratory curiosity with limited, if any, commercial potential. After RCA’s public announcement, which demonstrated the use o f liquid crystals in displays, research in the field intensified dramatically and within a few short years, organizations in Europe and Southeast Asia as well as the U.S. beg ran serious development efforts to fabricate practical commercial products.

REFERENCES

1. Newspapers that reported the story included: Boston Herald Traveler, Chicago Sun Yimes, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Electronic News, Guinsville Sun, Hackensack Record, Home Furnishings Dailj, Los Angeles Times, Michigan Ba.y City Times, New York Dui& News, New York Times, Newark Stur L e d g q Omaha World IIerald, I-’hibde@hia Bulletin, Suginaw N e u ~ , &It Luke City Desert News, San FPuncisco Chronicle, Sun ,Jcise Mercu y, Seallle I’ost-I~itelligencer, Sioux Cily journal, S t . Petershurg Evening IndependenL, 1bcomu Neux Tribunej Trenlon 1 i‘mes, Trentonian, Wall Slreel ,Journal, Wushington Post, Wushington Dai[y News, Winston Salem,Journal.

2. Some of the magazines that featured stories about the RCA development in the next few months following the announcement includecl: Aerospace Technolo~qy, C’hemicul 6 Bngineering News, Spectmm, Machine Design, Marl, Newsweek, Science Neu/s, Time. Technology, Chemical & Engineering News, IEEE Spectrum, Machine Design,

56 Liquid Gold

3. George H. Heilmeier and Joel E. Goldmacher, A New Electric Faeld Controlled Optical Storuge effect in Mixed Liquid Crystal Systems, KCA Technical Report PTK-2467, May 14, 1968; also see Appl. Phys. Lett. 13, 132 (1968).

4. Werner E. Haas, “Liquid crystal display research: the first fifteen years,” MoE. Cyst. Liq. Cyst. 94, 1 (1983).

5. J.A. Castellano, Electro-optic Light Modulator, L J S . Patent 3,597,044 (19711, applied for September 3, 1968.

6. G.H. Heilmeier, J.A. Castellano, and L.A. Zanoni, “Guest-Host interactions in nematic liquid crystals,” Mol. Cyst. Liq. Cryst. 8, 293 (1969).

Chapter 6

N e w Ex p I o ra ti o n s

”In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.“

Sir Francis Darwin, noted botanist and son of Charles Darwin, April 1914

By the end of 1968, the scientific world was certainly persuaded, if not convinced, that displays based on liquid crystal technology offered great potential for future products. This is evidenced by the proliferation of research and development programs that sprung up throughout the world over the five-year period following RCA’s announcement. This led to a remarkable period of exploration and discovery, which resulted in improved materials and new device concepts as well as the first commercial products. It was also a time of intense competition, not only between commercial organizations, but also among scientists and engineers who were looking to be the first to make a breakthrough that would lead to “the next big thing.” For those of us who were fortunate enough to be working in this new field, it was certainly quite an exciting time. This chapter presents my perspective on how these events and developments unfolded.

THE SEARCH FOR NEW PRODUCTS

At liCA Laboratories, further research was performed on development of optical storage and “Guest-Host” color displays, while the work on dynamic scattering was aimed at product development. It was clear that television based on LCDs would require many years of development (the commercialization of integrated circuits was in its infancy), so the focus shifted to products that could become marketable in the more immediate future. Among these were clocks, wristwatches, electronic window shades,

57

58 Liquid Gold

compact calculators and digital test instruments. The first compact desktop calculator was developed by Sharp Corporation. However, that unit used a ixx iun i fluorescent display (VFD) that was invented in 1966 hy Tadashi Nakamura o f Ise Electronics ( n o w Noritake Itron Corporation) in Japan.' This first Sharp model was purchased by KCA in 1767 and the VFD was replaced by a dynamic scattering I,CD with eight seven-segment characters (Fig. 6.1). While Sharp went o n t o produce the world's first commercial truly portalde calculators using LcIls. I helieve this was one o f the first demonstration models o f a n LCD in a working calculator. Almost at the same time, Rockwell International also h i l t a calculator with a dynamic scattering LCD. As clescribed in more detail in Chapter 10, the Rockwell product was the first LCD calculator t o be sold o n the open market. The first working digital voltmeter using a liquid crystal display was also I x d t in 1069 (Fig. 6.2) at RCA Laboratories. Louis Zanoni h i l t these models, although other staff memlxr s were also involved.

Our efforts were rewarded in the spring o f 1767, when the David Sarnoff Outstancling Team Award in Science was presented to our group, which included George Heilmeier, Richard Williams, Joel Goldmacher, Lucian Barton, Louis Zanoni a n d m e . This award was RCA's highest technical honor ; it w a s estaI,lished in 1756 to commemorate David

Fig. 6.1. Eight-digit liquid crystal dynainic scattering display retrofitted into Sharp's first compact desktop calculator. I'hoto courtesy o f Louis Zanoni.

New Explorations 59

Fig. 6.2. First \ \orking digital test meter t o LISC ;I liquid crystal display. This mock1 LVLIS I x i i l t i n 1969. I'hoto coiii-tesy of Louis Zanoni.

Sarnoff's 50th anniversary in the industry. At this time, Kobert Sarnoff, Ihvicl's son, was President and CEO o f RCA, so he personally presented the award t o our group at a ceremony held at the company's 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters in Manhattan. Each of us was presented with ;I gold medal, 21 bronze replica, a cash award, and a framed citation that stated: ". . . fo r basic studies of liquid crystals with imaginative ideas for their application to practical displays.'' I t was truly a huge honor to receive :I medal with the embossed image o f David Sarnoff, a man me Nezii Yo& Times' called ". . . a man o f astounding vision who was able t o see with remarkahle clarity the possibilities of harnessing the electron." This medal still sits on a shelf above my desk. Heilmeier and other members o f his group, including myself, were developing improved materials as well as performing fundamental studies on the operating mechanisms behind the various liquid crystal electro-optical effects that had been discovered. LJnfortunateiy, the time t o perform the number of experiments required far exceeckd the nutidier o f hours in a day, so new staff members were added t o the team. Among these were chemists Michael McCaffrey, Chan Soo Oh and Alan Sussman. In addition, Edward I'asierb and Konald Friel, Iwth of

60 Liquid Gold

whom carried out detailed electro-optical measurements as well as fabricating devices and prototypes, provided technical support. On the lighter side, we always had time to enjoy ourselves when we took a break from LCD research as shown in Fig. 6.3.

Wolfgang Helfrich, a solid-state physicist, also joined the team to perform fundamental studies and refine the theories of device operation. Helfrich's contrilxitions in these areas will be discussed later in this chapter.

During this period, KCA secured contracts from various government organizations to further pursue research that might lead to products for military and/or civilian use. Among the agencies that funded this research were the Air Force Materials Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force h s e , Dayton, Ohio, The Air Development Center, Rome, New York and the Langley Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Hampton, Virginia. The Air Force work involved research on liquid crystals for electro-optical storage systems that might be used in military aircraft,j while the NASA project was aimed at developing electronically tuned optical filters..i To assist with these projects, additional physicists and electrical engineers joined the group. This included Deitrich Meyerhofer and Lawrence Goodman.

Fig. 6.3. During ;I break from doing LCD research, several members of the "licluid crystal mafia" posed for the camera. From left t o right: Chan Soo Oh, Michael McCaffrey, the author, Ronald Friel and Edward l'asierb.

New Explorations 61

As part of the work on the Air Force contracts, the RCA team built the first prototype aircraft instruments to use liquid crystal displays. Among these were a simulated airborne ground position locator and an engine monitoring display. These prototypes used the cholesteric-nematic phase change (storage) effect as well as the dynamic scattering effect.

For the NASA project, we built a three-layer display using the Guest- Host effect with a subtractive color scheme to maximize light transmis- ion.^,^ Each layer could change the transmission of polarized white light in response to an electric field. The concept was to have one layer change from colorless to magenta, a second layer from colorless to cyan, and the third layer from colorless to yellow. In principle, by modulating the electric field o f each layer, it would be possible to obtain substantially all the colors o f the visible spectrum when starting with light that passes in tandem through all three layers.

Many years later, in the 1980s, Steven Hix, founder of In FOCUS Systems, working with Terry Scheffer, A r k Conner and Paul Gulick, used this concept (with considerable improvements in material and device operation) to h i l d a stacked color LCP) panel that could be mounted on an overheard projector to present computer generated graphics on a large screen. At that time, 'I'elex, Chisholm, Proxima and several other companies in addition to In Focus were working on similar products. According to A r k Conner,6 the first In Focus product used a yellow-blue SuperTwisted- Nematic LCD (the invention o f this effect will be discussed in a later chapter) with 640 X 200 (horizontal X vertical) pixels. This was soon replaced by a 640 X 480 pixel (VGA format) panel in black and white. Eventually, the display panels were manufactured in Japan by Kyocera, a company that developed a Chip-on-Glass (COG) technologT that enabled the panels to 'ne instantly transmissive since all of the panel was open to light. Conner was asked to develop a full-color system shortly after he joined In Focus in Ilecember 19x8, and he immediately thought of using a subtractive color scheme. Steve Hix considered stacking of the panels, but wondered how it could lie done. Conner began working on the stacking method and demonstrated a crude prototype in January 1989. His design really was optimal if one could change the rubbing angles for each layer. After a day of meetings with Kyocera in Japan, Hix, Gulick and Conner convinced the company to make a custom panel set with specified rubbing angles, but without the polarizers, something which In Focus would do later. Conner spent many hours trying various film combinations, but the real improvements came when he found better color polarizers from Sanritsu and

62 Liquid Gold

convinced Kyocera to improve the contrast of its ten-inch diagonal VGA displays. Later, In Focus commissioned Kyocera to build a five-inch diagonal set and put it into the first true data-grade VGA portable, the In Focus LitePrc).

In 1996, researchers at Toshiba developed improved yellow, cyan and magenta dyes and by using the tri-layer concept, built one o f the best reflective color displays shown up to that time.’

Another device built at RCA Laboratories was a display with side-by- side electrodes on only one substrate; these were called interdigitated electrodes.8 The reason we chose to develop such a display was to reduce the relaxation time and to eliminate the need for two substrates coated with transparent conductive coating. By using this type of electrode structure, it was possible to use very small spaces between the electrodes (limited only by the photolithographic process used to pattern the electrodes). This resulted in a reduction in relaxation time of more than an order of magnitude. My colleague, Konald Friel, built several animation displays in 1970 to demonstrate the concept with the dynamic scattering effect, but we envisioned that the concept could. apply to any type of L C D . ~

Shortly thereafter, others independently investigated the idea of interdigitated electrodes for LCDS.~ In June of 1971, for example, Anthony G. Genovese, working at Kockwell International, built an interdigitated LCD that operated at less than 3 volts.od The device used chromium electrodes instead o f IT0 because the chrome version had higher transmittance than I’I’O. Then, in 1972, Shunsuke Kobayashi and his students T. Shimjo, K. Kasano and I. Tsunda at the Tokyo Ilniversity of Agriculture and Technology, published a paper describing the use of interdigitated elec- trocles for a dynamic scattering display.9’” Kobayashi was unaware of the KCA patent, so no reference was made to it.

Two years later, Kichard Soref published a paper describing the use of interdigitated electrodes for field-effect LCUs. Soref was working at Heckman Instruments when he performed the work and he obtained a patent,1° which cited the RCA patent.8 However, he made no reference to our work in his paper. The concept bay dormant until 1992, when scientists at the Institut Angewandte Feskorperphysik in Freiburg, Germany, which was led by Guenter I3aur and included K. Kiefer, B. Weber, F. Windscheid and H. Kkausmann, described the use of interdigitated electrodes in a twisted- nematic display to widen the viewing angle of TFT-LCDS.~’J~ Baur’s group coined the term “in-plane switching” to describe the method and it turned out to be a very effective technique. In 1995, M. Ohta, M. Oh-e and K. Kondo

New Explorations 63

at Hitachi Research Laboratories, working with state-of-the-art materials and fabrication processes, used the concept to build a 13.3-inch color TFT-LCD with a very broad viewing angle;13 Hitachi called the new device a “super TF’I’-LCD.” Ilnfortunately, the RCA patent* was not cited in any of these papers, so until this writing, it was not recognized that the KCA group was the first to conceive of a liquid crystal display using side-by-side electrodes. This technique, commonly called IPS for in-plane switching, is widely used today by many companies to produce high image quality color LCIls.

In addition to the government-sponsored research he directed, Heilmcier was busy making the case t o IICA’s management that LCDs should be manufactured for various portable consumer and industrial applications, even while research toward flat panel television continued. He was successful in this endeavor and KCA management decided to transfer this technology to the Solid State Division (SSZ)) located in Somerville, New Jersey. It was expected that the first products would be digital displays for wristwatches, calculators and industrial test instniments. All of us in the LCD group were elated that our research efforts woidd soon lead to products that would be useful to consumers. However, it was not long before we learned that the process of transferring the technology from essentially a laboratory setting to a manufacturing environment would be a long and arduous task. ‘I’lic first problem to overcome was the “NIH (Not Invented Here) fxtor.” Initially, the SSD inanagement was interested in fabricating semiconductors and integrated circuits using processes they were familiar with and resented being directed t o engage in a totally new and untested technologv.

Fortunately, there were engineers at SSD who looked forward to the challenge of taking a new technology to market and were eager to cooper- ate with us to achieve that goal. Thus, after numerous meetings and training seminars, the SSI) engineers became convinced that this would be an exciting technology to be involved in from the ground. up. This was due primarily to the persuasive powers o f George Heilmeicr, who spent quite a bit o f time as a liaison between the Sarnoff labs and SSII.

The second problem was to decide which product would be the target for use with an LCI>. At the Sarnoff labs, we felt it should be a digital display for a wristwatch since patent applications had dready been submitted, enabling KCA to have an early lead and possibly a dominant market position. Also, RCA had a strong early position in CMOS (Complirnentary-symmetry Metal Oxide Semiconductor) integrated circuit development; these low power devices would turn out to be ideal for digital watch drivers and timing circuits. I~Iowever, one of the managers at SSD felt that the upper operating

64 Liquid Gold

temperature limit of the liquid crystal material that was being used at that time was not high enough for this application. His comment was that if someone put the watch in his shoe at the beach, the display would turn clear at the high temperature. Not realizing that improvements in material operating temperature range would be forthcoming very quickly, SSD decided not to pursue the wristwatch application at that time. Instead the company decided that point-of-purchase displays would be the ideal application.

In 1970, a point-of-purchase display was simply a colorfully printed advertisement display on cardboard that was located in a retail store; these still exist today. The idea to have a moving image display instead o f a static picture seemed very compelling. Consequently, SSD embarked on a project to build a pilot line to manufacture displays that would be about 12 inches on a side. These displays would be hermetically sealed using the same glass-to-glass and metal-to-glass seals that were being used to manufacture cathode ray tubes, a technology that RCA pioneered and refined to a high degree. Engineers Herman Stern and Henry Schindler were heavily involved in developing this packaging for LCDs. It would ensure high reliability and long life, but it was an expensive manufacturing process that required large, high-temperature furnaces and other handling equipment. In addition, there were no sources for the larger quantities of material needed to fill these panels, so SSD set u p a small liquid crystal production facility under the direction of senior chemist Howard Sorkin. Therefore, through the imaginative and dedicated work of the engineering team at SSD, as well as the personnel from the research center, the pilot line was successfully completed and hundreds of working panels were made.

The moving images on these displays were created by sequentially activating the segments o f the picture, an idea that was originally conceived in 1969 by Louis Zanoni.14 A production prototype was designed and built in 1970 by Richard Klein, Sandor Caplan and Ralph Hansen at SSD.15 This device used copper conductors on a rotating drum that was hidden in the base o f the panel. One of these panels was set up in our laboratory at Princeton and in October 1972, I was privileged to show it to the first scientific delegation from the People’s Republic of China’‘ to tour the 1 1 5 , after President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing earlier that year. The display was so impressive that these visitors initially thought it was a fully operational flat panel television. Fortunately, I was able to explain how it actually worked through a translator.

A number o f different advertising displays were made and sold to Ashley-Butler, a company that installed point-of-purchase displays in

New Explorations 65

various retail establishments. While the LCD point-of-purchase display was a technical success, it was not the type of product that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The advertisers liked the concept, but wanted new designs every three months or so. Therefore, this was not the kind o f high-volume, high-revenue product that RCA was accustomed t o manufacturing.

After abandoning point-of-purchase display manufacturing, RCA’s SSD began looking at manufacturing LCD digital displays for instruments and eventually wristwatches. One of the first products the company built was a single-digit, seven-segment dynamic scattering LCD that it sold commercially. The display glass was 1.25 inches wide by 1.5 inches high and the character size was 0.5 inch wide by 0.75 inch high. The display used a mixture of Schiff base-type liquid crystals and was constructed using hermetic glass-to-glass and glass-to-metal seals. One of these units is still in the pos- session o f Sun Lu, President o f Landmark Technology and an early LCD pioneer whose exploits will be discussed in Chapter 8. Sun LU was working fo r Riker-Maxson in 1971 when he purchased the unit from RCA. In September 2003, Sun Lu activated the display in my presence t o show that it is still in perfect working condition. A photo of the display is shown in Fig. 6.4. The fact that it works now does not say anything about its operating lifetime since it has been dormant for many years, but it does show that

Fig. 6.4. Photo of a working single digit dynamic scattering LCD taken in September 2003. This device, built by RCA’s Solid State Division in 1971, is believed to be one o f the first LCI) digital display models sold on the open market. Photo and demonstration courtesy of Sun Lu.

66 Liquid Gold

the hermetic seal packaging provided long shelf life. When sealed properly, LCDs have tremendously ,long operating lifetimes as well. I still have working 1,CD watches that were made with Schiff base liquid crystals and the frit sealing method in 1976 at Fairchild. And, I have two continuously operating Casio LCT) watches made with polymer seals, which I bought in Japan some 15 years ago. I wear them all the time, changing the lithium Ixtteries every three or four years.

While the Solid State Division was working on point-of-purchase displays, those o f us in central research were busy looking at other applications and some were looking at other opportunities outside of RCA. Most members of our group saw great promise for LCDs in digital displays and we all felt that RCA was going in the wrong direction with the point- of-purchase display effort at SSD.

11 was about this time that 1 saw an article in Chemical i; Engineering News, the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society, which announced that applications were being accepted for the White House Fellowship Program. The program was relatively new, having been formally adopted in 1965. It has since become America’s most prestigious program for leadership and public service. The purpose of the program was to provide gifted and highly motivated young Americans with some first-hand experience in the process o f governing he Nation and a sense of personal involvement in the leadership of society. White House Fellowships, which are awarded on a strictly non-partisan basis, offer exceptional young people first- hand experience working at the highest levels of the federal government.

I thought this was an interesting opportunity for someone like George Heilmeier, whom I believed had the credentials to qualify, so I showed him the article and he seemed very interested. He may have seen it elsewhere before this, but I am not sure. I do know that before long, an agent from the Federal Bureau o f Investigation came to the laboratories asking lots of questions about Ileilmeier, so that was when I found out that he did actually apply. Soon thereafter, he was accepted into the program. This was indeed quite an accomplishment since less than 20 people were selected from more than 1,500 applicants.

With the departure of Heilmeier, the LCD project lost its great champion, as he was the main interface and promoter of the technology to RCA management. Meanwhile, other members of the staff were also looking to go elsewhere. Joel Goldmacher left to become Director of Research for St. Regis Paper Company and Louis Zanoni joined Optel, a company that was being formed by Zoltan Kiss, another one of RCA Laboratories’ top

New Explorations 67

scientists. (‘l‘he story of Optel is important to the history of LCns and will I x discussed in more detail in Chapter 8.) Thus, in a rather short period of time, 1 saw three of my closest friends depart for new ventures.

SPREADING THE WORD

As a result of these changes, some members of the group were assigned to other areas while the smaller LCI) group continued to work on liquid crystal materials and devices. As the project leader, I spent a good deal of my time traveling to various government agencies to secure contracts and/or report on the results of our research activities. Through the diligent efforts of the research center’s marketing group, which included George Hennessy and William Iknnehy, IiCA obtained over $500,000 in LCD research contracts during the period from 196s through 1972.

At one meeting with the head of the U.S. Army’s procurement group in St. Louis, Missouri, we learned that the engine monitoring displays installed in helicopters then being used in the Vietnam War had a very high MTBF (Mean-Time Between Failure). These displays were electromechanical devices that used a moving tape to show the engine’s condition. After seeing the LCD prototype that Dennehy and I demonstrated, this procurement officer, whose name I do not recall, was extremely interested in having RCA build instruments based on this technology. While we very excited that a new product line for RCA could be developed, it was impossible to convince RCA management to pursue this further. There was reluctance to engage in product development with such a new technology. In retrospect, it was prolxhly the right decision because it did take many years o f LCD development before the displays could meet the stringent require- mcnts of military systems. I3y the 19XOs, such firms as General Electric, Rockwell-Collins and Honeywell were investing in developing LCDs for military systems. Today, LCD instrument displays are commonplace in both military and civilian aircraft.

In addition to visiting government agencies, I was also traveling around the country to various KCA divisions presenting seminars on the new tech- no log^. At KCAs large television production facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, for example, I discussed the possibility of replacing the rotary mechanical tuner with a digital LCD, an idea that originated with Heilmeier and Zanoni. While there was interest in this idea, it would be several years before digital displays came into wide use for T V tuners. However, emissive displays based on LEI)s and later VFns were selected instead of LCDs.

68 Liquid Gold

At another seminar I presented at RCA’s electronic component assembly facility in West I’alm Beach, Florida, the idea to build a handheld calculator came up. The idea was so intriguing to the engineers at this facility that they built a mock-up of a handheld calculator to demonstrate how it might look. In fact, two of the senior engineers visited our laboratory shortly thereafter and discussed the concept with Larry Goodman and me. We came up with a plan whereby the displays could be built at SSD and the assembly of the calculator would take place in West Palm Reach. Again, RCA management was not interested in pursing this further. I tried to make the case that these products would soon replace the slide rule, but was told that they would never be cheap enough to appeal to the mass market. At that time, we were unaware that Rockwell had already developed a commercial LCI) calculator for the d e ~ k t o p . ~ ”

Soon, a number o f other companies including Texas Instruments, IIewlett-Packard, Sharp and Casio saw the potential of the handheld calculator and became major players in that business. Today, these products are so inexpensive that they are often given away free as promotional gifts.

In the 1960s, RCA was heavily engaged in negotiations with television manufacturers around the world t o obtain licensing and technology transfer agreements for RCA’s patents on the color picture tube manufacturing process known as the “shadow mask” technology. By 1972, most of these companies had signed licensing agreements and I was told by a manager in the Patents and Licensing Division that RCA was receiving on the order of $85 million in royalties and fees from these and other contracts on KCA inventions. In most cases, licensees were entitled t o receive information about new technologies that KCA was developing. As a result, representatives of kensed companies from Japan and Europe would regularly visit the Sarnoff laboratories to Vake advantage of this technology exchange program. I was often selected to demonstrate the various LCD prototypes and explain the technology to these groups; other staff members would do the same for the new technologies they were developing. This gave me the opportunity to meet people from most of the major television manufacturers in Japan and some from those in Western Europe as well.

As a result of these meetings, I also became well-acquainted with the personnel in RCA’s Patent and Licensing Division. On one occasion, Monday, March 20, 1972 to be exact, we met with a large contingent o f representatives from the Soviet IJnion at RCA’s headquarters in Manhattan. Negotiations between RCA and this group of Russian engineers had just

New Explorations 69

entered its seventh year and the hope was that they would finally sign a licensing/technology agreement.

In addition to myself, several staff members from the Sarnoff laboratories were selected to make presentations. Due to standard protocol, the presentations had to he translated into the native langxage of the visiting delegation; in this case it was Russian. This required us to stop after every few sentences to allow the translator to present the information in Russian to the group; thus, each talk took about twice as long as it should have. Following the formal meeting, there was an elaborate luncheon reception with food supplied by one of New York's finest restaurants and of course quite a seleczion of spirits to relax everyone. It was then t h t we realized every member of the Soviet delegation spoke fluent English! 'rhe Soviet Union did eventually sign a licensing agreement with KCA for the color picture tube and the Russians would also go on t o develop LCD technology on their own.

During this time frame, RCA also had a contract with the Walt Disney Company to provide electronics for the many exhibitions at Walt Disney World then being built in Orlando, Florida. Consequently, we had a visit one day from Roy E. Disney, son of Walt's brother Roy 0. Disney, who co- founded the company. We were told to show Disney the work we were doing on LCDs, so we placed a picture of Mickey Mouse behind a DSM- LCI) window to demonstrate the electronic window shade concept. While Disney liked the demonstration o f the technology, his main concern was that the copyright be prominently displayed in Mickey Mouse's picture, which fortunately it was. This gave me an early appreciation of how the entertainment industry valued intellectual property above all else.

In addition to licensing manufacturers of color picture tubes, KCA had cross-licensing agreements on technology with other companies including IT3M and AT&T. As a result, I spent quite a bit of time making presentations to memllers o f the technical staff from IBM, both at the Sarnoff laboratories and at IHM's Thomas Watson Kesearch Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. IRM was early to recognize the importance of this new technology and in later years, the company did its own very successful development and manufacturing of L C I k

With A"&T, the situation was somewhat different in that the management o f this company took longer to embrace the technology; the company believed it was too early to consider manufacturing products because not enough was known about the fundamental mechanisms of the device's operation. A vice president from Bell kaboratories expressed this opinion

70 Liquid Gold

to me. Nevertheless, I3ell Lab scientists were quite interested in the science of liquid crystals as well as the potential for LCDs. One day I had a visit from Fredcric Kahn, Gary Taylor and Dan Maydan who were very interested in the prototypes that I showed them. Shortly thereafter, these scientists did their own independent work on advancing the technology, including the development of projection systems, which Kahn later pursued himself.

While it took some time, ATCLT eventually made several forays into display manufacturing in the 1980s, before abandoning its efforts and resort- ing to dependence on outside vendors for its displays. 1 had additional interactions with both IHM and AT&T in the 1980s in my later capacity as a consultant; these will be discussed in a later chapter.

In 1971, RCA Corporation was having financial difficulties as a result o f the huge investment it had made in attempting to compete with IBM in the mainframe computer business. Combined with the problems of ahsorbing several large acquisitions that were outside its traditional mainstream consumer electronics business (I-Iertz, Banquet Foods, etc.), the company was incurring large financial losses. Most important to those of us in the central research laboratories, was the announcement of a work force reduction at the Sarnoff center for the first time in its history. Several key members of the XI ) group were released while others were assigned to other projects, making our small group even smaller.

By the suriimer of 1972, things went from l a d to worse, prompting inanagement to completely close down the LCD project. Obviously, this was a devastating blow to those of us who had heen involved in the research nearly from the project’s inception. I was given the opportunity to find another area of research “that I would find suitabk.” I did not have much time to think about a change in direction because within two days, our colleagues in the Patents and Licensing Division rescued the project from extinction. They persuaded management of the need for technical support to help secure licensing agreements that were then in final negotiations. As a result, the project was reinstated and I was able to continue my research activities as well as supporting the efforts of our patent group.

In August of 1972, the Fourth International Liquid Crystal Conference was held at Kent State IJniversity in Ohio. As exemplified by the more than 170 papers given at the conference by authors from all over the world, the world had finally discovered the importance of liquid crystals for displays and other uses. A photo of some of the participants is shown in Fig. 6.5.

New Explorations 71

Fig. 6.5. Some o f [lie pirt icipants ;I[ the Fourth International Liquid Crystal Conference, Kent. Ohio, August 1072. From left t o right: Edward I’asierh, George Heilmeier. Pierre I>e Gennes, Alan Sussnxin and Hou,ard Sorkin. Photo from the xiitlior’s collection.

A NEW BREAKTHROUGH - THE TWISTED-NEMATIC EFFECT

As mentioned earlier. Wolfgang Helfrich was another important member o f I K A ‘ s ILX) research team. €Ielfrich \vas Imrn in 1932 ;ind stuclied physics a t the Irniversities o f Munich, Tiihingen, and GOttingen, where he received the doctorate in 195%. These universities were world-renowned for theoretical physics. having spawned numerous Nobel Prize winners during the 20th century. After spending several years teaching and doing research a t the Ilniversity of Munich, he joined the National Research Council in OttaLva, Canacla in 1964, where he txcatne a fellow and assistant research officer. Helfrich moved t o KCA Laboratories in 1967 when he joined the L(:D group and Ixgan looking at the mechanisms behind the operation of the Eirious effects from ;I physicist’s point o f view. Soon he Ixgan developing models and mathematical expressions to explain inany o f the physical phenomenon that occurred when various liquid crystal materials were su1,jectecl t o electric fields. The results were published in a series o f papers’--” and internal that appeared in 196%1971. reports23--25

72 Liquid Gold

During this period, Helfrich and I shared the same laboratory/office, so we would sometimes discuss the interesting effects that each of us was working on. Some of the equations he developed would take up an entire blackboard and I remember that the mathematical expression for the threshold voltage of dynamic scattering was one such example.

Occasionally, Helfrich would perform experiments to confirm certain concepts that he was examining and would sometimes ask me to look at a liquid crystal cell under the polarizing microscope if he thought it was particularly interesting. On one occasion, he showed me a cell that went from clear to dark in transmitted light under crossed polarizers when an electric field was applied to the cell. It had a low contrast between the O N and OFF states and was therefore not very impressive. The material he used had a positive dielectric anisotropy and was most likely pethoxybenzylidene- p’-aminobenzonitrile (a compound we called PEUAB), and one that he had heen working with for other studies.21 It was also one that was part of the family of alkoxy and acyhxy cyano Schiff bases that we were then using for our Guest-Host experiments. These compounds were used in the room temperature mixtures that we had developed and already described in the patentz6 we applied for in 19668; Helfrich was also well aware of the chemical nature of these materials from internal reports and discussions.

This cell may have been constructed as a twisted-nematic device or it may have had another configuration (i.e. the internal surfaces of both plates rubbed parallel to each other instead of perpendicular), I am not certain. I am also not certain if this was done in 1969 or 1970. However, Helfrich claimed that he explained the idea of electrically activating a twisted-nematic structure to Heilmeier in the summer of 1969, according to Hirohisa K a w a m ~ t o , ~ ~ who interviewed him several years ago.

This would indicate that Helfrich conceived of the twisted-nematic effect at RCA Laboratories, although there are no written documents or notebook entries to confirm the actual demonstration of the effect and its reduction to practice. In any case, Helfrich ceased to explore this concept when our group, including myself, showed little interest in any effect that used two polarizers because of the large amount of light absorption by the resulting device. Consequently, KCA lost a great opportunity to develop what would become a valuable piece of intellectual property.

In the fall o f 1970, Helfrich decided to return to Europe and he accepted a position with Hoffmann-La Koche, a large pharmaceutical company that was engaged in research on liquid crystal materials. There he

New Explorations 73

teamed up with Martin Schadt, a solid-state physicist who joined Hoffmann-La Roche at about the Same time. Both Helfrich and Schadt had backgrounds in electro-optics and organic semiconductors, so it was an excellent match for a research team in LCDs.

Martin Schadt was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1938, and was educated at the [Jniversity of Easel, receiving the doctorate in solid-state physics in 1967. He received a two-year post-doctoral fellowship from the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, where he developed and patented the first blue, organic light emitting diode. In 1969, he moved back to Europe and ticcame a research scientist at the Laboratoire Suisse de Rechere I-Iorlog&c in Neuchstel, Switzerland. He joined the physics department of Hoffmann-La Roche in 1970.

According t o his account,28 the company decided to start a liquid crystal research program because of the biological relevance o f lyotropic liquid crystals in miceks and cell membranes as well as by the prospects for flat panel displays in medical instrumentation. At that time Hoffmann-La Roche had a joint venture with I h w n Doveri & Company (now Asea Brown Uoveri, Ltd.), a Swiss electrical equipment manufacturer, to develop medical electronic equipment.

The two scientists were searching for a novel concept and so focused on field effects. Since I-Ielfrich was already aware of Mauguin’s twisted-nematic structure (Chapter 1, reference 41, from his work at RCA, he suggested to Schadt that they investigate the possibility of electro-optical switching in such a device. And so, Schadt decided t o build a cell with electrodes and Mauguin’s twisted-nematic structure using the liquid crystal material called PEBAB (vide supra), a high melting material that Helfrich had reported in prior studies2’ when he was at RCA. Apparently, Helfrich did not mention t o Schadt that RCA had already developed room temperature mixtures o f Schiff bases using compounds that were part of the PEBAB family, so Schadt’s original experiments used only the single high melting compound.

After extensive experimentation with different surface treatments, different cell gaps, and different driving conditions, the surface alignment was improved to the point where a weak effect became visible under the polarizing microscope. Excerpts from Schadt’s comments28 on the events that subsequently occurred are as follows:

“It was on a Saturday in November 1970 when some areas in TN-samples started t o exhibit switching from a more or less bright off-state into a darker on-state upon

74 Liuuid Gold

application o f only :I few vol ts . The excitement of the two scientists ~ v a s great To improve the initi:illy poor electro-optical performance and t o suppress the high inelling tempel-atures, Schaclt soon started t o comliine different positive dielectric liquid c.r)lst:il components in eutectic mixtures such tha t nematic phases occurred at root11 tcniperatiire. 'l'his improved surface alignment, reprodiicil>ility and contrast o f the cclls. I n p a d c l . nc\\' Schiff Ixise licliiicl ciystals \\ere syntliesizecl Iiy Roche chemists which \vere sensitive t o moisture Iiut ~ v e r e found t o align \\.ell o n Iirusliecl sl1l~str:lteS >I t 1'00111 telllpcl-atLlrc."

After Iia\.ing successfiilly demonstrated the effect, Schadt and Helfrich filed ;i patent o n the t\visted-nematic display on I)eceml>er 4. 1970 in S\vitzerIancI.'" Se\,eral months later, they published the results of their experi~iients~~' and suggested that the twisted-nematic effect promised interesting device applications. The authors reported using a room temperature mixture coinposed o f the same alkoxy and acyloxy cyano Schiff Ixises that \\.ere clescrihecl in K A ' s earlier patent."' Since the patent did not issue until the siiiiinier o f 1971, the information was still not in the public domain. 1 fou.ever, as mentioned alx)ve, Helfrich was aware o f the chemical striic- tiires o f the materials k i n g used :it I K A . In order t o demonstrate the fexi- M i t y o f the new effect for displays, Schadt worked closely with Optical Coating Iiiboratory, Inc. in Santa Rosa, California, t o develop hermetic glass se:iling techniques that were subsequently used to I>uilcl ;I 3.5-digit display p;ineI in 1972 (Fig. 6.6). prol>al>ly one o f the first, fully-functional twisted- nematic ILDs ever macle. The aim w;is to provide :I clemonstration t o the management o f Hoffniann-La Roche on the applical>ility o f the effect t o

Fig. 6.6. I ' l io to o f one o f the \vorld's first fully-functional twistecl-nematic LCIIs. I 'ho to courtesy o f Martin Schadt.

New Explorations 75

practical displays. This early prototype was operable between - 10°C and 65°C. It showed 24 picture elements (pixels) and exhibited a maximum contrast ratio o f 151. The display was made with a liquid crystal mixture that consisted of just two similar liquid crystal compounds with a response time o f 140 milliseconds.

Despite this impressive demonstration, Hoffman-La Roche management was still not convinced that this was a technology for the future. Excerpts of Schadt's commentsz8 on these events continue:

"In the early 1370s the term liquid crystal was unknown to the general public and most physicists displayed deep-rooted skepticism towards fhctional organic inaterials, such as liquid crystals, in electronic devices; they considered them unreliable. This attitude was partly a result of the rather poor perforinance of some of the early dynamic scattering ICDs, as well as of their unawareness of the fascinating and almost unlimited design potential of organic materials. Moreover, there existed strong competition from existing and emerging solid-state display devices, especially from inorganic light emitting diodes, but also from other potential display technologies, such as electroluminescence and electrochromism. Therefore, and in view of the many scientific and technological problems still to be solved in the infant liquid crystal field, it was not obvious for quite a number of years that TN- LCl>s would survive and initiate today's field-effect LCD technology.

Sometimes the opponents of TN-LCDs expressed their skepticism in sarcastic cartoons. This skepticism also infected Roche management at the time, and the project was shelved until the end of 1973. Wolfgang Ilelfrich left the company and the field of thennotropic liquid crystals and became professor at the Freie Universitdt in Berlin. Martin Schadt stayed with Roche and focused his research efforts on biophysical problems related to macroscopically ordered artificial lipid bimolecukir (nM)-membrane

Thus, the very company that supported its invention stopped continuing research into the twisted-nematic LCII, which turned out to be one of the most successful technologies in the field of electronic displays. However, events taking place in Japan would reverse this decision by the end of 1973. Japanese researchers became aware of the twisted-nematic effect and saw its potential for portable electronics liecause of its low power consumption and low driving voltage. This prompted a visit by Masakatsu Hamamoto, legal advisor of the president of Seiko Epson and a graduate of Harvard law school, to visit Hoffmann-La Roche in 1973 and initiate licensing negotiations under the Swiss patent.29 A s a result of this meeting, Schadt developed a plan for Iloffmann-La Itoche to offer non-exclusive licenses for the TN-LCD patent

76 Liquid Gold

worldwide as well as to manufacture liquid crystals on a larger scale. He also convinced management to establish an interdisciplinary research and development team o f physicists and chemists whose aim would be to investigate, develop, and transfer into manufacturing, better liquid crystals that would improve the performance of LCDs and lxoaden their applications.

Another o f Schadt’s plans, which he implemented quite successfully, was to continue research that would establish correlations between ekctro- optical effects, material properties, and molecular structural elements such h a t new effects requiring specifically designed liquid crystal materials could be developed. This resulted in the development of a large number of new liquid crystals, promising new devices, and many important scientific contributions as well as a large number of patents and fruitful collalxx- tions with LCD manufacturers and Universities worldwide.

Martin Schadt left Hoffmann-La Roche in 1994 to form Rolic, an independent research and development company. Currently, he is chief technology officer and continues to develop improved methods t o fabricate displays. Hc received many awards for his contributions to the advancement o f displays including the Karl Ferdinand I3raun Prize, the highest award from the SocieLy for Information Display, and the Robert-Wichard-Pohl Prize of the German Physical Society, together with Wolfgang Helfrich. After leaving Iloffmann-La Roche, I Ielfrich joined the Free LJniversity of Berlin, where he is currently Research Group I’rofessor in the Institute for Theoretical I’hysics working on fluid memliranes and liquid crystals. Helfrich also received numerous prizes, including the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize, the Ostwald Prize of the Colloid Society, and the Prize for Technology and Applied Natural Science with Martin Schadt.

Meanwhile back in the United Sates, John F. Dreyer, who was working at I-’olacoat, a developer of polarizing materials based in Blue Ash, Ohio near Cincinnati, built an optical device in 1969 based on the twisted- nematic structure.32 This device, which could rotate the plane of polarized light, had all the elements of the twisted-nematic cell except for the electrodes. However, Dryer’s patent deals only with a polarizing/depolarizing cell, not a display. It was essentially a modern refinement o f the Mauguin cell. This patent was important because attorneys for LCD manufacturers later cited it in their unsuccessful attempts to invalidate the patents of James Fergason and Hoffmann-La Roche.

At about the same time, Fergason and his colleagues Sardari Arora and Alfred Saupe at Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute were doing their own research on the twisted-nematic effect. A year earlier, the three researchers

New Explorations 77

reported33 experiments using the twisted-nematic phase. According to F e r g a ~ o n , ~ ~ he was well aware o f Mauguin’s twisted-nematic orientation from prcvious research and he planned experiments to apply electric fields to that structure in 1969.

In the fall o f 1969, Kent Sate IJniversity was reorganizing and decided to reduce its funding of the Liquid Crystal Institute. As a result, Fergason left the IJniversity, although he would continue to work on contracts that the Institute was committed to fulfilling. In late Ikcember 1969, Fergason began experimenting with electrically activated twisted-nematic cells and on 1)ccember 30, 1969, he demonstrated the concept to both Ted Taylor and Thomas Harsch. Fergason was careful to document this event in his notebook with Taylor and Harsch as witnesses. This would prove to be important later, when a prolonged court battle with Hoffman-La lioche ensued over the rights to the invention.

In January 1970, the group published an articlej5 that essentially described the twisted-nematic field effect as it might be used in a Guest- Host type structure. Within the next few months, Fergason’s group conducted further experiments and built a working device on April 5, 1970. At about the same time, Fergason formed a new company, the International Liquid Xtal Company (ILIXCO), which would go on t o develop twisted- neniatic displays for digital wristwatches. However, it was not until February 9, 1971, that Fergason filed the first U.S. patent application.36 This was two months after the Swiss patent29 was filed by Hoffmann-La Roche and set the stage for the legal confrontation that would soon follow.

Complicating matters for Fergason was the claim by Kent State IJniversity that it had full ownership o f the patent. Consequently, Ferg ’ason sued the university for rights to the patents. Meanwhile, Hoffmann-La Roche decided t o license its patent to the electronics industry and also t o defend it against the numerous appeals that were filed against it as well as settle the interference with Fergason in the 1J.S.A. As a result, the case became quite complicated with the teams of Hoffinann-La 12oclic and Urown Boveri, Fergason, and Kent State University each arguing its case for the patent rights. Fergason successfully defended his patent in both Gerlnany and Japan, but the lJ.S. case lasted from 1973 t o 1976 when it was finally settled out of court with Fergason’s company assigning its patent rights t o Hoffmann-La Koche in exchange for a share of the royalties. After the settlement, Hoffmann-La lioche received 30% of the royalties, while 30% went to Fergason’s ILIXCO, 300/0 to Brown k v e r i and 100/0 to Kent State University. So, despite all the claims of who invented the twisted-nematic LCD first, in

78 Liquid Gold

the end, all the parties received a fair share of what would become many millions of dollars in royalties over the life o f the patents.

After the settlement, Hoffmann-La Roche aggressively pursued licensing from all LClI manufacturers worldwide. Arguments against opposition, especially in Japan, were thoroughly prepared and required elaborate scientific work. According to Schadt,28 this intensive, but psychologically and technologically interesting patent defense in different countries extended over 15 years and ended in May 1986 with the granting of the twisted- nematic LCI> patent in Japan.

CONCLUSIONS AND OPINIONS

When RCA management realized several years later that digital displays were indeed the wave of the future, they developed a manufacturing line for digital watch displays. However, by that time, numerous competitors had already established themselves in the fledgling industry, so RCA lost its early advantage and never became a major LCD supplier.

This was to become a Familiar theme with RCA, where numerous technologies were spawned, but few reached the marketplace successfully as RCA products that were manufactured internally. In addition to liquid crystal displays, pioneering research was being conducted in such technologies as thin-film transistors, charged-coupled devices, electrophotography, light emitting diodes, video tape recordedplayers, video disc recorders/players, and flat panel television.

For a number of years after I left the company, I believed that IICA’s failure t o capitalize on these technological developments was due to lack of vision and commitment on the part of its management during the 1960s and 1970s, when its main focus was on mainframe computers (which it eventually abandoned) and corporate acquisitions unrelated to its core electronics busine While there is some truth to this, my subsequent 25 years of experience working as a consultant to many different companies has altered my opinion. I now believe that the entrepreneurial spirit of the individual researcher ultimately prevails over the corporate hierarchy, making it very difficult for any large corporation to develop future products from all the technologies coming out of its laboratories. In fact, history shows that most successful companies are typically built on one o r two major technologies, which are then refined and enhanced further, allowing the companies to grow and prosper. .And, those companies that veer into unrelated areas often run into serious trouble.

New Explorations 79

The important point is that corporate research centers continue t o play a very important role in creating an environment that gives birth to new products for the betterment of humanity. In addition to RCA Laboratories, important high-technology products that are commonplace today have found their origins in places like Bell Laboratories, IBM, Xerox, Texas Instruments, Fairchild, Hewlett-Packdrd, and Philips, to name just a few examples. However, in many cases, these companies never manufactured or inarketed the products that evolved from their pioneering research. Yet in the end, consumers everywhere benefited because others took the technology from the kaboratory to the marketplace.

REFERENCES

I. ‘Padashi Nakamiira, personal communication, JUIY 2003. See also: Advunces in Zmuge Pickup and Ui.spluy, Vol. 5 , ed. R. Kazan (Academic Press, l982), p. 200.

2. David Sarnoff’s obituary, 7he New York Time.s, December 13, 1971. 3. J.A. Castelhno, K.N. Friel, M.T. Mccdffrey, D. Meyerhofer, C.S. Oh, E.F. Pasierb,

and A. Sussman, Liquid Cystal Systems .for Electro-oplical Storage Efects, Final Report, Ikcember 1971, Air Force Contract F33615-70-C-1590, Project 7360.

4. J.A. Castellano, E.F. Pasierb, G.H. Heilmeier, H.W. Hdfrich, C.S. Oh, and M.1: McCaffrey, ~lectronicully-Tuned Opticul Filtm, April 1970; Final Report, Jmuai-y 1972, NASA Contract NAS 1-10490.

5. J.A. Castellano, Liquid Cystal Color Displu.y, 1J.S. Patent 3,703,329 (19721, applied for Ikceinber 29, 1969.

6. A r k Conner, personal communication, August 2003. See also: A r k li. Conner :ind I - ’ ~ L I ~ E. Gulick, Color Displuy Syslem, 17,s. Patent 4,917,465 (1990>, applied for September 1, 1989.

7. K. Naito, 13. Iwanaga, K. Sunohdrd, and M. Okajima, “Light absorption properties of guest dyes for reflective color GH-LCDs,” Euro Display 96 Digest of Technical Pupen‘ (1996) 126.

8. J.A. Castellano and K.N. Friel, Liquid Cystul Di.sp1u.y Device Including Sideby- Side f k t r o d e s on u Common Substrate, 17,s. Patent 3,674,342 (19721, applied for 1)ecernber 29, 1970. This patent claims the use of the technique for any type o f liquicl crystal display.

9. (a) Anthony G. Genovcse, personal communication, November 2003. yashi, T. Shimojo, K. Kasano, and 1. Tsundd, SZD Znlernationul

10. Richard A. Soref, J. Appl. Pbys. 45, 5466 (1974). U.S. Patent 3,807,831 (1974), applied for June 20, 1972.

1 1 . li. Kiefer, 13 . Weber, F. Windscheid, and G. Baur, Proceedings of.japuu Ui.sp1u.y ’92 (1992) 547. Also, G. Haur, “Various possihilities to improve the viewing

Symposium Digest of Technical Papeys (1972) 68. (b) S. Koba

80 Liquid Gold

angle characteristic of nematic LCDs,” Proceedings Freiburger Arbeitsagurzg Flussigbristalle 31.3 ( 1993).

12. G. Haur, K. Kiefer, H. Klausmann, and F. Windscheid, “In-plane switching: a novel electro-optic effect,” Liquid Crystals Today 5(3), 13 (1995); G. Baur, M. Kamm, K. Kiefer, H. KkdiiSmdnn, R. Weber, €3. Wieber, and F. Windscheid, Proceedings Freiburger Arbeitsagung Flussigbristalle (1994). Also, personal communication with Guenter Eaur in J d y 2003.

13. M. Oh-e, M. Ohta, S. Aratani, and K. Kondo, “Principles and characteristics of electro-optical behavior with in-plane switching mode,” Asia Display ’95 Digest of Technical Papers (19951, paper S23-1. M. Ohta, M. Oh-e, and K. Kondo, “Development of Super TFT-LCD with in-plane switching display mode,” Asia Display ‘95 Dig& of 7Bchnical I’ape~s (1995), paper S30-2, p. 707.

14. Louis A. Zanoni, Color Advertising Display Employing Liquid Crystal, U.S. Patent 3,576,364 (1971), applied for May 20, 1969.

15 Kichard I. Klein, Sandor Caplan, and Kalph -1’. Hansen, Liquid Cystal Display I)evice, 17,s. Patent 3,689,131 (1972), applied for June 29, 1970.

16. Letter of thanks dated December 21, 1972 from Ms. Anne Keatley, Executive Secretary of the Committee on Scholarly Communications with the People’s llepublic of China, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC.

17. W. Helfrich, “Alignment-inversion walls in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of a magnetic field,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 21(22), 1518 (1968); J. Chem. Phys. 50, 100 (1969).

18. W. Helfrich, “Capillary flow of cholesteric and sinectic liquid crystals,” I’hys. Rev. Lett. 23(7), 372 (1969).

19. W. Helfrich, “Orientation of domains in nematic p-Azoxyanisole,” J . Chem. Ph.ys. 51(6), 2755 (1969).

20. W. Helfrich, “Torques in sheared nematic liquid crystals: a simple model in terms of the theory of dense fluid,” J Chem. Phys. 53(6), 2267 (1970).

21. W. Helfrich, “Effect of electric fields on the temperature of phase transitions of liquid crystals,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 24(5), 201 (1970).

22. G.H. Heilmeier and W. Helfrich, “Orientational oscillations in nematic liquid crystals,” Appl. I’hys. Lett. 6(4), 155 (1970).

23. W. Helfrich, Deformation of Choksteric Liquid Crystals with Low 7breshold Vollage, KCA Laboratories Technical Keport, PKKL-70-TK-164, August 12, 1970; published in Appl. Phys. Lett. 17(12), 531 (1970).

24. W. Helfrich and C.S. Oh, Optically Active Smectic Liquid Crystal, RCA Laboratories Technical Keport, PKKL-70-TK-180, Aiig~st 28, 1970; published in Molecular Cy.stals and Liquid Cystals 14, 289 (1971).

25. W. Helfrich, Electrohydrodynamic and Dielectric Instabilities qf Cholesteric Liquid Crystals, KCA Laboratories Technical Keport, PKKL-70-TR-236, November 4, 1970; published in J. Chem. Phys. 55(2), 839 (1971).

New Explorations 81

26. J.A. Castellano, Electro-optic Light Modulator, 1J.S. Patent 3,597,044 (19711, applied for September 3, 1968.

27. H. Kawamoto, “The history of liquid crystal displays,” Proc. IEEE 90(4), 460 (20021.

28. Martin Schadt, “The origins of twisted-nematic liquid crystals and their way to maturity,” Nikkei Microdevices 9 (1994) 5. Also, personal communication with the author in July 2003.

29. M. Schadt and W. Ilelfrich, Swiss Patent 532,261 (19741, applied for December 4, 1970.

30. M. Schadt and W. IIelfrich, “Voltage dependent optical activity of a twisted- nematic liquid crystal,” Appl. l%ys. Lett. 18(4), 127 (1971).

31. Schadt made two important scientific contributions to the understanding of the transport mechanisms of biogenic amines across ionophore-doped BM-films and on the role of vitamin A derivatives in BM-films. In the vitamin work, which was related to the visual process, he simulated electro-optical phenom- ena generated in RM-films with an electronic model.

32. John F. Dreyer, Means for Rotuting the Polarization Plane of Light and for Converting Polmized Light to Nonpolurized Light, US. Patent 3,592,526 (19711, applied for July 15, 1969.

33. S.L. Arora, J.L. Fergason, and A. Saupe, “Two liquid crystal phases with nematic morphology,” Proceedings of the Second International Liquid Crystal Conference, Kent, OH, August 1968; also, Liquid Crystals II (Gordon and Breach Publishers, 19691, p. 563.

34. James L. Fergason, personal communication, August 2003. 35. James L. Fergason, Ted K. ‘Taylor, and Thomas B. Harsch, “Liquid crystals and

their applications,” Electro-Technology, January 1970, p. 41. 36. James L. Fergason, Display Devices Utilizing Liquid Crystal Light Modulation,

1J.S. Patent 3,731,986 (1973), filed April 22, 1971 as a continuation in part of the first application, filed February 9, 1971.

Chapter 7

Enter t h e Japanese

"I knew w e needed a weapon to break through to the U.S. market, and it had to be something different. Something that nobody else was making."

Akio Morira, co-founder of Sony Corporation, 1971

A major objective of nearly all Japanese electronics companies starting in the 1950s was to penetrate the U.S. market with new products. This was exemplified by Sony's decision to build the transistor radio as stated by Morita in a 1971 Time interview.

It is important to understand how the Japanese Ixcame interested in the development of products l ~ s e d on liquid crystal displays. Superficially, the Japanese have always welcomed and copied new thoughts and ideas from abroad. 1-Iowever, close inspection reveals that in almost every case they have adapted and improved the import. Rarely was an alien idea accepted at the expense of local concepts. If the new idea conflicted, it had short-lived popularity, but it was likely to be modified. In the early 1950s, as Japan was being reconstructed, the Japanese would stay aloof from for- eign influences until they had been thoroughly digested and assimilated into the Japanese system. However, new product concepts, which appeared to be potentially beneficial t o the Japanese, often gained rapid acc:eptance.

Through the centuries, the Japanese developed a high degree of manual dexterity that has led to skill in fashioning miniature objects. The Japanese garden, fo r example, is a miniature landscape designed to give a feeling o f spaciousness in a confined area. The tiny farm, the tight living quarters, the use of every inch of space explains their penchant for sulitle, small things such as the portal,le radio, the pocket calculator, and ultimately, the handheld television set.

82

Enter the Japanese 83

The politeness of the Japanese, so agreeable to visitors from abroad, stems from the suppression of individuality and the necessity of living together in close quarters. This gives the Japanese a rare intuitive ability to sense the feelings o f others. Since it would be impolite to say “No,” the Japanese avoid saying it if at all possible.

The Japanese work ethic is also worthy o f note. After centuries of feudal isolation from the developing world, industrialization came from the West only over a hundred years ago. The Japanese seized the new system and inade it their own subject, of course, to modification t o local ways. up until the early 1990s, lifetime employment in a single firm was the way of life. Working people accepted a paternal pattern of industrialization knowing that their jobs for life meant security as well as obligations. Young graduate engineers and scientists who joined a company at the same time txcaine like a family. If one of the members of the group was promoted to a position o f authority, he would look after his “fainily.” As an example, Yasuo Moriguchi, a research group leader at Kobe Steel, Ltd. whom I met in 1980, attended to the personal problems of a member of his group. The idea was t o help members of the group solve their problems so that they could concentrate their thoughts and energy on their work. At the same time, the company provided extensive fringe benefits and conveniences to its workers in order to foster the general feeling of loyalty t o the company and dedication t o their jobs. At Sharp Corporation’s Nara Kesearch Center, for example, attractive apartments for both single and married personnel were within walking distance. Identifying themselves with their firm and their nation, the worker took a keen interest in output. Hence, the drive to continuously increase production levels as well as product quality.

While things changed during the 1990s because of the economic problems that Japan encountered, along with stiff competition from companies in Korea and ’Iaiwan, Japanese companies in the early 1970s were capable of developing technical concepts into inanufacturable products in high volume through dedication and tenacity.

Two scientists who recognized the importance of the 1968 RCA announcement of its LCD developments were Dr. Tomio Wada and his supervisor Ilr. Tadashi Sasaki, who were working at the central research laboratory o f Sharp Corporation (then known as Ilayakawa Electric Company) in Nara. In late 1968, a television crew from NIIK, the Japanese national broadcasting company, visited RCA Laboratories and produced a short television program on the work then being done on LCDs at the Sarnoff laboratories. While Heilmeier was the main spokesman, I recall that

84 Liquid Gold

most members of LCD team were televised briefly. However, I never saw the final version of the program, nor did I recognize its significance.

Wada watched this program in Japan when it was broadcast in January 1969 and immediately brought it to the attention of Sasaki, who was already convinced that the handheld calculator would be the next big product for his company. Sasaki traveled around the world looking for companies to supply the circuits and displays needed to make the product a rea1ity.l Both Wada and Sasaki envisioned the use of LCDs in electronic calculators and by 1970, Sharp started a research program to accomplish that objective. According to one account,2 Sasaki visited KCA’s Solid State Division in Somerville, New Jersey, in late 1968 where he saw dynamic scattering LCI) prototypes. Another account3 infers that it was later, probably closer to 1971, when Sasaki negotiated a $3 million patent license with RCA for LCD technology. In any case, a group of Japanese engineers from Sharp, including Wada and Sasaki, visited KCA Laboratories where I showed them the prototypes we had built. At the time, I viewed it as a visit from yet another KCA licensee and did not realize how serious Sharp was to further develop LCDs. While the exact date eludes me, I believe it was after Heilmeier left, probably in 1971. I3y this time, Wada had already built his own dynamic scattering LCD prototypes. When I went to Japan in 1980 to visit Sharp’s laboratories, Sasaki told me he remembered me from this visit to RCA.

Wada’s group went on to synthesize liquid crystals and prepare mixtures that would enable operation o f LCDs at room temperature, using the same strategy as the RCA team had used several years before. By 1972, the team of scientists and engineers from the central research laboratory working on the handheld calculator project had grown to 20 members. Their work culminated in the development of the ELSI Mate EL-805, the first commercial handheld calculator, which was introduced in 1973 with a dynamic scattering LCD. Kawamoto gives a detailed history of this development.2

Meanwhile, another Japanese researcher, Yoshio ydmasaki, who was working at Suwa Seikoshd (popularly known as thc Seiko Watch Company), was searching for ways to build digital wristwatches with LCDs after he read the 1968 KCA announcement in a Japanese newspaper. Yamasaki was successful in convincing his management to form a group to design and build LCD watches./’ His team started with LCDs using the dynamic scattering mode, much the same as Optel, the company that designed and built the first commercial LCD watches. However, when it became clear that the twisted-neinatic field effect of LCDs offered significant advantages over the DSM types, he switched over and the company introduced its first


digital watch, the 06LC in October of 1973. Although not the first company to build TN-LCD watches, Seiko went on to become one of the world’s leading producers of these watches.

After having successfully built their first LCD digital watch, Seiko formed another group to develop a wristwatch television. For the next nine years, this group worked diligently to develop this product, with much of the effort aimed at producing suitable CMOS transistors on a silicon wafer to drive the display. In 1982, the company reported on its development5 and shortly thereafter, introduced the first wristwatch television with a blue-and-white display using the Guest-Host effect. While the wristwatch TV drew lots of attention: it was not a commercial success and was soon discontinued.

Research on developing LCDs for television was also going on at other companies in Japan during the 1970s. Among these were Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, Matsushita, Casio, Canon and Fujitsu. In 1977, for example, Hitachi demonstrated a six-inch diagonal black-and-white television that used a field effect LCD.7 The panel had 82 X 109 pixels and was driven using 15-volt unipolar pulses. While the display had 16 gray levels, its response time was 200 milliseconds, too slow to eliminate smearing in fast moving scenes. Although this would be considered a “passive matrix” display, it was an early working LCD television.

In 1971, at the same time that Yamasaki’s group was developing the Seiko digital watch, Shinji Morozumi, a recent graduate in electrical engineering from Tohoku University, one of Japan’s top schools, began working at Suwa Seikosha designing integrated circuits for watches. Soon, he became intrigued with the research work that was being done on a wristwatch television and joined that effort. For much of the 1970s, Morozumi worked to develop CMOS transistors on silicon wafers and later thin-film transistors using polycrystalline silicon (“poly silicon”).

As will be discussed in subsequent chapters, work on amorphous silicon and poly silicon was in its infancy in the late 1970s and nobody had succeeded in building a commercial “active matrix” display using these materials. But through the tenacious efforts of Morozumi and his team, a working color television model (Fig. 7.1) with a 2.1-inch diagonal screen was demonstrated in 1983 at the annual SID symposium.* When Morizumi presented his talk, I was sitting in the audience alongside Robert Durbeck of IBM and we were both amazed at the progress that the Seiko team made. We both questioned if such products could be made cost effectively in volume, given the state-of-the-art in TFTs at that time. The answer came quickly as Seiko introduced its first “pocket

86 Liquid Gold

Fig. 7.1. First LCI) color television driven by an active matrix of polycrystalline silicon TFTs. The display had 240 X 240 pixels and was 2.13 inches diagonal. Photo courtesy of Shinji Morozumi and the Society for Information Display.

television” using this technology later in 1983. More importantly, it prompted the Japanese companies to intensify their efforts to build large screen color LCDs driven by TFTs.

Another effort to develop LCDs was begun in 1970 at Matsushita’s central research laboratory in Osaka where a digital clock with a dynamic scattering display was demonstrated. Two of the pioneers who were developing LCDs at that time were M. Yoshiyama and T. Ohtsuka, both of whom held Ph.D. degrees. Later they were joined by Isao Ohta, whom I met at KCA Laboratories in 1972 when he made his first visit to the U.S. to review work on the development of light valves for projection TV based on the dynamic scattering mode. Ohta was also the inventor of the electrophoretic display and showed the first color displays made with that technology one year

Matsushita’s scientists made rapid progress in applying LCDs to consumer products.1° In 1971, for example, the company introduced a radio with a world clock that used a dynamk scattering LCD. By 1978, the company built a prototype black-and-white television with a dynamic scattering LCD formed on a silicon wafer with MOS circuits in a 240 X 240 pixel structure. The group also built a unique full color TFT-LCD, called a multi-gap display, which used a different thickness for each primary color filter layer in order to optimize the display’s viewability.” And, in 1985, the company began selling a full color TFT-LCD with a three-inch diagonal screen.


Another important figure in the development of LCD technology in Japan was Shunsuke Kobayashi. Kobayashi received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Science Liniversity of Tokyo in 1955. He went on to obtain a Master of Arts in applied physics in 1961 and a 1’h.D. in electronic engineering from University of Tokyo in 1964. Upon graduation, he became a member of the research staff at the Institute for Physical and Chemical Research (IZIKEN) and in 1973 took the position o f Associate Professor in the department of electronic engineering at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He remained at this university for 23 years, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1996. Kobayashi has received numerous awards including the prestigious Jan Rajchman Prize from the Society for Information Display and the Tokyo Metropolitan Governor’s Prize. He continues to perform research in LCDs at the Science University of Tokyo, Ydmaguchi, where he is also the Director of the Liquid Crystal Institute. In 1972, Kobayashi and his associate Fumio Takeuchi, who later joined Toshiba, Fabricated a defect-free twisted-nematic LCD using one of the first, if not the first, mechanical rubbing machines. This display was perhaps the first to demonstrate multiple colors using selective polarizers. This work was reported in a paper presented in 1973 at the SID symposium in New York City.12 It was at this meeting where I first met Kobayashi and we remain good friends to this day.

Kobayashi went on to publish over 200 papers, contribute to 26 books, and obtain more than 20 patents in the field of liquid crystal devices. Among his many developments were: multiplexing of Guest-Host LCDs using highly twisted materials;13 a full-color field sequential LCD using a modulated ba~k-light;’~ materials and processes for obtaining high pre-tilt orientation of liquid crystals on polyimide surFaces;15 and, improvements in the viewing angle characteristics and gray scale capability of twisted- nematic LCDs by forming multi-domain structures using non-rubbing techniques.I6 Japanese LCD manufacturers later adopted many of the techniques that were developed by Kobayashi and his students. In addition, he was responsible for the education and training of many of the en&’ meers and scientists that went on to create Japan’s LCD industry. In my opinion, he was and continues to remain one of Japan’s great ambassadors of liquid crystal technology to the world at large.

Professor Fatsuo Uchida from Tohoku University was another important researcher who pioneered the development of advanced Guest-Host (GH) color displays. IJchika and his students reported” the use of double layer, negative and positive image color displays in 1980. The so-called

a8 Liquid Gold

DGH displays (Double Guest-Host) did not require a polarizer. The operation of a negative image DGH device is as follows: in the “OFF” state (no field applied) the first layer, that is the layer closest to the incident white light, absorbs 50% of the light only at the wavelength of maximum absorption, while the second layer absorbs the balance of the light at this wavelength (the neutral polarizer used in a GH display absorbs 50% of the light over nearly the entire spectrum). When an electric field is applied to both halves of the DGH cell, the dye molecules become oriented in the direction of the field and the incident light is transmitted unchanged. The DGH cell is much brighter than the GH cell because the light being transmitted through the “ON” segments is nearly 100% of the light incident on the cell instead o f 50% as in the case of the GH device. These devices offered excellent contrast and brightness as well as low voltage operation (1.5-5 volts). A few years later, Stanley Electric Company, Tokyo, Japan, introduced products using this concept. A small, digital travel alarm clock that used a negative Guest-Host display was given to the author as a gift in 1983 by K ~ Z U O Ariga and Toru Toshima, who went on to become president of the company in 1985. A photo of the clock is shown in Fig. 7.2.

Fig. 7.2. Travel alarm clock using a negative image Guest-Host color LCD made by Stanley Electric Company. The clock measures 67 mm (2.6 inches) X 48 mm (1.9 inches) X 1Omm (0.4 inch) thick. The clock has been operating continuously since it was given to the author as a gift in 1983. Photo taken in December 2003.


During the early years, many Japanese firms followed and copied the developments coming out of the United States. However, they quickly k g a n striking out on their own by developing improved fabrication and packaging techniques that resulted in greater reliability and lower manufacturing cost. They envisioned that a large market for electronic products made with low power, highly legible LCDs would be forthcoming and they dedicated themselves to pursuing that goal. Companies in the United States lost their early leadership position in LCD technology to those in Japan because many American firms were not convinced that the LCD would have adequate viewability to meet the needs of equipment makers. However, the Japanese firms believed that only a passive display technology such as the LCD could provide the characteristics that would make miniaturization and portability a reality. Ry focusing on that concept, they became the leaders.

REFERENCES

1. Robert Johnstone, We WereBurning (Hasic Books, New York, 19991, pp. 23-60. 2. Hirohisa Kawamoto, “The history of liquid crystal displays,” Proc. ZEEE 90(4),

3. Robert Johnstone, We Were Burning (Hasic 13ooks, New York, 19991, p. 105. 4. Robert Johnstone, We WweBurning (Hasic Books, New York, 1999), pp. 108-112. 5. T. Yamdzdki, Y. kiwahard, S. Motte, €1. Kaindmori, and J. Nakdmura, “A liquid

crystal TV display with panel drivers,” SID International Symposium Digat of Technical Papers (1982) 48.

6. The watch was worn by actor Kogcr Moore in his famous role as James Bond in the motion picture “Octopussy,” a John Glen film produced by Albert K. Broccoli, 1983.

7. “Japanese show off liquid crystal televison screen,” Electronics, May 26, 1977, p. 4.1.

8. S. Morozumi, K. Ogmchi, S. Ydzawa, T. Kodaira, H. Ohshima, and T. Mano, “B/W and color I,C video displays addressed by poly Si TFTs,” SID Inlernational Symposium Digest ef Technical Papers (1983) 156.

9. Isdo Ohta, et al., Proc. Z E E 61, 832 (1973); also, Proc. SID 18, 243 (1977). 10. ~ s a o ~ h t a , personal communication, September 2003. 11. S. Nagata, el al., SID International Symposium Ui‘qesst oj” ‘Ikchnical Papers

(1985) 84. 12. S. Kobayashi and F. Takeuchi, “Multicolor field-effect display with twisted

nematic liquid crystals,” Proc. SID 14, 40 (1973). 13. Y. Nara, S. Kobayashi, and A. Miydji, “Multiplexing the guest-host mode using a

nematic cholesteric mixture with a long pitch,” J. Appl. Phys. 49(7), 4277 (1978).

468-470 (2002).

90 Liquid Gold

14. H. Hasebc and S. Kobayashi, “A full-color field sequential LCD using modulated backlight,”SID Inlernational Symposium Digest of Technical Papers (1985) 157; S. Kobayashi, T. ’I’anaka, and S. Shirnada, Flat Punel Field Sequentid LCD, Japan Patent 2,519,429 and 2,518,625 (1996).

15. H. Fukuro and S. Kobayashi, “Newly synthesized polyimide for aligning nematic liquid crystals accompanying high pretilt angle,” Mol. Cvst. Liq. Cvsl. 163, 157 (1988); H. Fukuro and S. Kobayashi, Japan Patent 1,832,763 (1994).

16. Y . Toko, T. Sugiyama, K. Katoh, Y. Iimura, and S. Kobayashi, “Amorphous TN-LCDs hhricated by non-rubbing and showing wide and homogeneous viewing angle characteristics accompanying excellent voltagc holding ratio,” J. Appl. Phys. 74, 2071 (1993); S. Kobayashi, Y. Toko, and T. Sugiyama, Japan Fatcnt 5,210,320 (1999).

17. T. Uchidd and M. Wada, Proceedings of the Eighth International Liquid Cystul CbZf~?“e?ZCe, Kyoto, Japan (1L)80), pp. 330 & 429.

Chapter 8

Risky Business: Spin-offs and New Ventures

“Happiness is positive cash flow. Everything else will come later.” Frederick Adler, Venture Capitalist, circa 1970

‘l’he research and development activities at KCA and several other large companies werc previously discussed in Chapter 6. During the period from 1970 through 1975, many companies throughout the world saw the potential of LCI) technology and initiated programs to manufacture the displays and/or products that used them.

In the [J.S.A., several start-up companies were formed on the east coast as “spin-offs” from KCA to develop LCD-based products. In the midwest, enterprising scientists and engineers from Kent State [Jniversity established ncw ventures to exploit the technology. Soon, start-ups were created in California’s “Silicon Valley,” Texas, and other parts of the country as well. There was a remarkable expansion of interest in the technology over a very short period of time. This chapter traces the history of many early start-up firms as well as the activities of Some major companies attempting to develop new products based on LCDs.

THE OPTEL STORY

One o f the first start-up companies to engage in the development and manufacture of LCUs and LCD watches was Optel Corporation. Zoltan J. Kiss, who left RCA Laboratories where he was a research group head, founded the company in 1969 as Quantel. Kiss escaped from communist- controlled Hungary in 1950 at the age of 18 and emigrated to Canada where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University

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of Toronto. He went on to receive a Ph.D. in physics from that university, then did postgraduate work at Oxford University for one year before joining RCA Laboratories in 1960. In 1969, he received the individual David Sarnoff Award in Science for contributions to the advancement of photochromic and laser materials.

I first met Kiss at RCA when he put together a task force that I joined to develop non-magnetic video recording using photo-imaging techniques. He was very knowledgeable and persuasive - an excellent motivator of researchers. In addition to working on LCDs, I was also doing research in photochemistry for my doctorate, which I completed in 1969, so I was interested. in his project. At the time, RCA had three main approaches to replace magnetic recording: (1) laser imaging o f holograms on tape or disc; (2) using photochemical or photochromic reactions to store images at the molecular level; and, (3) producing microscopic pits in a plastic film or disc using a laser. Based on the demonstrations I saw at the time, I thought the first approach was the best, but the third technique was the one finally selected and RCA was the first to introduce the “video disc” as a consumer product. Unfortunately, the world was not ready for this product in the 1970s and by the time it was, KCA no longer existed as an independent company. After many years of development, it was Philips and Sony that developed the now popular Compact Disc (CD) and Digital Video Disc (DVI)) products using laser addressing.

Kiss recruited most of the founding managers of Quantel from KCA, so it was considered to be the first “spin-off’ from that company. In addition to Joel Goldmacher and Louis Zanoni, my close friends from the Sarnoff laboratories, other RCA alumni included Nunzio A. (“Tony”) Luce, DoUgldS R. Bosomworth and Edward Kornstein. Soon additional scientists and engineers from RCA joined the company. Quantel was started with a venture capital investment of $1 million. It began operations in a building close’to the FMC research center that housed an old chemical laboratory, which was rumored to be the place where Penicillin was first made in the U.S.A., although Peoria, Illinois is generally regarded as the first location. (Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin in London in 1928. By 1943, some 21 companies in the 1J.S.A. were supplying 400-million units of the drug for the military’s need in the various war zones and perhaps FMC was one of them.) Soon it was discovered that another company had rights to the Quantel name, so the company name was changed to Optel.

The company initially planned to develop two products, cathodochromic storage tubes, aimed at displays for computer terminals, and LCDs

Risky Business: Spin-offs and New Ventures 93

for various applications. Since Kiss had his expertise in the former, most of the resources were directed towards that technology. However, by the middle of 1970, it was clear that the market for cathodochromic devices was not developing, while customers were interested in LCDs. This created a dispute among the executives as to the company’s direction; most felt they should focus on LCDs. According to a story in Fortune,1 some of the directors attempted to oust Ki s the CEO because of this disagreement. In the end, Kiss successfully fended off the coup and ultimately shifted all of Optel’s resources toward I L X S .

’Ibny Lute was leader of the LCD team at Optel and was responsible for the development of the world’s first LCD digital watch. Born in 1934, he received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Ohio University and joined IiCA upon graduation. After working at several RCA plants around the country, he transferred to RCA’s microwave development group in Burlington, Massachusetts, where he worked on lasers. In early 1970, Zoltan Kiss offered him a job at Optel (then Quantel). In a rather short period of time, he came to the conclusion that a digital wristwatch would be ideal as the first .commercial product to use a liquid crystal display.2

Luce designed the first integrated circuit chip based on CYMOS technology for LCD watches and convinced Solid State Scientific, a semiconductor company located near Philadelphia, to manufacture the devices. ‘The first chips were delivered in December 1970 and were assembled into a watch-size package by Luce, Zanoni, George Graham and Amilcar Gumares while a Christmas party for Optel employees was in progress. Upon completion, the watch was taken to the party and shown to the employees.2,j While all of the segments of the display didn’t work, the feasibility was proven. Later, refinements were made to the system design“ and the coInpany began producing dynamic scattering LCDs and digital watches. A diagram showing the major components of the first LCD digital watch designed by Luce is presented in Fig. 8.1. A photo of the watch is shown in Fig. 8.2.

In 1972, Optel moved to a much larger facility and in June had its initial public offering of stock. The company then began hiring more people and buying more equipment to reach a goal of manufacturing 5,000 watches per month in 1973. IJnfortunately, as with all new technologies and new products, many problems prevented the company from delivering the promised numbers of watches to its customers. Ikliveries of many key components, includ.ing the vital IC chips, miniature switches and cases were d.elayed. In retrospect, this is not surprising since all these

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Fig. 8.1. Sketch on the left shows the front view o f Optel’s LCII digital watch module designed by Nunzio Luce in 1970; the back o f the module is shown on the right. Courtesy of Louis Zanoni.

Fig. 8.2. First LCI) digital watch model with dynamic scattering display. Nunzio LLIW at Optel designed the module in 1970. With the case cover removed, the outside dimensions are 1.375 inches wide by 1.625 inches high. This particular unit, Ix i i l t in 1972 o r 1973, is still operational as shown in this photo taken from a video made on January 5, 2004. Courtesy of Louis Zanoni.


components were new designs that were put into production for the first time. ‘l‘o make matters worse, technical problems with LCD manufacturing reduced the yield and slowed output. This resulted in delivery of only about 10,000 units in 1973 instead of the 50,000 to 60,000 units planned. Nevertheless, the company’s revenue jumped to $2.5 million from just $170,000 in 1972 and it became a viable manufacturer of LCD digital watches. The team at Optel was also responsible for introducing innovations into watch manufacturing that survive to this day. Among these were the flashing colon and the use of the flexible connector (a flexible strip of material consisting of alternating layers of conductor and insulator) to replace soldering of the display to the printed circuit b o a d 2

After 1973, the company experienced severe competition and went through several management changes. Kiss left the company to form Chronar, and Luce was named President in 1977. Although Optel was a public company, its stock was trading at a very low price, below one dollar. However, the company had a large tax loss carry fonvard (something like $24 million according to LuceZ), which could be used in a buy-out situation. h c e saw this as an opportunity to buy a company called Levitt Industries by offering that profitable company the low value Optel stock in exchange for Levitt shares. This resulted in a tremendous boost in the bottom line for optel and a dramatic increase in the price of its shares, enabling all the shareholders to receive a profitable return on their original investment. After this transaction was completed, Luce left the company to form Springwood Electronics, a manufacturer of digital watches in China that exists to thb day.

Optel was sold in 1979 to Refac Electronics, a company that was primarily interested in Optel’s intellectual property from which it ultimately made millions of dollars in licensing fees and royalties.

OTHER RCA SPIN-OFFS

Soon after Optel had been established, sometime in late 1970 as I recall, I was approached by venture capitalist Frederick Adler who was interested in possibly starting a company to develop and manufacture LCDs. Adler had been responsible for arranging venture capital financing for a number of new companies including Intersil, a semiconductor company that was headed by Jean IIoerni, a former member of Fairchild Semiconductor’s founding group. IIoerni invented the planar process, which enabled Fairchild Semiconductor to produce the first integrated circuit. Adler encouraged me to develop a business plan for the proposed company. At that time, I had no experience or knowledge of what it took to start a

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company, let alone to run it. However, Adler was very helpful in guiding me through the process and for the first time I began to understand the importance o f market research. The plan called for the new company to develop and manufacture LCns for digital watches and test instruments. Adler’s plan was to establish the company, then merge it with Intersil in an exchange of stock whereby Adler and I would receive Intersil stock, which was publically traded. At Adler’s expense, he and I made a trip to visit FIoerni at the Intersil plant in Cupertino, California. This was my very first visit to “Silicon Valley” and 1 was surprised that Intersil was already doing some exploratory LCII research at Intersil. Hoerni was interested in the tcclinology and thought it had great potential, but he felt it was not mature enough for Intersil to invest in, although the company did later go on to make integrated circuits and digital watches under the Chronus name. As a result, Adler lost interest and the company was never formed. However, I was now bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, which infected me with a desire t o develop a start-up company.

About one year later, Joel Goldmacher, then working at Optel, put me in touch with Norman Zatsky, a vice president of l‘imex who wanted to establish LCD manufacturing either internally or through a subsidiary company. Over a period of months, I had several meetings with Zatsky, including a visit to the l’imcx headquarters then in Westchester County, New York, where I met other Timex executives. I was mainly interested in starting a subsidiary company with Timex backing and this was discussed at length. In the end, however, Timex decided to develop the technology internally. Since I was not interested in working directly for Timex, we parted ways amicably.

By the fall of 1972, a few months after the LCD project at KCA Laboratories was canceled then quickly reinstated, as described earlier in Chapter 6, I began thinking seriously about leaving the Sarnoff labs. It was about this time that George W. ?DylOr, a former member of the technical staff at RCA Laboratories, asked me t o join a company called Princeton Materials Science, which he had formed with Issai “Lef” Lefkowitz in 1969. About one year earlier, I had written an article on liquid crystals5 for the journal, Ferroelect?”ics, which Taylor and Lefkowitz, his co-editor, had founded in 1970. Both Taylor and Lefkowitz were world-renowned experts in the field of ferroelectric materials and devices. During the preparation of that article, I became friends with both of them.

Taylor, a native Australian, has a Ixchelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Western Australia and a Ph.D. from the


[Jniversity of London; he also received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Western Australia. Currently, he is President and CEO of Ocean IJower Technologies, a company that develops systems for converting ocean wave energy into electricity.

Lefkowitz received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Brooklyn College and a 1’h.D. from Cambridge University, where he worked in the world-famous Cavendish Laboratory. After returning to the U.S.A. in 1965, he joined the Army research and development facility at Frankford Arsenal, near Philadelphia, Iknnsylvania. Unfortunately, a terminal illness took his life in 1983. However, his contributions to science and his warm relationships with colleagues from around the world are well-chronicled in a special commemorative issue of Fe’t.rroelectrics6

Over a period of several months in late 1972, I met with both Taylor and Lefkowitz and by early 1973 decided that I would make the move to join the company in March. A few months later, we leased a building that had been abandoned by the Plasma Physics Laboratory o f Princeton Ilniversity. The build.ing was ideal for installing laboratory and limited manuflacturing facilities. Our objective soon became to manufacture not only LCDs, but digital watches as well. Looking back on this some 30 years h e r , I realize what an audacious decision that was in view of the many problems we encountered. Since Optel, which was located nearby, had already developed the digital watch with a dynamic scattering display, it did not take us long to build a few prototype models, which were essentially copies of 1,uce’s design and nearly identical in operation to Optel’s first product. However, Optel’s executives, who were friends from our RCA days, knew that if we did succeed, we would become a second source for customers that might be nervous about using an infant technology made by only one company. Also, after the Optel patents were issued, our company would be subject to payment. o f royalties to Optel. Consequently, we never had any legal issues with Optel to my knowledge.

From the very start, Princeton Materials Science had limited funds, so Lefkkowitz, who was then President and CEO, spent a great deal of time trying t o convince Wall Street venture capitalists t o invest in the company. IIe also used the watch prototypes to attract potential customers. One of the interested companies was Longines-Wittnauer and Lefkowitz persuaded one of its vice presidents, Bertram Lowe, to invest his own money in the company and to join it as President and CEO while Lefkowitz remained as Executive Vice President. with Lowe’s many contacts in the watch industry and Lef‘s considerable ability as a salesman, we soon had

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an order to deliver 50,000 pieces over a one-year period. Unfortunately, we did not have the funds to buy enough electronic components to build that many watch modules, but we did build several thousand units during the summer of 1973. Two key managers who made this possible were George Colantonio, who had previous experience at Optel and was responsible for LCD manufacturing, and Rodney Hlose, who managed the watch module production line. By the fall of 1973, it was clear that additional financing was needed to keep the company operating. Lefkowitz worked long and hard to find investment groups or corporations that might invest in the company. By October, he and Lowe had convinced Robert C. Sprague, founder and CEO of Sprague Electric Company of North Adams, Massachusetts, to buy a majority of the company’s shares for $300,000,

Shortly thereafter, Sprague, who was in his 70s at the time, and his son John, joined the board of directors. At that time, Sprague Electric Company was one o f the world’s leading producers of capacitors and was also engaged in semiconductor manufacturing. Sprague soon put the resources o f his company at our disposal and we received much- needed equipment and production know-how. It was not long before the decision was made to cease watch manufacturing and focus on displays only.

Meanwhile, other companies such as ILIXCO and Optel were introducing watches with twisted-nematic field-effect LCDs and customers were beginning to like the new displays better than the dynamic scattering types we were producing. For one thing, the field-effect LCDs needed lower voltage, eliminating the need for the small transformer that was required in our watches. For another, the displays used less current, thereby increasing battery life. 130th factors led to the possibility of smaller, thinner watches, something that customers desired. I recognized the importance o f this requirement when I visited the Gmen watch company with Lefkowitz in Manhattan. The IJresident of Gruen showed us a watch with a TN-LCD and asked if we could make the same type of display. If so, he was ready to place a large ord.er for the displays; Gruen would have another company build its watches. I boldly promised we would get back to him in several weeks with a sample. This led to a major disagreement with Lowe, who thought we should not change our LCD process. Fortunately, we were able to convince him of the necessity of the change, since our survival depended on it.


I had made some TN-LCDs when I was at KCA, so in a short time and with the help o f Lefkowitz and a few other staff members, we had a good working sample, which we showed to the Gruen executives. By January 1974, Gruen placed an order for 100,000 displays. Although manufacturing them in high-volume would be a major challenge, we did succeed in producing thousands of field-effect LCns and digital watches using them.

A few months later, Bertram Lowe resigned his position, but remained as a director. Robert Sprague asked me to take the position of Chairman of the board and CEO with Lefkowitz as President and Taylor as Executive Vice President. Now I was in the hot seat. However, Robert Sprague was very helpful and taught me a great deal about the fundamentals of operating a business.

In addition to the fact that the equipment used was not designed specifically for LCD manufwturing, many problems were encountered in attempting to reach acceptable production levels. The first was to make the change from dynamic scattering to twisted-nematic LCDs. This involved a new deposition technique that required the evaporation of silicon monoxide at specific angles to the patterned glass plates. This was a process that greatly limited the production flow. It also led to the problems of “reverse twist” and “reverse tilt.” Thanks lo a paper by Peter Kaynes,’ which was brought to our attention by Lefkowitz, adding a small amount o f a chiral component to the liquid crystal mixture as well as rubbing the plates after the silicon monoxide deposition solved these problems. Another problem was that the patterning of the electrodes on the indium-tin oxide coated glass was done with screen printing equipment designed for making hybrid electronic components and could not provide the registration accuracy needed for a high-yield LCII process. Finally, there were problems with the process for attaching the polarizers needed for the twisted-nematic LCDs; many of these related to the adhesives that were used, but the process itself was cumbersome.

Needless to say, all these problems hampered our ability to meet production schedules, resulting in negative cash flow. In August 1974, Sprague Electric Company provided a $250,000 loan to keep the company afloat. At this point in time, Princeton Materials Science had over 50 employees, so payroll was a major expense. While we continued to make progress in improving yields and production output, our financial situation did not improve, so by October we were forced to release most of our staff and by the end of 1974, we had only 12 employees. At the Same time, Sprague

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Electric Company itself was having financial problems due to the downturn in the electronics industry. Consequently, I was summoned to attend a meeting with Robert Sprague at his office in North Adams in January 1975. At this meeting, which took place only between the two of us, Sprague told me his company could no longer fund Princeton Materials Science, so Sprague Electric would write its investment off as a tax loss. Obviously, this was devastating news t o all of us.

I3y February 1975, we were out of business and I began looking for another job. IJnfortunately, there was a major recession in 1975 and jobs were hard to find in the New York Metropolitan area. Lefkowitz, on the other hand, was convinced that a large company would be interested in buying I-’rinceton Materials Science and he was able to set up meetings with I Iewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor. I was skeptical, but attended the meetings anyway. Eventually, Fairchild offered to buy the assets, but only if I joined the company. Fairchild management also made it clear at the outset that the operation might eventually be moved to Palo Alto, California, although it would be restarted in the Same facility in Princeton at a much lower level of manpower. After a trip to California to visit Fairchild headquarters and much family discussion, I decided to accept the position. However, after about five months of operating in Princeton, Fairchild decided that it would be best to move the operation to California and consolidate it within the company’s Optoelectronics division. In the end, the only person from the original staff of IJrinceton Materials Science that joined me in moving west was Rodney IYose. George Taylor went on to form Princeton Resources, which became a successful consulting company that I would work with in later years. Lef Lefkowitz returned to research and development with the U.S. Army Research Office in Durham, North Carolina, where he reinained until his untimely death.

Another KCA spin-off was created by Ashley-Butler, an advertising company that was buying LCns for point-of-purchase displays from RCA’s Solid State Ilivision in Somerville, New Jersey, not far from Princeton. When KCA decided to shift its emphasis to digital displays for watches and instruments, it sold the technology to Ashley-Butler and a number of KCA’s engineers, led by Sandor Caplan, joined the new venture to set up production nearby. The company made a series of different advertising displays that were sold to various retail establishments. The operation continued for ten years before it was closed down. Today, there are more than 1,000 companies that sell point-of-purchase displays and a number of them offer advanced electronic displays that can show full-motion video.


TEXAS INSTRUMENTS AND ITS SPIN-OFFS

During the early 1970s, Texas Instruments was one of the first American semiconductor companies to begin experimenting with liquid CiySVdlS and Sun LU was one of the company’s first researchers to become interested in the technology. He joined Texas Instruments in 1966, shortly after completing the work for his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Rice University in IIouston, Texas. A native of the IZepublic of Taiwan, he had previously earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from National Taiwan LJniversity in Taipei. Sun Lu began working on LCD technology in 1968. The central research laboratory had a holographic mass memory program that needed a “page compiler” to generate an array of dots representing the ‘‘0s and 1s” of the data and would allow recording of the dot pattern on the hologram using a laser beam. Since nobody had any ideas as to which technology might be suitable for this page compiler, Sun Lu thought it would be a very interesting and challenging task, so he volunteered to investigate further. This decision changed the direction of his career.8

In the next few weeks, Sun Lu went through lots of books and journals in the library without making much progress. Then one day, he met Ray Lee, one of Texas Instruments’ semiconductor specialists who had joined the company from KCA. Lee was just beginning work on what was then known as the “E-valve project.” This work would eventually evolve into the digital light processing (IXP) technology concept that Texas Instruments would commercialize for projectors many years later. Lu thought that perhaps the E-valve would be a candidate for the 100 X 100 array for his page compiler, but Lee told him it would take him a great deal of time and effort just to make a few elements. Lee suggested the use of liquid crystals since it was a technology he knew was being developed at RCA 1,aboratories and which seemed to be a more realistic approach for the page compiler.

After reviewing Heilmeier’s paper on dynamic scattering, Lu became intrigued with the liquid crystal display concept, but as an electrical engineer, he knew very little about organic chemistry. Consequently, Lu enlisted the help of a British 1’h.D. chemist, Derek Jones, who was eagerly looking for something significant to do at the company’s research laboratory. Jones knew a little about liquid crystals and soon convinced another 1’h.D. chemist Linda Creagh to join the group. And so, an electrical engineer and two chemists established Texas Instruments’ LCD project.

During the next six months, the group made a lot of progress and fabricated a back-lit 3 9 digit display based on dynamic scattering. Lu also put

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a color wheel behind the display so that the character color could be changed. In the middle of 1969, the team developed a room temperature nematic liquid crystal mixture using pmethoxybenzylidene-p’-butylaniline (MBBA) and pethoxybenzylidene-~’-butylaniline (EBBA). They believed that this was the first room temperature nematic mixture because they were unaware of the secret RCA work done four years earlier as described in Chapter 2. However, the cornpound MBHA was indeed the first single compound to exhibit nematic liquid crystallinity at room temperature. The synthesis of this compound was reported9 before the Texas Instruments group published its paper,1° so Kelker and Scheurle are generally regarded as the inventors.

Shortly thereafter, Lu was called in to speak with Jack S. Kilby, inventor o f the integrated circuit, who would eventually receive the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. Kilby showed a strong interest in LCDs for future use in watches and calculators, since Texas Instruments was developing ICs for these products. He also expressed the opinion that LEDs would not be suitable for watchesGx As a result, Lu decided to abandon the page compiler and with the help of Jones, focused exclusively on watch and calculator displays. I

It was about this time in 1969 that physicist Allan Kmetz, who had just received his 1’h.D. from Yale University, joined the liquid crystal research team. lexas Instruments made a major policy decision to bring out the first consumer end product under its own name: the digital pocket calculator. The company was already supplying calculator chip sets for customers like Howmar and it had developed a single-chip calculator. According to Kmetz,” the LCD group was ordered to develop a DC-driven dynamic scattering display t o work with the I X outputs of the calculator chip. Chemists Linda Creagh and Charles Ristagno did a lot of work on conductivity dopants, similar to work by David Margerum at Hughes. Kmetz and Creagh worked on materials for surface alignment’s and perhaps for the first time, clarified the distinct roles of surface chemistry and topography in determin- ing the vertical and azimuthal alignment angles. Kmetz was also the first to recognize that LCDs respond to the rms (root mean square) value of applied voltage,14 which drew implications for multiplexing performance. Until then, many people believed multiplexing was governed by transient response, but Kmetz showed that threshold steepness was key. He quantified the degradation of selection ratio with increasing number of scanned lines for the common 3:l drive scheme, but it never occurred to himi2 to optimize the drive scheme as Paul Alt and Peter I-’leshko15 subsequently did at IBM.


The LCII group was surprised t o learn that another team at Texas Instruments had an LED display ready fo r the calculator t o go to market on schedule, so they focused on dynamic scattering displays for watches. In 1072, the group, which by then also included Richard Reynolds, Morris Clung and Daniel Evanicky, huilt :in eight-digit dynamic scattering LCD that won Industrial Research magazine’s IR-100 award. However, by reject- ing the AC drive technique preferred by the rest o f the world, the project was doomed t o failure, according t o Kmetz” who went on t o other projects, then left Texas Instruments in 1974 t o join Brown Boveri in Switzerland. Other members o f the group also began looking outside the company for opportunities in the LCD field.

Both Sun LU and Derek Jones left Texas Instruments at the end of 1970 t o join a start-up company called Riker-Maxson Corporation based in Great Kiver, New York. Aware o f the problems associated with dynamic scattering LCI)s, they began working on twisted-nematic field-effect displays for digital watches and in 1972 demonstrated what Sun Lu believes t o hex the world‘s first electronic digital watch using the effect. A photo o f the prototype watch is shown in Fig. 8.5. Rikker-Maxson went out o f business in 1973 and Sun LU moved west t o join Hewlett-Packard’s LCD project while Derek Jones formed another company in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania,

Fig. 8.3. Sun LLI helieves this to bex the world’s first digital watch made with a twistecl-neinatic LCI). Deinonstrated at Kikker-Maxson in 1972. Photo courtesy of Sun L i i .

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called Integrated Display Systems, which went on to be a major supplier of color Guest-Host LCDs to the aircraft instrument industry.

In 1973, another group of engineers from Texas Instruments left to form a new company called Micro Display Systems based near Dallas, Texas. According to Daniel Evanicky,16 the founders, in addition to himself, were Charles Iiistagno, Thomas Hyltin, Larry Billings and Robert Schnurr. Other key members of the team were Dr. Joseph Hull, Ronald Strebel and Robert Jones. The company was funded with $1 million from the Seiko Watch Company to develop twisted-nematic LCDs for its line of digital watches. One of the clever processes that this group developed at Texas Instruments was etching of a cavity in one of the glass plates to hold the liquid crystal material so that the layer thickness would be precise. This process was carried over to the start-up company and put into manufacturing. By 1978, the company was manufacturing both watch and calculator displays in a 48,000 square foot facility with the capacity to produce 15,000 watch displays per week.

Engineers from the two main subsidiaries of Seiko, Suwa Seikosha (later to become Seiko Epson) and Daini Seikosha (now Seiko Instruments), started visiting once a month to learn about the latest version of the manufacturing process.16 Then, like many of the LCD start-up companies, financial problems led to the company being sold to Commodore in 1979, which at the time was a pioneer in the development of personal computers.

START-UP FEVER MOVES TO THE MIDWEST

Another early start-up company was the International Liquid Crystal Company (ILIXCO), which was founded by James Fergason in 1969, shortly after he left Kent State University. ILIXCO was based in Kent, Ohio, and was the first company to manufacture twisted-nematic LCDs in volume. The company also produced digital watches that used these displays, but it went out of the digital watch business a few years later. However, krgason continued to develop new materials and devices at ILIXCO, leading the firm to become a major technology licensing company for LCDs,17 which continues to this day.

After ILIXCO ceased the manufacturing of LCDs, former ILIXCO employees established several other LCD manufacturers based in Ohio. Among these were LXII, Crystahid, and Hamlin, which was a volume producer (sales of about $30 million per year) of magnetic reed switches and mercury switches for the electronics industry in the early 1970s. One of the


first employees to work on LCDs at Hamlin was William Tonar, who started his career at Hamlin in 1974 after receiving his B.S. degree in chemistry from the IJniversity of Wisconsin. He held various positions in process development and engineering management at Hamlin. According to Tonar,lH Hamlin’s President at the time, Ronald Ferguson, and Vice President of R&D, Arnie Darsh, believed the days of the reed switch were numbered. They felt that the long-term survival of Hamlin would require that the company diversify into new technologies with a bright future. Hamlin was good at hermetic sealing and processing glass packages (reed and mercury switches) and the company had an established electronic component sales and representative force, so making and selling LCDs seemed like a natural fit. Hamlin’s executives decided that the best way to enter the market was to purchase a dynamic scattering LCD production line that had been developed by OCLI (Optical Coating Laboratory, Inc.) in Santa Rosa, California. OCLI had developed 1,CD cell assembly and sealing techniques as well as the dichroic reflective and transparent conductive (17’0) thin films on glass required for LCD cell production. After the line was installed at Hamlin, there were many heated debates as to whether or not Hamlin got its money’s worth, but the acquisition enabled Hamlin to enter the LCn business where it remained for many years until it was sold to Standish Industries. In the late 1990s, the LCD operation, known as Standish LCD, was sold to Planar Systems.

Another early start-up was LXD, also based in Ohio. Hugh Mailer, who left ILIXCO after it ceased t o be a producer of LCDs, founded this company. LXD purchased the assets of General Electric’s display operations in Cleveland, and soon hired Tonar who became Vice President of R&D and manufacturing. The company survived for many years as a custom producer of Lcih for specialty applications. Tonar left the company in 1989 when he joined Gentex, a maker of electrochromic mirrors for the automotive industry, where he is Vice President o f advanced materials and process development. IJnfortunately, Hugh Mailer passed away in August of 2003, so information on the more recent history of the firm is unavailalk

SILICON VALLEY DISCOVERS LCDs

One of the first start-up companies on the West Coast to develop LCI) technology for digital watches was Microma. In 1971, Shou-Chen “James” Yih and several others, including Robert Robson, James Phalen and Nicholas Sethofer, founded the companyI9 and established a manufacturing facility

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in Cupertino, California, which is located about ten miles north of San Jose in an area that became known as “Silicon Valley” because it spawned many of the first semiconductor companies that based their technology on the element silicon. Nick Sethofer was a chemist who I believe started working at Intersil on 1,CDs in 1969 or 1970, so he was a key member of the staff. I met him on my visit to Intersil in 1970. By early 1972, the company built its first digital watches using dynamic scattering LCDs. Since it worked closely with Intel on the development of integrated circuit chips, Intel decided to buy the company as a way to enter the digital watch business. I3y 1973, the company, then a subsidiary of Intel, expanded the facility and hired more engineers.

Sam IJyeda was a process engineer who arrived at Microma at about that time to develop processes for liquid filling and indium ball plugging o f the holes in the glass of dynamic scattering LCDs. These processes were similar to, but not identical to those being used by Optel, RCA, and Princeton Materials Science. However, Uyeda helped develop a unique cell assembly process using preformed gaskets instead of the screen printing technique that was k i n g done by other companies. Also, Microma engineers deposited gold on the back plane substrates to act as both a reflector and a conductor. They etched both front and back planes to form a com- plimentary pattern that gave its products a unique appearance.20

Along with the more compact size of the module, the distinctive appearance enabled Microma watches to become popular with customers. This forced its competitors to begin redesigning their modules to create more attractive products.

In addition to becoming a major factor in the LCD digital watch industry, Microma became a Source of experienced engineers who went on to help develop LCI) technology for other companies in Silicon Valley who jumped onto the LCD digital watch bandwagon. One of these was Gerald “Jerry” Garies, who became an expert in photolithographic mass production techniques for patterning the electrodes on the glass surfaces. Garies received a 13,s. degree in Metallurgical Engineering in 1960 from the IJniversity of California at 13erkeley and spent 14 years working in the electronics and semiconductor industries. In 1974, he became a process engineer with American Microsystems, Inc. (AMI), Sunnyvale, California, a semiconductor company that had recently entered the LCD digital watch industry. The LCDs produced by AM1 were men’s and ladies’ 3.5-digit watch displays that were mainly sold to Gruen. ’The LCD manufacturing process was based on single unit processing with IT0 coated glass cut into

Risky Business: Spin-offs and N e w Ventures 107

individual displays; the process was quite similar to that being used by Optel, Princeton Materials Science and Microma.

According to Garies,21 another process engineer, Malcolm Kinter, was assigned to develop a photolithographic process, but before the equipment could be completely set up, he left the company to join Suncrux, another Silicon Valley start-up company. Consequently, Garies finished the set-up and developed the process based on using an ITO coated strip that was four inches long and the width of the display. After electrode patterning, the strips were scribed to single displays using a wafer diamond scriber and processed the rest of the way as single units. Later, he developed a process for frit printing the strips and strip sealing into laminates.

Among the other people who were working at AM1 with Garies were the plant manager 1% Cegka as well as 1’h.D. scientists l’aul van Loan, the research and development manager, Robert Young, Vijay Kagavan and Simon Chang.21 Also working in the liquid crystal synthesis laboratory was Michael McCdffrey, a synthetic organic chemist who had previously worked for me at both KCA and Princeton Materials Science. Each went on to other companies that subsequently became engaged in LCD development and production.

Simon Chang soon went to Microma and in 1975 he recruited Garies to become supervisor of process development engineering. Also working as process engineers for Microma at this time were Hernard Berman, who originally worked at Optel, and Kevin Hathaway, who went on to spend many years as a display engineering consultant. Chang had replicated the photolithographic equipment that had been installed at AM1 and Garies was assigned to make the line operational. The LCD manufacturing process was basically the same as AMI, being based on single unit processing. Micromd eventually raised production volume to 25,000 units per week.

With a desire to increase productivity and efficiency further, Garies began developing a 4-inch X 4-inch array2’ and worked with the Microma watch designer to create a format for the digits that was compatible with the watch designs. He continued to use this formatting when he moved to the other LCD companies that he later became associated with.

In 1977, Intel sold Microma t o Timex, one of the world’s leading watch companies. Timex was very anxious to become established in the digital watch hsiness and Microma offered it a quick entry. More information on

I imex is given in Chapter 10. Another early Silicon Valley start-up was Ness Time, which was

founded by Gordon Ness in 1971 as Ness Clocks and later called Solid State

I 1.

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’l’ime. There is not much information available on the early days of the company. However, by 1974 Solid State Time bought Omron, another local company that was making digital watches. Like many of its competitors in those days, Solid State Time ran into shortages of components that delayed deliveries ultimately causing its customers to cancel their orders. Consequently, the company went into bankruptcy and was forced to close down in early 1976. An interesting account of Solid State Time’s final days is given by Gordon Ness in Don Hoefler’s unique tabloid newsletter, which is available on the Internet.22

As interest in digital watches intensified, other start-ups began spring- ing up in Silicon Valley. Among these were Exetron and Suncrux. Exetron, which was founded hy Donald Brown and others, was sold to Fairchild in 1075, while Suncrux closed down a few years later.

CONCLUSIONS AND OPINIONS

The transition from discovery and invention o f LCDs to product development and manufacturing by many companies around the world took place incredibly fast. In just two years after IICA’s public announcement of LCD development, a number of start-up companies established rudimentary I m manufacturing Facilities. By 1973, just five years later, there were dozens of companies around the world engaged in LCD digital watch and calculator manufacturing. This sparked the interest of the semiconductor companies, since many were already manufacturing the integrated circuits t o drive the displays. They saw a major opportunity to control the fledgling digital watch industry by entering LCD manufacturing and many acquired the faltering start-ups or hired experienced engineers from those that closed down.

And then, in June of 3 973, the motion picture ‘%ive and Let Die,” featu- ring Tan Fleming’s fictional character James Bond,23 was released in the 1J.S.A. In my opinion, this played a major role in the events leading to the decline o f the LCII manufacturing industry in the 1J.S.A. and its shift to Japan. In this movie, actor Roger Moore, while lying in bed next to actress Jane Seymour, reached over and pressed the button on a PulsarL4 watch with a LEU (light emitting diode) display. Life sometimes imitates art and this scene endorsed the LED watch as a sex symbol, sparking one o f the most rapid product development rises and falls in memory. By 1974, interest in the LCD watch waned rapidly among customers as the LED watch hecame popular. It was during this period that the Japanese companies


made major gains in LCD technology development, choosing not to get on the LEI1 bandwagon. Sparked by a heavy advertising campaign, the LET> watch gained prominence and major semiconductor companies such as Texas Instruments, Fairchild and National entered the business. These companies increased production, reduced costs and prices, and subsequently flooded the market in 3975 and 1976. One year later, the LED watch was essentially d.ead; consumers d overed that a timekeeping prod.uct with a continuous readout was better than a sex symbol. l’he demise of the LEI> watch was also helped by the fact that it needed a new battery quite often.

In Japan, however, the LCD watch was becoming quite popular and more companies began selling LCD calculators as well. This enabled the Japanese companies, which had much lower labor costs than those in the IJ.S.R., to greatly increase manufacturing efficiency and product output, resulting in lower costs and prices. In order to compete, lJ.S.-based companies had no choice hut to move their production facilities offshore. Only the large, well-funded companies could continue to operate in the LCD industry and so many of the smaller companies either went out of business or were acquired by larger firms.

REFERENCES

1. Charles G. Ikirck, “Optel’s misadventures in liquid ciystals,” Fortune, October 1073, p. 193.

2. Louis A. Zanoni, personal communications, September through December 2003. The author is also indebted to Louis Zanoni for providing a written transcript o f the audio tape recorded interview of Louis Zanoni and Nunzio Liice inade on November 24, 1998 by Margaret Dennis and Carlene Stephens o f the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

3. Nunzio A. Luce, personal communication, September 2003. 4. Nunzio A. L~ice, “C/MOS digital wristwatch features liquid crystal display,”

Electronics, April 10, 1972, p. 93. N.A. Luce gave this description of the electronic design of the dynamic scattering LCI) digital watch electronic system when Optel was beginning production.

5. J.A. Castellano, “Mesomorphic materials for electro-optical application,” Fewoebctm’cs 3, 29 (1971).

6. G.W. Taylor (ed.), “I. Lefkowitz Commemorative Issue,” Ferroe1ectric.s 73(1-4), (1 987).

7. Peter Raynes, Electronic Letters 10(9>, 141 (1974). 8. Sun Lu, personal communication, August 2003. 9. H. Kclker and 13. Scheurle, Angewandte Chemie 81, 903 (1969).

1 10 Liquid Gold

10. 13. Jones, L. Creagh, and S. Lu, “Dynamic scattering in a room temperature nematic liquid crystal,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 16(2), 61 (1970).

11. D. Jones and S. I.u, “Design of liquid crystal displays for low power electronic pocket calculator,” Proceedings of the 7-97] Znternational Electron Zlevices Meeting, p. 58; M. IIalherstam, D. Jones, and S. Lu, “Liquid crystal displays for electronic time keeping,” Eurocon 71, Lausanne, Switzerland, October 1971 ; I). Jones and S. ILI, “Field effect liquid crystal display,” SZD International Symposium Uigesl qf Technical Pupers (1972) 100; S. Lu, “Continuous displays for electronic watches,” Wescon 1975.

12. Allan Knietz, personal communication, September 2003. 13. Linda T. Creagh and Alkdn R. Kmetz, “Mechanism of surface alignment in

nematic liquid crystals,” Molecular Cystals and Liquid Cystals 24, 59 (1973). 14. Allan 12. Kmetz, “Liquid crystal display prospects in perspective,” ZEEE

Trunsuctions on Electronic Devices, ED-20(1 l), 954 (1973). 15. Paul M. Alt and Peter Pleshko, IEEE Trunsuctions on Electronic device.^, ED-21,

146 (1974). 16 Daniel Evanicky, personal communication, August 2003. 17. James Fergason and his colleagues have several hundred patents on LCD

devices and processes that are assigned to ILIXCO. 18. William Tonar, personal communication, December 2003. 19. Kevin Hathaway, personal communication, December 2003. 20. Sam LJyeda, personal communication, September 2003. 21, Gerald Garies, personal communication, October 2003. 22. Donald C. Hoefler, Microelectronics News, March 6 , 1976; http://

smithsonianchips.si.edu/schreiner/l976/h7~3ll.htm, This newsletter was quite popular with executives and engineers at the semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley during the 1970s and 1980s. Thanks to a donation by K.J. Schreiner to the Smithsonian Institution, issues from 1975 to 1986 are available to the public online.

23. Live and Let Die, a Guy Hamilton film produced by Albert R. Hroccoli, 1973. This was Roger Moore’s first appearance in the role of secret agent James I3ond.

24. I’dsar was established in 1971 and is believed t o be the first company t o commercialize a digital watch with an I,ED display.

Chapter 9

Silicon Valley Calls

"Innovation is everything. When you're on the forefront, you can see what the next innovation needs to be."

Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel, circa 1972

One day in 1974, when I was reviewing the production problems we were having at Princeton Materials Science, I received a telephone call from Robert Noyce, CEO of Intel in Cupertino, California. Intel had recently bought Microma, one of the first LCD digital watchmakers on the west coast. At the time, Intel was a supplier of integrated circuit chips for timing and driving the displays. Noyce asked if I was interested in joining Intel to be a liaison between Microma and the parent company. He wanted a technologist with experience in LCD fabrication to evaluate the processes that Microma was using and perhaps suggest improvements. He said he was prepared to offer a competitive salary in addition to Intel stock options. During our conversation, he said that he liked dynamic scattering displays better than the twisted-nematic types. I agreed, but said that it didn't make any difference what we liked personally, the customers preferred the field effect types and the industry would probably switch over completely. I thanked him for his offer, but said that I wanted to try making Princeton Materials Science a success, so I would stay with it at least for the time being. Also, I mentioned that moving across the country would be a big problem for my family. Hut, as fate would have it, just one year later I would move to Silicon Valley anyway, but under less favomble conditions. And, in retrospect, the Intel stock would have been very valuable over the years if I had taken his offer. Such is the stuff of life; one can never look hack on decisions that were made under the circumstances of the time.

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FAIRCHILD SEMICONDUCTOR FINDS LCDs

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I made a trip to Fairchild’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, in March 1975 to consider the company’s job offer. It was then that I met Wilfred Corrigan, President and CEO of Fairchild, as well as Gregory Reyes, Group Vice President of the consumer products division, and Bud Fry, Vice President-General Manager of the Optoelectronics Division. The plan was to position the LCD operation within the Optoelectronics Division, which was already a major manufx- turer o f LEDs for watches and numerous other instrument applications. As tnanager of LCI) operations, I would report directly to Bud Frye. I accepted tho position, which provided a one-year employment contract and stock options.

After closing down the pilot line in Princeton, all the equipment was moved to California and a new area was set aside for LCD manufacturing in Fairchild’s original R&D building in Palo Alto, California, which also housed LED manufacturing. During the fall of 1975, the facility was prepared and the equipment installed, thanks to a great deal of help from Alfred Jankowsky, the division’s facility manager. Meanwhile, I began recruiting people to fill various staff positions. In addition to Rodney Blose, the production manager who moved west with me, I brought in Edward 13ennet as quality control manager and William Nakagawa to run the liquid

Operations began in January 1976. IJnfortunately, there were no funds set aside for new equipment to upgrade the manufacturing process and three months later, it became evident that we could not achieve the level of production or the yields that were expected. One of my mistakes was not demanding that new equipment be purchased to augment what we had. Another was accepting management’s unrealistic production goals that could not be achieved in the expected time frame. Finally, I did not have enough experience as a manufacturing manager. As a result, I was replaced as operations manager by Ray Kinney, a man with many years of experience in semiconductor manufacturing at Motorola. While I was initially devastated by the move, it was the right decision. Kinney h d a solid reputation in production management and a good relationship with the CEO from their days together at Motorola. Consequently, he was successful in obtaining a capital budget for processing equipment and approval to add much needed engineering support. Since we respected each other’s ability

crystdl material 1abordtOry.

Silicon Valley Calls 1 13

and experience, Kinney and I worked very well together, and we quickly became good friends. As a staff advisor, I was then able to focus on process development, yield improvement and cost analysis.

In order to understand the technical problems that we and many other LCD manufacturers were having at that time, it is necessary to present a brief description of the processes that were being used to make twisted- nematic LCDs. In a later chapter, I will explain how these processes changed over time and evolved into the highly automated systems that are used throughout the world today.

The first step was to stack plates of indium-tin oxide (ITO) coated glass measuring four inches or six inches on a side with wax between the plates to hold them together. These stacks were then placed on a sawing machine that was adopted from those normally used for cutting ceramic tiles; it used water as a lubricant. After the large stacks were cut into individual stacks, they were placed in a hot solvent bath to remove the wax and separate the pieces into individual plates, which typically measured 1 2 mm wide X 25 mm long X 3 mm thick. The individual plates, which would form the “top” and “bottom” portions of the display cell, were then manually loaded into plastic carriers that were placed in a hot deter- gent solution to thoroughly clean the plates. Obviously, this was a very messy and cumbersome process that required a great deal of manual labor.

The process was then divided into three parts: top (also called front or segmented), bottom (also called back or common), and assembly. Initially two small holes (about 0.5mm in diameter) were drilled into the back plates using an air abrasive system with sub-micron particles of alumina. These holes would be used for filling the cell with liquid crystal. Later, this tedious, time-consuming process was eliminated and filling was done through a small opening in the seal on one edge of the display.

Each individual top plate was coated with an acid-resistant ink by using screen printing to create the seven segment pattern of four digits, while the bottom plates were patterned with the same ink, but with a different screen to create a common electrode. The top plates were placed side-by-side on large ceramic tile plates and passed through a drying oven on a conveyor belt; the bottom plates were handled the same way, but put through a separate drying oven. The top and bottom plates were then loaded into plastic carriers and placed into a bath of diiute (5%) hydrochlo- ric acid; this removed all of the indium-tin oxide not protected by the ink.

11 4 Liquid Gold

Fig. 9.1. Patterned watch display plates being unloaded from plastic carriers onto ceramic plates for screen printing and further processing. Fairchild LCD Operation, 1976.

A photo o f the laborious process of removing the plates from the carriers is shown in Fig. 9.1.

In the process used at Fairchild, the indium-tin oxide coated glass was purchased from Bakers in Liechtenstein under the trade name Baltracon. This glass had a partially oxidized coating consisting of 95% indium, 5% tin and an undercoating of silicon dioxide (SO2) between the glass and ITO. This material had many advantages over glass from other suppliers. First, it provided a “passivating layer” of dielectric SiOL to block sodium and hydroxide ions from migrating into the liquid crystal material; this pre- served the integrity of the alignment as well as prevented degradation of the liquid crystal material. The second advantage was that the partially oxidized coating would make the pattern visible (brown) after the etching process fo r easy visual inspection for shorts and opens. Another advantage was that the material etched easily in dilute acid; only a 5% solution was needed instead o f 5oV0 with fully oxidized ITO. Finally, the Si02 layer acted as an anti-reflective coating that reduced the visibility of the electrode pattern in the finished display to enhance the overall appearance.

The next step was to apply a gasket of “frit” to only the top (front) plate using screen printing. Again, this was done on each individual plate as shown in Fig. 9.2. The frit material consisted of a mixture of powdered glass, organic binders and solvent. The powdered glass had a high content of lead oxide to lower its melting point. After printing, the top plates were


Fig. 9.2. Screen printing of glass “frit” material on watch display top plates. Fairchild LCD operation, 1976.

passed through a high temperature furnace at 470°C on a conveyor belt to allow removal of the solvent and decomposition of the organic binders to leave a bead of glass in the shape of a gasket. Known as the “firing” process, this also resulted in full oxidation of the IT0 coating, which made it turn from brown to colorless. This firing process was also carried out with the bottom plates to fully oxidize its IT0 coating.

After the firing, the plates were loaded into specially designed fixtures that were placed in a vacuum chamber for “sloped evaporation” of a thin film of silicon monoxide, which became the surface that would ultimately align the liquid crystal molecules on each plate in the desired direction to achieve the twisted-nematic structure. This was perhaps the most critical step in the process and one that limited production flow because of the need to hold the plates at specific angles to the evaporation source. It was originally developed by Janning’ and was later studied in more detail by Guyon’ and Go0dman.j After the deposition, the surfaces were rubbed in order to avoid the reverse tilt problem mentioned in Chapter 8. Several years later, I discovered* that the sloped evaporation was unnecessary and that a rubbed surface of silicon monoxide, which had been evaporated with the plate perpendicular to the source, worked equally well and was maintained even after the high-temperature sealing process.

The assembly process consisted of manually placing the top plate over the bottom plate in a specially designed, three-point metal fixture that

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Fig. 9.3. Fixtures used for glass “frit” sealing of twisted-nematic LCD watch displays being placed on furnace conveyor belt. Fairchild LCD Operation, 1976.

would hold a number o f display panels. These fixtures were then placed on the conveyor belt of a multi-zone furnace that was programmed with a temperature profile to ensure that the plates were sealed together and cooled slowly to avoid warping or cracking. I’hotos of the fixtures and furnace loading are shown in Fig. 9.3.

There is an interesting sidelight to this story. When this sealing process was first developed at RCA and later adopted by Optel and Princeton Materials Science, a small metal weight was used t o apply pressure to the plates during the sealing cycle. When Wilfred Corrigan, President of Fairchild, saw this operation, he commented that the metal weight was unnecessary; the weight of the glass itself should be sufficient to seal the plates. He was proven to be correct and the metal weight was eliminated. Not only did this simply the process, but it reduced the energy

Silicon Valley Calls 117

consumption of the furnaces required to seal the plates. The suggestions of an astute observer, one who is not close to the process development, can sometimes be invaluable.

The next step in the process involved injecting the liquid crystal material into the small hole in the back plate, then filling the hole with an indium ball to seal the hole. It was not long before this labor-intensive, hole-filling operation was eliminated and replaced by edge filling.

In order to implement edge filling, the sealed display cells needed to have a metal film deposited over the opening in the edge so that it could be sealed with lead-tin solder after filling with liquid crystal. This film was deposited by vacuum sputtering of chromium, copper and gold in that sequence. Through the use of special fixtures, it was possible to perform this operation on thousands of stacked display panels in a single pump- down. After the edge-metallized stacks were removed from the sputtering system, they were turned over with all the open edges down and placed in another vacuum chamber containing a bath of liquid crystal material. After the air was removed from the cells, they were lowered into the liquid crystal bath, and nitrogen gas was introduced into the chamber to bring it back to atmospheric pressure. This forced the liquid into the space between the plates, thereby completely filling the display cells. After filling, the stacked units were turned with the edge openings facing up and a bead of solder was melted over the openings to seal the displays.

The final steps involved cleaning the units, placing polarizer films on the front and back of each unit, and subjecting each display to visual and electrical testing. The polarizer attachment process was very labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Kinney recognized early on that screen printing of individual glass plates for electrode patterning was severely limiting our production throughput. Also, we sometimes had problems with completely removing the ink that was used to pattern the electrodes. He wanted to adopt the silicon IC manufacturing process to LCD manufacturing by using photolithography to pattern a multitude of watch display parts on a large glass plate; the glass plate could then be scribed and broken into individual plates for assembly into single display units. We knew that Microma was already doing this on a small scale with plates that were about four inches on a side. Consequently, in August 1976, Kinney hired Gerald Garies, who had been working at Microma on its photolithography process using a 4-inch X 4-inch array, to develop a process for Fairchild that used larger plates. The only problem was that no scribing equipment was available for

118 Liquid Gold

plates larger than four inches. Assuming that new equipment could be obtained internally or by working with an outside vendor, Garies designed and installed a photolithographic process based on using a glass plate that was 6 inches X 6.5 inches in an array format. Garies was very successful in implementing this photolithographic process, which eliminated screen pattern printing and greatly increased the production flow.

Another important advance was the shift to automated scribing of the large plates patterned by photolithography. Initially, LCD manufacturers were using equipment that was designed for silicon wafer scribing, but these scribers were inadequate for large glass plates. James Pfeiffer, a manufacturing engineer who had previously implemented a very effective glass sealing fixture for the LCII line, designed a glass scriber that had promise, but it could not provide the scribe placement acCurdcy required. Through the efforts of Garies and another engineer, Donald Brownewell, a new system then in development by Thoinas Muir of Villa Precision, Phoenix, Arizona, was adopted for our operation. Muir had built a scriber based on a scribe wheel concept for Motorola to scribe 4-inch X 4-inch glass plates. As a result of input from Garies and Brownewell, Muir made modifications to enable the scriber to work with 6-inch X 6.5-inch glass plates and later to larger and larger sizes. This scriber opened the door for laminate scribing after laminate sealing,5 another major advance that increased productivity. Villa Precision delivered the first model of its scriber to Fairchild in March 1977 and four other units over the next two years. The Villa Precision automated scribing equipment soon became an industry standard with units installed in LCD manufacturing plants throughout the world.

By the end of 1976, the Fairchild operation was producing thousands of displays per day as the operation became highly productive, efficient and ultimately profitable. One day at the beginning of 1977 as I recall, Ray Kinney and I were discussing the latest production report when Wilfred Corrigan called to tell Kinney that we must shift the LCD manufacturing operation to the company’s plant in Hong Kong as soon as possible. Since labor represented a significant portion of the manufacturing cost, a shift to Hong Kong, which had very low labor rates at that time, would greatly reduce the unit manufacturing cost. Corrigan promised to make the company’s resources available to achieve the transition as quickly as possible and indeed in a matter of a few months, the process was well underway as new equipment was ordered and the facility in Hong Kong was prepared. My responsibilities also changed and I was then directed to help plan the


new facility, prepare technology transfer documentation, and teach the process to the Hong Kong engineers who were sent over to spend several months in Palo Alto.

After a number of discussions it was decided to design a factory with the capability to produce 250,000 men’s watch displays per week. The original design included both the screen printing process and the photolithography process, but Kinney wisely decided to p the screen printing process and go exclusively with photolithography based on plates that were 4 inches X 6.5 inches in size.

As mentioned previously, placing polarizers on the finished display was a labor intensive process, so a technique was developed where ten displays were placed in a linear holder and a strip of polarizer mechanically applied to both sides.5 The scratch protective layer was then stripped off and the holder placed in a laser system, which cut the displays by a step and repeat operation. James I’feiffer was involved in the design of the laser cutting system. Polarized displays were then placed in plastic trays for visual and electrical testing.

The Hong Kong factory, known as Wing Kai, was located on the mainland in Tuen Mun, a rapidly growing industrial city in what was then called the “New Territories” of Hong Kong. The factory had other electronic assembly operations underway in addition to LCD production. Engineers K.K. Cheng, W.T. Wan and S.S. Kwan from Wing Kai were sent to Palo Alto to learn the process and participate in the technology transfer. By the summer of 1977, these engineers returned to Wing Kai to oversee the installa- tion of equipment. Other engineers who played major roles in establishing the line were C.S. Chan, Raphael Kan and C.B. ‘rang. In September, Garies, Brownewell and others went to Wing Kai to help turn on the production line. Soon the line was producing close to its designed capacity.

During the long flights to and from Hong Kong in 1978, Garies designed5 a manufacturing line for large area displays for non-watch applications based on laminate array sealing of a 14-inch X 14-inch glass substrate starting with suboxidized ITO. His plan was approved and the manufacturing line was installed in Palo Alto in 1979. Engineers Allen Winterer, Paul Salisbury, Carol Knight and IYavid Kuty were also involved in establishing the production line.

Once the shift of manufacturing operations to Hong Kong was well underway, I began looking for other ways to advance LCD technology and to seek out other Fairchild researchers for collaboration. During the mid-l970s, the development of the charge coupled device (CCD) and 256K random access memory (RAM) were two of the most important

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research projects underway at Fairchild. These were conducted under the direction of solid-state physicist James Early, who was Director of Research and Development. Early earned a PhD. from Ohio State University and spent 18 years at Bell Laboratories before joining Fairchild in 1969. He was already a well-known scientist having done important research at Bell Labs where he created much of the design theory of bipolar transistors and discovered the effects of space-charge layer widening6 (“The Early Effect”). Among other things, he created the oscillator transistor and led development o f solar cells for Telstar I, the first L J S . communication satellite. At Fairchild, he developed the isoplanar bipolar process and the prototype of its isoplanar memory products. Together with Gilbert Amelio, another Bell Labs physicist who Early recruited, they created the buried channel CCD imager, which has revolutionized low light level electronic imaging. Unfortunately, James Early passed away while this book was being completed.

Since Early’s office was just down the hall from mine, we would often discuss the possibility of developing silicon thin-film transistors for LCDs. We were well aware of the work that T. Peter Brody was doing on cadmium selenide and other Group 11-VI compounds, but silicon was a material that was well understood by Early’s experienced team of researchers in transistor technology, so it seemed like a promising area of research. Later, I would learn that amorphous silicon TITS were already being researched at Exxon’s central research laboratories in New Jersey as well as labs in Japan and Germany. Fortuitously, it was about this time that we had a visit from a Texas-based minicomputer company called Datapoint.

The Datapoint engineers had conceived of manufacturing a small table-top computer with a built-in multi-line, multi-characzer flat panel display and believed that an LCD would be a perfect fit. In essence, this would have been an early version of the notebook computer. We explained to them that producing an acceptable high-information content LCD would require an active matrix of thin-film transistors, a technology that was in its infancy. However, they were so convinced that this would be a breakthrough product, they were willing to engage in a jointly-funded research and development program with Fairchild to build such a display. This seemed like an exciting project to us, so we planned to organize a small team consisting of members from the LCD operation and the integrated circuit processing group. In order to take the project further, however, we needed approval from ’rhomas Longo, then Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Fairchild and James Early’s boss. Consequently, Early, Kinney, one of Early’s top researchers whose name I


cannot recall, and myself, met with Longo to present our proposal. Linfortunately, Longo was very skeptical that thin-film transistors would have acceptable electron mobility to be successful for this application and the project never went forward. In my opinion the company lost an opportunity to tie at the forefront of active matrix LCD development.

With the Hong Kong plant up and running and a lack of interesting LCD research projects to work on, I began thinking about other opportunities. It did not take long before one came along.

ANOTHER NEW VENTURE

Datapoint was not the only company thinking about larger, high information content LCDs for compact computers. Researchers at Hitachi, IIewlett-Packard, and several other firms were also developing multi-line LCDs, but using multiplexing addressing schemes rather than the more difficult TIT approach. Others, such as Exxon, were investigating amorphous silicon as a material for TETs. Although Exxon was primarily engaged in oil exploration and refining as well as chemical manufacturing, it had established a separate company called Exxon Enterprises to exploit new technologies that were being developed either internally at Exxon’s central research laboratory or by other organizations.

Exxon Enterprises was formed in the early 1970s to invest a portion of Exxon’s excess capital in the venture capital market. Exxon hoped that these efforts would expose the company to emerging technologies that would eventually lead to strategically valuable diversification. To this end, Exxon invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1970s in a wide variety of emerging firms. Representative investments included the early developers o f the microprocessor, fax machine and word processor.

Exxon Enterprises was ultimately dissolved in the early 1980s. An article by Pinchot7 speculates on the reasons for its demise.

In 1977, George Taylor, who was engaged in various consulting projects, was approached by Exxon Enterprises to form a start-up company that would develop high information content LCDs. Taylor contacted me to see if I would be interested in joining such a firm, which would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Exxon Enterprises. I expressed an interest, but only under the conditions that the operation be located somewhere in Silicon Valley and that there would be some sort of equity incentive program. I thought it would be unlikely that these conditions would be acceptable o r that the venture would ever become established.

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Despite my misgivings, Taylor continued to work on the venture with Garrett Stone, a manager at Exxon Enterprises who had an MBA from Harvard University and was slated to head up the subsidiary company. Over a period of several months, Stone and Taylor convinced the management at Exxon Enterprises to base the company in Silicon Valley and to establish an equity program that rewarded the principals with a bonus cash payment tied to the achievement of specific goals. The company was initially called Datascreen Corporation, but in 1979 the name would be changed to Kylex because of a name conflict with another firm.

In addition to Stone, Taylor and myself, David Davies, a Ph.D. physicist who had been developing TFTs with Brody’s group at Westinghouse, was recruited to join the founding team. Stone developed a business plan that called for the development of a one-line, 40-character, multiplexed 5 X 8 dot matrix TN-LCD prototype in one year with a total budget of $900,000. Each member of the founding team would receive what were called “participation appreciation rights” (known as PARS) in lieu of shares in the company. If we achieved the goal of building the prototype in one year and within the allotted budget, each PAR could be redeemed for $1. Since each of us would have more than 100,000 shares, there would be a great incentive to achieve the desired goals.

Ry the fall of 1977, the plans to move ahead were finalized and the principals met at Exxon Enterprises in New York City to sign the contracts. Due to philosophical differences he had with Stone, Taylor decided not to join the company. Since Taylor was a good friend and I was well aware of the talent he would bring to the organization, I had reservations about signing on. However, Taylor encouraged me to go ahead with the venture and so I resigned from Fairchild at the end of September and joined Datascreen as Manager of Operations.

Between October and December facilities were installed in a newly constructed building in Mountain View and in early January of 1978 it was completed and occupied. Meanwhile, key staff members with experience in materials development and LCD production were recruited. Among these were Sun Lu and Kenneth Harrison. Lu, an early LCD pioneer who was mentioned previously, was recruited from Hewlett-Packard where he was project manager for LCU development. Harrison was co-discoverer of the biphenyl type liquid crystal material when working on his Ph.U. at the IJniversity o f Hull under George Gray. He was recruited from Optel. Other electrical engineers and technicians from Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild were soon added.


The construction of the Facility, which included a 3,000 square foot clean room, went very well, the quality of construction was excellent and the project was only two weeks behind schedule. However, the procurement of capital equipment was many weeks behind schedule. Some key items, such as the sealing furnace and the wet stations used in the photolithographic process, were delayed by as much as six weeks. In spite of these dePays, the company was fully operational by mid-March and by June displays were being fabricated.

We soon found that a 40-character display with fine lines and spaces was quite a bit more difficult to fabricate than the four-digit watch displays that I had been accustomed to producing at Fairchild, so a number of problems arose in the summer of 1978. Perl-laps the most serious concern was the large number o f open contacts from the front glass plate into the display. After studying this in some detail, we attributed this problem to a chemical reaction between the frit and the indium-tin oxide coating, which can occur at the high temperatures being used for the sealing process. As a result, we lowered the operating temperature for sealing to below 530°C and changed to a new frit material supplied by AVX Materials.8 With the adjusted profile and the new material we were able to achieve much improved sealing yields with cell spacings in the desired range. By the end of August, we solved essentially all the other problems associated with the cell fabrication.

Meanwhile, Davies and his engineering team were successful in building electronics to demonstrate the operation of the display and to test its func- tionality against the target specifications. Another key achievement was Harrison’s development of a mixture of cycloalkyl aromatic ester liquid crystal compounds that produced excellent eight-line multiplexing characteristics.

By the middle of September, we demonstrated the 40-character, one- line alphanumeric display tc) Exxon Enterprises’ management (see Fig. 9.4). We also showed that the process for its fabrication could be adaptable to manufacturing with the addition of suitable production fixtures and equipment. The project was completed within the promised one-year time frame, although we exceeded the $900,000 budget by about 7.5%. Thus, the value of our PARS was set at $0.93, so each of the founding members of the group had been given a significant bonus.

IJnfcjrtunately, during the late summer of 1978, major differences in management and operational philosophy arose between myself and Garrett Stone, President of Ilatascreen/Kylex. As a result, we simply could not work together. Consequently, I resigned at the end of September and

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Fig. 9.4. One-hne, 40-character twisted-nematic LCD using a 5 X 8 dot matrix for each character and eight-line multiplexing. This panel, one of the first of its kind, was fdbri- cated in 1978 at Datascreen Corporation (later called Kylex, Inc.), Mountain View, California, a subsidiary of Exxon Enterprises, Inc. The display was made with glass-to- glass and glass-to-metal seals. Although it has not operated electrically since it was first made, the twisted-nematic alignment at room temperature remains as a testament to the integrity of the hermetic seal packaging. Photo taken in October 2003.

agreed to be a consultant to the company for one year. As part of the settlement, I would receive only about half o f the value of my PARS. However, it turned out to be a good arrangement for me because I had my first client and was able to finance the start-up of my professional consulting activities.

After I left DatascreedKylex, the engineering team continued its work on the one-line, &character display and reported on improvements to its o p e r a t i ~ n . ~ The plan for Kylex beyond the first year was to build larger displays with more lines of characters and ultimately a display driven with amorphous silicon TFTs. Although the latter goal was never achieved, the company did build multi-line, multi-character displays using another technology called the Thermally-Addressed Dye Display (TADD), which was invented by Sun Lu.” This unique concept used a smectic liquid crystal with an added dye addressed by a combination of thermal and electrical signals to give a highly multiplexed display with good contrast and viewing angle. Kylex demonstrated 6-inch X 7-inch displays with 288 X 357 pixels in a portable terminal, the KT-111. This was one of the largest high information content LCDs made up to that time. Because it operated by switching between two stable states (“bistability”), the display consumed power only when the elements were written. However, Kylex never commercialized the display and Exxon Enterprises sold the company to 3M Company in late 1981. Display development eventually ceased as 3M focused on the development of optical disk storage media.

Sun Lu further developed the TADD technology when he joined Crystalvision in 1983 as Vice President of Engineering. He built a panel that


was 6.5 inches X 5 inches with 640 X 256 pixels - again, one of the first IXDs in this size and information content.l’ The panel could show text and graphics with MS-DOS compatible software. However, this company was unable to develop a market for the display and closed its doors in 1985.

MOVING IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION

While still working at Fairchild, I was in regular contact with George Taylor, my former colleague from both RCA and Princeton Materials Science. As I mentioned previously, Taylor had established a consulting company called Princeton Resources, which quickly became engaged in various projeczs, some not related to displays. He would often call on me to help him with these projects because there was simply more work than he could handle himself. Therefore, I decided to establish my own company to engage in these non-dispkay related projects outside of Fairchild to avoid any conflict of interest. Since I was working in close proximity to Stanford University and would often spend time doing library research there, I named the company Stmford Resources. Following the concept devised by George Taylor, the company would subcontract various aspects of a project to other expert consultants. Thus, the company could assemble the “resources” necessary to handle both small and large projects.

During my one-year tenure with Datascreen, Stanford Resources became totally dormant because I was consumed with the work of building displays. However, when I resigned from Datascreen/Kylex, Stanford Resources was resurrected as a full-time consulting company, which I soon registered as a corporation in the state of California. With natascreen/Kylex as my first client, I was enthusiastic about the consulting business, but knew that I would need more clients. Fortuitously, while preparing to move out of my office at DatascreedKylex, I received a phone call from Henry Woodward, one o f the chief patent attorneys at Fairchild. Woodward asked me if I knew of a consultant who could advise Pairchild on the validity of the Hoffman-La Roche patents since that company was pressing Fairchild for royalties. I explained to Woodward that I was now a full-time consultant and could help him. He was quite pleased and incredibly I had my second client in as many days. In the following weeks, more clients began calling and soon I was swamped with work. However, at that time I never dreamed this activity would consume the next 25 years of my life.

126 Liquid Gold

REFERENCES

1. J. Janning, Appl. Ph,ys. Lett. 21(4), 173 (1972). 2. E. Guyon, I? Pieranski, and M. Boix, Letten cfApplied andEnginem’ng Science

1, 19 (1973); Appl. 1’h.y~. Lett. 25, 479 (1974). 3. I,. Goodman, J. McCinn, C. Anderson, and F. Digeroniino, 1’roceeding.s of the

Society,for Irlfbrmation Display 18(1), 11 (1977). 4. J.A. Castellano, “Surface anchoring of liquid crystal molecules on various sub-

strates,” Molecular Cyslals and Liquid Cystuls 94, 33 (1983). This was taken from a paper presented at the American Chemical Society Symposium, Las Vegas, NV, 1982. Also, “Alignment o f liquid crystal molecules on surfaces,” Liquid c‘y.stals and Ordered Fluids, Vol. 4 , eds. A.C. Griffin and J.E. Johnson (Plenum Press, New York, 1984).

5. Gerald Caries, personal communication, October 2003. 6. James M. Early, “Effects of space-charge widening in junction transistors,”

I’ror0Cceding.s oj‘the Institute @Radio Engineem- 40, 1401 (1952). 7. Gifford 111 Pinchot, “Intrapreneurship: how firms can encourage and keep their

bright innovators,” International Munugement, January 1, 1983. This paper gives a description o f the reasons for Exxon’s decision to dissolve its venture capital subsidiary.

8. This material was formulatcd by David E. Mentley, a ceramicist who was working at AVX Materials in San Diego, California. Mentley joined Kylex in 1979 and in the 1980s went on to become a leading market research analyst to the display industry. He worked with the author at Stanford Resources for more than 20 years.

9. I). navies, W. Fischer, G. Force, K. Harrison, and S. Lu, “Practical liquid crystal display forms forty characters,” Electronics, January 3, 1980.

10. S. Lu, D. navies, J. Wells, and G. Force, “TADD technology utilized in KT-111 portable display terminal,” Information Display, January 1982, p. 3.

11. Alan V. King, “CrystalVision’s new liquid crystal displays,” Information Dtsplay, Ikcember 1984, p. 10.

Chapter 10

An Industry in Transition

"Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress."

Stephen Jay Gould, renowned palaeontologist, 1978

Iluring the mid-l970s, the LCD industry began to mature and firms began looking toward expanding applications beyond small watch displays to larger, high-information content products. At the same time, companies in Japan, Southeast Asia and Europe started t o seriously engage in the development and manufacturing of LCns as well as their component parts. By early 1980, many 1J.S. and some European firms shifted LCD manufacturing t o plants in Southeast Asia while others transferred the technology to firms in Eastern Europe. A few years later, nearly all high-volume manufacturing of LCDs was being carried out in the Far East, although significant advances in the technology continued to come from U.S. and European organizations.

This chapter will present a discussion of the transition during this period, from deve1c)pment and rudimentary production to a high-volume manufxturing industry with examples from the author's experience as well as those of other individuals who participated in the events. It is by no means intended to cover every organization that became engaged in LCD development and manufacturing. However, by providing some specific examples, it will give the reader a flavor of how the industry shifts occurred and why.

NEW MATERIALS EMERGE

The search for new liquid crystalline materials that would provide improvements in performance was ongoing throughout the world from the time of the 1968 KCA announcement. But a major breakthrough occurred in 1972 when George Gray, John Nash and Kenneth Harrison, working at Hull

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IJniversity’s chemistry laboratory in England, developed alkyl and alkoxy cyanobiphenyls that could be mixed to produce materials with broad operating temperature ranges and excellent electro-optical performance. The structural formulas of the compounds that were used to form one of the most widely used mixtures of that time is shown in Fig. 10.1.

According to Kawamoto,l E. Peter Raynes who was then working at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (KSKE) in Malvern, England, prepared this specific mixture. Dr. Raynes played a key role throughout the development of liquid crystal displays. His early research established the electro-optic properties of the cyanobiphenyl materials and created novel mixtures. He also devised methods for predicting the composition and properties of commercially valuable multi-component eutectic systems and applied these successfully in the production of such mixtures. His patented methods for eliminating the defects, which he named “reverse

A - Nematic Range: 54 - 80 degrees C

1

B - Nematic Range: 22- 3 5 degrees C

C - Nematic Range: 28 -42 degrees C

D -Nematic Range: 130- 239 degrees C

Fig. 10.1. Structural formulas of liquid crystalline cydnobiphenyl compounds. The mixture, designated as E-7, was one of the most widely used liquid crystal mixtures of cyanobiphenyl compounds for LCDs during 1970s and 1980s. It contained 16% l ~ y weight of A, 51%) of R, 25% of C and 8% of D.

An Industry in Transition 129

twist” and “reverse tilt” are now industry standards for obtaining blemish- free devices. Raynes was awarded the Paterson Medal and Prize for his major contributions to the development of LCDs. A Queen’s Award to Industry for the Solid State Physics and Devices Division of RSRE in 1979 and the Rank Optoelectronics prize in 1980 have also recognized his work in this area.

The development of this new class of liquid crystal materials meant that expensive and production-limiting glass frit sealing could be eliminated because these materials were not subject to the base-catalyzed hydrolysis that other materials like esters and Schiff bases would undergo unless elaborate precautions were taken. In addition, they were less viscous, thereby providing faster response and relaxation times under electrical excitation. And, as an added bonus, the materials had better light transmission characteristics; they were essentially pure white compared to the slightly yellow color of the Schiff bases or azoxy compounds. The results of these experiments were not published until one year later2 because the researchers recognized the importance of this discovery and the need to apply for a patent on the material.

At that time, the project was being conducted under contract to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence and assigned to RSRE, its research arm. Many of the electro-optic measurements and devices were made in this facility. The team of researchers at RSRE, which was led by Cyril Hilsum, included E. Peter Raynes, John Kirton, Colin M. Waters, V. Brimmell, A. Ashford, J. Constant, 1). Hume and others. A number of significant contributions to the development of LCDs and improvements in their performance were made at RSRE. The story of these developments is covered in detail in several other account^.^^^ References to some of these developments appear in other parts of this book.

The emergence of these materials was a milestone event, which enabled the development of new manufacturing techniques that allowed high productivity at lower cost. The first materials became available through the British Drug House, which became known as BDH Chemicals, under license to the development team at RSRE and Hull 1Jniversity. In 1973, BDH was sold by its parent company, Glaxco, to E. Merck, now known as EMI) Chemicals and a unit o f Merck KGaA based in J%rmstadt, Germany. While there is no current corporate connection between Merck KGaA and the ‘CIS. pharmaceutical firm, Merck 8 Company in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, they were part of the same firm before World War I, according to the company’s history (wWW.emdchemcials,com).

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Chemists in Germany soon beaan looking for other structures that would give even better performance than the biphenyls. Demus and his group at the University of Halle, for example, found that certain cyanophenylcyclohexane esters were nematic and had lower viscosity than the cyanobiphenyls4 making them very desirable for calculator displays. Then, Ludwig I’ohl, Rudolf Eidenshink and their colleagues at E. Merck discovered that cyanophenykyclohexanes were also nematic and had even lower viscosity than the cyan~biphenyls.~~~ This led to materials with rapid response times and small birefringent effects while retaining the colorless features and other desirable device-related characteristics of the cyanobiphenyls.

These materials soon became widely used in LCDs and in particular with the TFT-driven displays that were beginning to be developed at that time. The structural formulas of some of the compounds from this series are shown in Fig. 10.2.

A - Nematic Range: 42 - 45 degrees C

B -Nematic Range: 30- 55 degrees C

C -Nematic Range: 30- 59 degrees C

D - Nematic Range: 94-219 degrees C

Fig. 10.2. Struclural formulas of selected liquid crystalline cyanophenylcyclohe~nes. Mixtures of compounds from among this family of materials became avdikdbk from E. Merck in the 1980s and continue to be used to this day.


The development of these materials opened the way for display designers to tailor the materials to meet specific applications and soon a whole host of materials became available to display manufacturers from E. Merck as well as from Hoffmann-La Koche in Hasel, Switzerland, and the Japanese firms Chisso Chemical Company and Dainippon Ink and Chemical Company. More details on the developments of the liquid crystal compounds that were investigated through the years appear in several reviews7-" that include references to the numerous papers that were published on the chemistry of these unique materials.

THE SHIFT TOWARD POLYMER SEALING

The development of first the cyanobiphenyls and then the cyanophenylcyclohexane materials enabled the LCD manufacturing industry to begin a shift away from glass frit sealing and toward the use of polymers. During the summer of 1979, I was doing a two-phase research project under contract to Fairchild to study the mechanism of interaction between liquid crystal materials and various treated surfaces (e.g. glass, silicon oxides, indium-tin oxide, organic films, etc.) and to develop surface treatment techniques that would result in improved display performance and lower manufacturing cost for TN-LCDs. One of the specific objectives was to develop techniques that would yield displays with broader viewing cones than were then available. The first phase involved a detailed investigation of the work that had been done prior to 1979.

In performing the literature search, some 35 different methods for producing alignment of liquid crystals on various surfaces were uncovered. These methods included the use o f both organic and inorganic films as well as various mechanical treatments (e.g. rubbing with cloths, paper and abrasives). Some 50 primary reference sources and a number of sec- ondary sources were reviewed. In addition, ten principal workers in the field were interviewed in order to gain further insight into the nature of their work. Among the recommendations that were made were to investigate replacement o f the slope evaporation process with polyimide deposition and the implementation o f polymer sealing. The reason for this change was to increase volume production by eliminating the slow throughput vacuum deposition of silicon monoxide. The output of this phase was a scheduled plan that detailed the experiments to be performed in order to establish a better understanding of the interactions between the material and surface.

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The second phase of the project involved acqual performance of the experiments, formulation of the mechanisms, and establishment of the material and surface requirements that gave improved display performance. I received valuable assistance from a number of Fairchild's employees including I)r. William Nakagdwd, Dean wu, Keith Riordan, Lillian Peterson and Allen Winterer during the course of this work. Rased on this research, models were developed to explain the alignment and tilt of liquid crystal molecules on silicon monoxide surfaces. Alignment was postulated to be caused by the unique ordered arrangement of silicon monoxide molecules produced during the slope evaporation process. It was further theorized that the tilt of liquid crystal molecules on this surface, after rubbing, was produced by tilted microcrystallites o f silicon monoxide. A monochromatic optical technique developed by Hirecki and KahnlO was used to measure low mokcular tilt angles. The standard production process gave small, finite lilts while unrubbed displays give no tilt. Also, liquid crystal alignment was achieved using a mechanically abraded (via diamond paste rubbing) surface of silicon monoxide, but the microgrooves thereby obtained forced the molecules into a zero tilt condition that resulted in a high degree of reverse tilt. Some of the results of this study were presented several years later,ll" but many of the findingsll" were never made public.

Another result of this project was the development of an epoxy sealing process using a rubbed surface of polyimide as the liquid crystal alignment medium. IXsplays fabricated in this manner at the Fairchild operation had very low tilt angles, were uniform in acZive cell thickness, and had good contrast.

Fairchild was by no means the only organization looking to move away from the labor-intensive and volume-production limiting, glass frit sealing process. In fact, nearly all other LCD manufacturers throughout the world were also investigating and implementing these processes during this time period. Over the next few years, the industry shifted exclusively toward this type of fabrication. Glass frit sealing eventually vanished as a volume manufacturing process, although this hermetic sealing technique, which provided high reliability and long shelf life, continued to be used for many years in manufacturing the smaller volumes of LCDs installed in aircraft instruments and military systems.

THE DIGITAL WATCH INDUSTRY EVOLWS

In the 1970s, Timex was the number one volume supplier of mechanical and electrical watches in the USA. In order to maintain its dominant market


position, the company recognized early on that it must become a proficient supplier of its own electronic modules instead of relying solely on outside vendors. Timex had a watch component manufacturing plant in Waterbury, Connecticut, but was dependent upon outside suppliers for its LCDs. Consequently, the company established LCD development in the early 1970s at its corporate R&D center in Tarrytown, New York and hired scientists and engineers with knowledge and experience in LCD development. One of the first was Chan Soo Oh, who previously worked with me at RCA Laboratories. Oh had a R.S. degree in pharmacy from Seoul National University and M.S. and ph.11. degrees in organic chemistry from St. John's University. Soon, other Ph.D. scientists, Frank Allan, Marshall Liebowitz and Paul Hsieh joined Timex from Olivetti. Allan had also worked on LCDs at Rockwell and previously worked on photochromic displays at RCA Laboratories in the 1960s when I first met him.

According to Oh,12 the early work at Timex was on developing material for dynamic scattering LCDs to be used in watches, clocks and instruments. It should be mentioned that during this time period, there were no major manufacturers of liquid crystal material; so, many companies maintained a staff of chemists to synthesize and purify the materials for use in displays. It was not until the late 1970s and early 190s, that the chemical firms mentioned previously began offering a wide variety of liquid crystal mixtures for LCI> manufacturing.

After reading the Schadt and Helfrich paper published in 1971, Oh shifted his work toward the twisted-nematic displays because the low voltage operation and low current consumption of the LCDs would greatly increase battery life, an important factor for buyers of watches. Oh and Hsieh prepared many twisted-nematic cells using mixtures of Schiff bases and azoxy compounds containing PEBAB (pethoxybenzylidene- p'-aminobenzonitrile). These were shown to Timex management and the company was convinced to switch to the lower voltage displays.

Meanwhile, Timex also began looking at acquisitions that would provide it with LCD manufacturing capability. Consequently, it initiated the purchase of Microma from Intel in 1977, when the market for LCD watches was in oversupply and Intel rcportedlyl3 had some 200,000 watches in inventory. At the time, James Heck, who was the engineering manager at Microma, became the general manger of the operation. Kevin Hathaway was one of the key material and device engineers who began working at Microma in 1972. His work at Microma/Timex started in the LC material side, but gravitated toward devices. Hathaway made many contributions to

134 Liquid Gold

the development of low voltage Guest-Host displays, mostly during the Timex years. He was also involved in development of molecular alignment methods and device measurements such as tilt angle and polarization effects as well as photometric characterizations of LCDs.

According to Ilathaway,14 Timex acquired the assets of Microma, but did not buy the name, which was sold to a Swiss company. Hathaway believes the transfer actually occurred in early 1978; the sale was orches- trated very carefully because Timex feared possible anti-trust action by the U.S. Justice Department. Thus, the sale was gradually leaked to Microma’s employees over a period of about six months. “This phase was initiated by a shutting down of all production-related activities by Intel and then by the establishment of a special new and, as it turned out, temporary division of Intel called the Advanced Electronics Products Development Group,” recalls Hathaway. “The non-essential people were mostly absorbed into Intel and those that remained were given the opportunity to either find a job at Intel or remain with the Group. Our supposed charter was to do contract engineering and development for other companies and a short while later, lo and behold, Timex showed up as our first ‘customer’. Anyway, this phase of the ruse lasted for about six months before Timex’s long-term intentions were made known at my level (engineer) in the organization. Even though the sale to Timex was handled with a bit of ‘cloak-and-dagger,’ I believe it worked out pretty well for most involved.”

Timex had also purchased RCA’s LCD operation in Somerville, New Jersey, during this time period. However, Timex’s whole business was facing intense competition from Asia and it sought to cut costs by moving all LCD production facilities to Asia and the Philippines. Consequently, manufacturing operations in Cupertino and Somerville were phased out by the early 1980s. liltimately, Timex realized that it could not compete as a manufacturing company and realigned its business to become a marketing and distribution entity, which is where it remains today.

During the mid-l970s, many other firms entered the LCD watch manufacturing industry. In addition to the semiconductor firms like Pairchild, National, Motorola, Texas Instruments and American Microsystems, others such as neckman Instruments, Rockwell International, Hughes Aircraft, Spiedel, Ebauches SA in Switzerland and Commodore joined the business.

Commodore WAS one of the first companies to produce personal computers. Bruce Crockett, who was a former operations manager for LEDs at Fairchild, led the LCD operation. Crockett had been hired by Bud Fry, my former boss at Fairchild who was then a vice president of Commodore

An industry in Transition 135

working directly for Jack Tramiel, the founder and CEO of the company. Rodney Blose, who had worked for me at both Fairchild and Princeton Materials Science, was hired as manufacturing manager. The company established a pilot line in Palo Alto, California, to build calculator displays and I was called in as a consultant in November 1978. Together with Blose and his assistant Walter Murray, we developed both an improved process for molecular alignment and polymer sealing using thermoplastic and epoxy materials.

In January 1979, Commodore acquired Micro Display Systems (MDS) in Dallas ’Texas, a company that was formed by a group from Texas Instruments as described previously in Chapter 8. This company already had a volume LCD manufacturing operation for watch and calculator displays, so Commodore consolidated all its display manufacturing in Dallas, leading me to believe that my services as a consultant would no longer be needed. However, several months later, I received a call from Bruce Crockett asking me to fly to Dallas as soon as possible to help solve a problem related to molecular alignment. Indeed, a day later I was being greeted by Crockett and Blose at the airport in Dallas and was Soon working with them to solve the problem.

I had previously visited MDS in August 1978 when I was still with natascreen/Kylex. The purpose of that visit was to develop a technology exchange agreement, but that never materialized. In any event, I was already familiar with the operation. Also, I had been working with Fairchild and other companies to develop improved aligning agents and in February 1980 had already developed my own polyimide formulation. However, Blose wanted to use a material that did not require expensive or exotic solvents, so polyimides, which required the use of N-methyl pyrrolidone as a solvent, was ruled out. Blose and I set out to design a series of experiments involving various alignment layer materials and within just one week, Elose and his staff completed the project. I suggested using methyl cellulose with a medium molecular weight range, making it possible to deposit a thick film of the material from an aqueous solution. This enabled the company to use a safe and rather simple process for depositing the alignment layer material, which could then be rubbed in the usual way to give a stable alignment layer. The company continued to use this process to build millions of reliable LCD watch displays, but the technique was never published or patented to my knowledge. Commodore’s production increased dramatically after 1979 and peaked in 1982 when it sold 30million units. After manufacturing 25million units in 1983, the firm exited the watch

136 Liquid Gold

display business. Commodore went completely out of LCD manufacturing in 1986 when it sold the operation to Eagle Pitcher Industries.

Meanwhile, a number of companies in Japan began expanding their operations and increasing volume production of LCD watch displays. By the end of 1930, the highest volume supplier was Hitachi with a monthly capacity of two million units. Other major suppliers and their monthly capacities were: Daini Seikosha (1 million), Citizen (800,000), Epson (600,000), Suwa Seikosha (350,000), Nanotronix (400,000), Optrex (400,000), Sanyo (400,000) and Sharp (200,000). Optrex was formed as a joint venture between Mitsubishi and Asahi Glass, a major supplier of the glass panels used in LCL) manufacturing. In later years, Daini Seikosha became Seiko Instruments and a merger between Epson and Suwa Seikosha led to the creation of Sciko Epson. However, all of these companies continued to develop LCDs in larger sizes with higher information content and for a broader range of application.. By the mid-1980s other Japanese companies such as Fujitsu and NEC moved into manufacturing of LCDs for computer displays.

HONG KONG MANUFACTURING EXPANDS

The transfer of Fairchild’s LCD technology to its Wing Kai Facility in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, was described in the previous chapter. By 1978, the interest in the LCD business in Hong Kong had accelerated greatly and local investors were eager to become involved. They looked to the Wing Kai plant as a source of experienced engineers and W.T. Wan and K.K. Cheng were recruited to form Display Technology Limited. Meanwhile, Rue Marshall, formerly Quality Assurance Manager, had become Wing Kai’s plant manager. According to Garies’ recollection^,'^ Marshall soon recognized the high profitability of the LCD operation and sought t o establish a competing start-up company. After meeting with Harry Suzuki, who was Fairchild’s sales manager, they made contact with Alex Au of Conic Investment Co., Ltd., a €long Kong entrepreneur, who agreed to fund the new company. Alex Au’s family had left Fujian province in China in 1949 and went to Taiwan, where they started an injection molding company. Au went to Hong Kong to set up another successful injection molding company. Eventually he formed Conic Investment Co., Ltd., which was aimed at investing in new ventures that showed promise in the electronics industry.

Shortly thereafter, Garies was recruited and was asked to design a process to produce 2.5 million watch displays per week. Over a couple of weekends, Garies designed the line and outlined the equipment to be

An industry in Transition 137

used. The design was based on laminate seal processing 14-inch X 1Cinch sub-oxidized IT0 coated glass sheets.

Marshall and Suzuki left Fairchild at the end of 1979 to form Conic Semiconductor on January 1, 1980 with Marshall as Director of Operations and Suzuki as Director of Marketing. “The use of ‘semiconductor’ in the name was a distraction to establish a rumor that Conic would be making watch and calculator chips,” said Garies. As far as I know, there was never an intention to actually manufacture semiconductors.

Garies stayed with Fairchild until May 1980 and then joined Conic Semiconductor as the Director of Engineering. The new company set up its facilities literally “down the street” from the Wing Kai plant. Soon other engineers and production managers from Wing Kai were recruited to join Conic. Included in the group were C.S. Chan, Manufacturing Manager, Raphael Kan, Engineering Manager, K.K. Fung, Human Resources Manager, C.B. Tang and T.S. Tso, process engineer. C.S. Chan also brought in at least three supervisors from Fairchild. I’roduction, engineering, and quality control operators were added; by October of 1980, the company WdS fully operational. At Fairchild, Garies had successfully implemented a process to pattern large plates of glass (14-inches X 14-inches) using in-line photolithography, but the Conic line had improved processes. This “front-end” operation soon had the capability of producing thousands of patterned plates per day in very high yield. However, the “back-end” of the process, namely the slope evaporation process and sealing, was severely limiting production flow. Because I knew the three principals from our days together at Fairchild, Marshall contacted me to enlist my help in solving various production problems that were encountered. I made my first trip to Hong Kong in the fall of 1980 and worked closely with Marshall, Garies and others to improve yields and increase output on the “back-end.”

One of the first things we did was to eliminate the slope evaporation By evaporating the silicon monoxide normal to the plate (the source was at a right angle to the surface of the plates), we could greatly increase throughput. Then, by rubbing the silicon monoxide surface, we Obtained the desired alignment and low molecular tilt in the finished displays. Despite what many had believed up to that time, this surface treatment maintained its integrity throughout the succeeding high temperature glass sealing process. It was not until 1982 that this was publicly reported.”“

Another remarkable volume production process that was implemented by Conic was the sputtering of chromium, followed by copper and then gold

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over the fill opening on the edge of the display. After filling, the displays would be sealed by soldering across this metal strip. The unique feature of the Conic system was that large volumes of displays could be processed in one-pump-down. Garies still recalls the concern on the part of the engineers about the first time 100,000 displays were loaded into the sputtering system for one run and the subsequent commitment for filling 5,000 displays at a time in the fill chamber^.'^

I3y early 1981, Conic's management decided that it must shift to polymer sealing if it were to increase its production volume and lower its manufacturing cost. Once again, I was called in to help establish a process and several months later, Conic's engineering and production staff implemented both epoxy sealing and polyimide alignment techniques. This change meant that different alignment coating systems, screen printers, laminate array sealing methods, UV seal material application and curing systems were needed. Conic designed and built all the necessary equipment, including special screen printers with video alignment and screen lift-off that were capable of three prints per minute. After the changes were made, the number of operators was reduced to two per shift from a total of 17 when using the old process. By the end of 1981, silicon monoxide evaporation and glass frit sealing were totally abandoned.

The company then installed photomask and screen fabrication shops. Garies designed and built a lensless step and repeat system for exposing photomasks. Iron oxide coated photomasks 16 inches on a side were used. He also converted an enlarger system to produce accurate photo- reductions. This gave Conic total in-house control of all designs.

Garies states15 that the company produced 60 million LCD watch displays in 1981, making it one of the largest producers in the world. The following year, production reached 93 million units and it increased year by year, reaching a peak of 198 million units in 1987.

Conic Semiconductor was one of some 40 companies in Conic Investment. In 1981, 25 o f the companies were split off to form Honic Holdings, Ltd., while Conic Semiconductor and 14 other ventures remained in Conic Investment, which went public on the Hong Kong stock exchange in August of 1981. However, in July 1982, according to Garies' a~count , '~ there were significant financial losses reported at the annual board meeting. Apparently, some of Conic Investments' major customers were involved with Honic Holdings and they were having financial problems. Consequently, in 1982, Alex Au arranged with Sin King, a subsidiary o f China Resources in the People's Republic of China, to inject HK$


100 million into Conic Investment, making it the first Hong Kong-based company to he funded by a PKC-based entity.

Sin King acquired 35% o f Conic Investment shares in 1984 and soon started taking control by installing a new board o f directors and placing its own people in some o f the Conic Investment companies. One year later, Sin King bought the balance of the shares in Conic Investment and in 1986, a new general manager was named. By 1987, a new director from Sin King was appointed to the hoard of Conic Semiconductor and it soon became clear that the intent was to move much of Conic Semiconductor’s operations into Mainland China. It was also clear that the new management had no intention of retaining Americans in key inanagement roles, so Marshall, Suzuki and Garies were released in 1988. Marshall and Suauki soon formed a new company called Yeebo Displays, which also became a high-volume producer of LCD watch displays in Mainland China. Garies joined Ihnnelly Mirrors and returned to thc U.S. Later, he formed, a consulting company called Constellation. [Tnfortunately, he passed away in 2004 as this book was being completed.

Another important Hong Kong company was Varitronix, which was founded in September 1978 by Dr. C.C. Chang, Ilr. York Lido, Dr. S.K. Yan, S.K. Kwok, S.M. Chung and James Lee. Chang, Lido and Lee were lecturing at that time in the Department of Electronics of Chinese IJniversity of Hong Kong, according to Chang? Kwok was a student of York and Yan was lecturing in the Baptist College (now Hong Kong Baptist University), while Chung was an entrepreneur who operated his own electronics Factory at that timc. Chang took the plunge of resigning from a tenured job at the university and along with Kwok and Chung devoted full time to starting up the company. Lido and Lee joined Varitronix eight years later as full-time employees.

Although Chang’s field was superconductivity, he became interested in liquid crystal displays and worked on the Ilynamic Scattering Mode in 1972 and 1973. Lido had already been involved in liquid crystal research having received his doctorate from Harvard IJniversity on order parameters of liquid crystals. He and Kwok were working on the relaxation time of the cholesteric-to-nematic phase change effect.

“Initially we planned to use the Same glass frit process as Fairchild’s Wing Kai plant, but by a stroke of luck, we heard that the Japanese were successful in plastic sealing and the laminate process,” recalled Chang. “We stopped in time to cancel our orders on high-temperature furnaces and other equipment and switched to investigate the laminate process. Everything seemed to work in our favor. First of all, BDH Chemicals Started

140 Liquid Gold

to offer cyanobiphenyl-based liquid crystals, which were more stable in air than Schiff-based material. We also found some plastic sealing material that did not react with the cyanobiphenyl material. Fully oxidized IT0 coated glass started to become available and furthermore, Villa Precision came up with a laminate glass scriber at the same time. Yields were much higher than the glass frit process and that was the main reason we managed to gain a firm footing in the field during that time.”

Varitronix started making LCD watch displays during the same time period as Pairchild and Conic, but it has grown to become a leading manufacturer of Lc1)s with sales in 2002 of $140 million. 1 first met Chang in 1981 when Varitronix and Conic began moving into high-volume production. The companies had a friendly rivalry during those years. From the outset, Varitronix was a research-driven company, working with customers to develop advanced LCD products for a broad range of markets, including sophisticated commercial, industrial, medical and military display products. The company became a public-owned company in 1991 when its associated holding company, Varitronix International Limited, was successfully launched on the IIong Kong Stock Exchange. Today, the company has manufacturing facilities in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia.

Other Hong Kong companies that joined the industry in 1980 were Display Tech, STC and Megahertz. In later years, the industry moved to Mainland China, where today there are dozens of high-volume manufacturers o f LcDs for applications ranging from small watch-size displays to large television sets.

MORE AMERICAN COMPANIES ENTER THE BUSINESS

Another early entrant into the field of LCl)s was North American Rockwell. This company had its origins in 1880, but in the 1950s, Willard Rockwell created a merger of several companies to form Rockwell Standard. In 1967, Rockwell Standard merged with North American Aviation to form North American Rockwell, which became Rockwell International in 1973 and Rockwell Automation in the mid-1990s. Anthony G. Genovese was a physicist who had been working at Rockwell’s Autonetics R&D Division since 1966 just after receiving a Master of Science degree in physics and mathe- matics from New York University.

In 1968, Genovese began working to build LCDs for practical applications. He soon proposed the possibility of manufacturing dynamic scattering LCns and showed a handmade sample to Donald Williams, then


I’resident o f R o c k ~ e l l . ’ ~ Shortly thereafter, he was funded to start a development program in the Advanced Technology Group to build a calculator display using the dynamic scattering mode and his department head was asked to develop a complete calculator. He also developed fonts that could be used for front and back plates as well as filling and sealing technology. With cooperation from the Rockwell Science Center in Thousand Oaks, California, the company manufactured its own liquid crystal materials. The development took one year and, according to Genovese,” this calculator was ahead of Sharp’s first product. Genovese claims that Rockwell developed the process for building the first reliable calculator LCDs to go into mass production.

Another key member of the team that developed the first liquid crystal numeric displays and calculators that were put into production was Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr,, who was manager o f the Advance Display Technology Department of the Autonetics Division of Rockwell. According to ‘I’annas,’I8 Rockwell Microelectronics was one of the world’s first companies t o produce CMOS chip sets for the arithmetic electronic calculator and sold the technology to Sharp Corporation. Tannas recalled, “As the market matured, there was a one-year lead time to get any kind of display. Rockwell was desperate to get a display solution so they could get products to market and compete with Sharp, Texas Instruments and others. At the time, Rockwell made about 90% of the world’s supply of chips.”

The Advance Display Technology Department under Tannas developed five LCD prototypes and a formal presentation to the Division Vice hesident, Cedric O’Ihnnell, resulted in the project being transferred to the Microelectronics I-’roduct Division in 1972. Development was completed that same year and a pilot line was set up in Anaheim, California, while a production facility was established in Mexicali, Mexico. Tannas and his group also developed an alpha-numeric display that was offered for sale to the aerospace industry for high performance applications.

Tannas went on to have a long career in the display industry and edited one of the first books on the development of flat panel display He also presents a series of seminars on display technology at the University of California at Los Angeles. A former President of the Society for Information Display, he is currently a consultant to many companies in the industry.

A photo of one of the first calculators is shown in Fig. 10.3. This unit was made for Sears, which sold the product in its stores in the early 1970s, according to both Genovese” and Oh.12 However, Tannas18 believes it was made in 1972, but not sold in stores until 1973. While the unit was compact

technology.18

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Fig. 10.3. Model C1 transportable calculator with a dynamic scattering LCD built by Rockwell and sold by Sears in 1972 for $79 according to Genovese.” This is believed t o he one of the first commercial products t o use a liquid crystal display. Although the LCD has a crack in the glass, the calculator is still operational. Photo taken in 1)eceinber 2003. Courtesy of Anthony G. Genovese, International Ilisplay Works, Inc.

(about 12 inches X 6 inches X 2 inches thick), it used line voltage, not batteries, so it could not Ix considered a true “portable” calculator. Nevertheless, this C1 model was one of the first (if not the first), commercially available LCD calculators. The Sharp Elsi Mate EL-805, which was introduced on May 15, 1973, was a tnie portable calculator, so it is generally considered’ t o be the first LCD “pocket calculator” to enter the market.

In 1970, Genovese left Rockwell and started a company with Ray Lee, who was formerly with Texas Instruments and RCA. This company was bought by Varadyne Electromask Company in Van Nuys, California, and for the next 18 months, Lee and Genovese continued to develop LCD technology including some with molded ceramic substrates and metallic feedthroughs to be used as a reflective backplane. Genovese also developed an interdigitated LCD in June 1971, which operated at about three volts. This display used chromium instead of IT0 for the electrodes. According t o Genovese,” this device was only possible at Varadyne Electromask since it developed the first photo tool with fine stepping. This was the first project done on this stepper.

Varadyne’s LCD Division was sold t o Beckman Instruments, Fullerton, California, in November 1971. Both Lee and Genovese moved with the


operation to Beckman, a manufacturer of analytical instruments that largely served the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. However, Beckman’s Helipot IXvision made multi-turn potentiometers (variable resistor, precision contact resistor over helically wound wires). These parts were manufactured individually, tested individually, and used as a discrete component. The Helipot Division, which later became the Electro-Products Division, also manufactured screen printed potentiometers, trimmers, capacitors and hybrid microcircuits. Sophisticated hybrid circuits on ceramic wafers were used in the aerospace and military industries. Thus, the company was experienced at manufacturing highly reliable discrete electronic components, so producing LCDs appeared to be very logical in the early 197Os.l2 In addition, Beckman was trying to get into the consumer product manufacturing business and away from the military and aerospace business, which was in decline at that time.

At Beckman, Genovese developed watch LCIh and sold the first watch displays to Gruen and ERC, a division of Spiedel based near Kansas City, Kansas. Beckman later sold one million LCDs to Timex at $4.50 each, according t o Genovese. Beckman developed a Teflon-like plastic seal and later developed a glass frit sealed display.

At about this time, Kay Lee recruited Chan Soo Oh from Timex to join Beckman, which had established the I,CD operation in its Helipot Division. Beckman needed an experienced liquid crystal chemist to set up the organic synthesis kdboratory to make nematic materials for display devices. This instrument company never had an organic chemistry laboratory, so it took Oh several months to equip the facility with glassware, chemicals, solvents and measuring instruments. Shortly thereafter, he started to synthesize nematic liquid crystals and prepared paper clamp assembled twisted-nematic displays for demonstration.

Beckman was soon manufacturing twisted-nematic LCDs using slope evaporated silicon monoxide and frit sealing, but like other manufacturers it wanted to shift to polymer sealing. Oh became aware of the fact that the Japanese manufacturers were all using polymer sealing to reduce manufacturing cost and he saw this as the next logical step. He was impressed with the displays being made by James Fergason’s company ILIXCO, so he made a visit to the company’s plant in Ohio and purchased a buffing machine, some spare rollers, PVA alignment solution and thermoplastic sealing material.12 Using the same process as ILIXCO, Oh was able to fabricate fast-responding, high-contrast displays, but the seal would not meet the high temperature/high humidity requirements of Reckman’s customers.

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Oh next developed polyimide alignment materials and epoxy sealants as well as cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals and biphenyl esters, which he synthesized himself in Beckman’s laboratories using processes that gave much higher yields than those reported in the literature. This allowed him to design stable, room temperature nematic mixtures and he was able to obtain several patents on ester biphenyl formulations for multiplexed displays. Beckman also manufactured LCIls for pH meters, toys, instrument indicators and multimeters. However, by the late 1970s, Eeckman could not compete with LCII makers in Japan and Asia, so it abandoned the display business in 1980 and sold the LCD manufxturing equipment.12

Chan Soo Oh stayed with Deckman and eventually became head of the organic chemistry group in the company’s Diagnostic Division. His group was involved in the development of advanced chemical reagents for high-speed chemistry analyzers used in the diagnostic industry. He was also given permission to be a consultant to other firms in the LCD industry on his own time, since it did not conflict with Beckman’s business. As a result, Oh has been a consultant to Honeywell’s Aerospace and Naval Systems Division, Samsung Electron Devices and several other companies in the TFT-LCD business.

Another company that entered the LCD manufacturing business was Printed Circuits International, Sunnyvale, California. In early 1976, the company hired Anthony Genovese from Beckman to start a new division, PCI Displays Pte. Ltd. in Singapore. Later in 1976, PCI Displays became the volume leader in LCD watch displays. At PCI, Genovese worked to lower the cost of manufacturing LCDs and developed LCD modules using Chip- on-Board technology, which the company jointly developed with Hewlett-Packard. The company was one of the first to build LCDs in panel form by buying technology from Ebauches SA in Switzerland and modifying the process to improve reliability. PCI introduced LCDs into the first automotive applications with the first aftermarket 1,CD clock for Sparkomatic and later into the first OEM automotive application at Kenault with a digital clock, which is shown in Fig. 10.4. PCI later built the first LCDs for Ford Motor Company and expanded the technology into appliances and telecommunications with the first LCD for a Motorola cell phone.”

In the early 1970s, Hewlett-Packard was primarily engaged in the manufacture of sophisticated test and measuring instruments for the electronics industry, but it also made many of the components for that equipment. At that time, the company recognized the importance of LCDs for its instruments and started a development program at its central research center in Palo Alto, California. One of the first LCD scientists to join the company


Fig. 10.4. One of the first TI’-LCD clocks for automobiles. This model was made by PCI Displays in 1978 and sold to Renault. Courtesy of Anthony Genovese, International Display Works, December 2003.

was Frederic J. Kahn, who had a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Kensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard LJniversity. Kahn began working in LCD research in 1968 when he joined NEC in Kawasaki, Japan. When he first suggested in a letter that NEC work on LCDs, Michiyuki Uenohara, later to become Vice President of R&D at NEC, wrote back that there were no liquid crystals available in Japan and asked Kahn to learn more about them and bring some with him to Japan.I9

Two years later, Kahn returned to the USA and joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he started the company’s LCD R&D program in January 1970. The initial target was large screen Picture- phone, but the small screen Picturephone trial in Chicago in 1970 failed, so the LCD group had to find other applications for its LCD developments. Kahn made important contributions to the advancement of LCD technology at Bell Labs, including the first tilted vertically aligned nematic (VAN),n’ now used widely in liquid crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) projection systems and TFI-LCDs. He and his colleagues also developed laser-addressed cholesteric and smectic liquid crystal light valves for projection displays.21,22 The laser-addressed smectic liquid crystal was used to create a writable, erasable mask for the manufaaure of telephone central office switching system backplanes.

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By 1974, Kahn had moved west to join Hewlett-Packard and in the spring of that year, his group demonstrated internally the first long-lifetime LCD to be used in the company’s line of scientific calculators. In 1979, Hewlett-Packard used this display in the HP 41, a breakthrough programmable calculator manufactured in the company’s Corvallis, Oregon plant. This enabled the company to become the market share leader in LCD calculators. For economic reasons, however, Hewlett-Packard stopped its own LCD production in favor of buying from Hitachi. Later, Kahn’s group went on to develop more advanced LCDs and a C-sized engineering work station for computer-aided design based on the laser smectic LCD rear projection scheme Kahn had pioneered at Bell Labs.

Kahn left Hewlett-Packard in 1984 and formed Greyhawk Systems to develop and commercialize a laser smectic LCD projector for high resolution applications. In 1986, the company introduced the first product using this technology and until recently it was the highest information content electronic display to be commercialized. l9 The SoftPlot 40-inch display, for example, had 2,200 X 3,400 pixels, addressable up to 8,000 X 13,600 pixels with 24-bit color.23 A photo of the system is shown in Fig. 10.5. Products

Fig. 10.5. The SoftPlot 40-inch diagonal high resolution display made by Greyhawk Systems. The display had 400 dots-per-inch addressability and 120 million addressable points. Photo courtesy of Frederic J. Kahn, who is seated third from the left.


were sold to the US. Air Force for monitoring spy satellite communications as well as for color printing and printed circuit board manufacturing. After leaving Greyhawk, Kahn formed Kahn International, a company that today provides consulting services to the projection display industry.

Hughes Aircraft Company's interest in LCDs goes back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when the company made LCD watch displays and driver circuits. After conceding that business to the Japanese and Asian firms, the Hughes research kdbordtoXy in Malibu, California became seriously engaged in the development of LCD projectors using a technology that was different from the laser addressed systems being developed by IBM, Bell Labs and Greyhawk Systems. Hughes was already investigating methods for display of real-time, laser-based holographic movies. "he company became a world-class leader in laser research after the first laser was demonstrated in 1960. The real-time holographic modulator required a full visible spectrum optical-to-optical image converter that could convert a white light image to a replica image on a laser light beam. This motivation led to the invention of the AC liquid crystal light valve (LCLV) in 1972 by a team of Hughes research s ~ i e n t i s t s . ~ ~ ? ~ ~ This device employed photoconductive thin films developed by William P. Rleha,26 who was one of the original developers of the Hughes LC light valve and projection system. The novel spatial light modulator was then developed for applications in large screen displaysz7 and optical data processing.28

Following U.S. Navy support for advanced development of the LCLV for shipboard graphic display applications, Bleha was transferred to the Hughes Aircraft Industrial Products Division in Carlsbad, California, to put the device in production. Under the U.S. Navy Manufacturing Technology Program and Hughes Aircraft funding, the LCLV was successfully produced and entered U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force display systems in the early 1980s. The potential for commercial use of the LCLV was also recognized and Bleha participated in development of projectors with LCLVs that could display high resolution graphical imagery and ultimately full-motion video projection. In parallel, much research was being conducted into real-time optical data p r o c e ~ s i n g . ~ ~ The LCLV, because of its high resolution and dynamic range, became a standard research modulator in industrial and academic research centers around the world.

Bleha led the group that developed the second generation LCLV, based on an amorphous silicon photoconductor, a device that allowed full-motion, high-resolution video images to be This development was important because it became the first method of projecting HDTV resolution video images on a large screen and paved the way for digital cinema.

displayed.30

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Hughes realized the future commercial importance of this display and in 1989 spun-off the LCLV activities into a subsidiary called Light Valve Products, Inc.'" Bleha was named Vice President of Engineering, responsible for both projector and device development. At that time, the LCLV was given the trademarked name ILA for Image Light Amplifier.31 Soon Light Valve Products, Inc. was demonstrating large screen displays for Digital Cinema in Hollywood and large venue applications.

In 1992, Hughes decided to join with JVC (formerly Victor Company of Japan), a well-established consumer electronics company based in Japan, in a joint venture called Hughes-JVC Technology Corporation to produce ILA projectors. Bleha served in positions of Vice I'resident of R&D and Vice President of Engineering with the joint venture. From 1992 to 2000, the company shipped over 3,500 projectors into large venue applications around the world.26 Hughes-JVC also developed a 12,000 Lumen ILA projector for digital cinema and in June 1999, it was used to present a demonstration of the world's first Digital Cinema Feature of Star Wars Episode 1 in Los Angeles and New York in June 1999. An equally powerful projector made by Texas Instruments, which employed the company's unique Digital Micro Mirror Devices (Digital Light Processing), was also used in that demonstration.

In 1995, JVC acquired a controlling interest in the joint venture and consolidated it within the parent company as the Projection Technology Group. The group continued to focus its efforts on delivering advanced display products, which led to the development of the first Direct Drive Image Light Amplifier (D-ILA) projector for the professional and industrial market in 1997. The D-ILA was the first successful LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) display modulator to reach production and in 1998, the first D-ILA projector was introduced to the market with 1,300 X 1,050 pixels. JVC created the JVC Digital Image Technolgy Center in Carlsbad, California, in 2000 to apply D-ILA projector technology to large screen applications, including Digital Cinema.32 In 2002, JVC formed the ILA Technology Group in Lake Forest, California. This eventually became the JVC North America R&D Center, where the development of new D-ILA applications for the JVC 2,048 X 1,536 and 4,000 X 2,000 pixel D-ILA projectors continues.

EXIT THE AMERICAN SEMICONDUCTOR FIRMS

While many companies were entering the LCD business, the semiconductor companies, which had mainly been involved in the LCD watch business,


lxgan their exit from the industry in the late 1970s. As mentioned previously, Intel sold its Microma division to Timex in 1978. Shortly thereafter, other semiconductor firms began leaving the business in droves. Included in the list of firms that ended LCD and/or LCD watch manufacturing between 1978 and 1982 were Intersil, National Semiconductor, Motorola, IKA, Texas Instruments, American Microsystems, Litronix and S u n ~ r u x . ~ ~ By June of 1.981, the only semiconductor company still manufacturing LCDs was Fairchild and just a few years later, it too was out of the busine of the major reason, for this was the continuing price pressure exerted on both digital watches and LCDs by the Japanese and other Pacific Kim manufacturers. By June of 1981, Japanese manufacturers as a group held a 45% share of the market for watch-size LCDs and 80% of the market for LCDs used in other application^.^^ In addition, there was an oversupply of watch LCI) production with many factories operating at only 30% of capacity. Another reason was the general softness of the semiconductor market at that time, so these companies started to refocus their efforts on the core semiconductor business in which they had been successful.

EUROPEAN INNOVATIONS

As mcntioned earlier, Brown Boveri & Company (BBC) in Baden, Switzerland, was a partner with Hoffmann-La IZoche on the royalties from the twisted-nematic LCD patent. In the 1970s, HBC had a very active research program in liquid crystal displays with Allan Kmetz, Terry J. Scheffer and Jiirgen Nehring, all 1’h.D. scientists, working on ways t o improve the multiplexability of the displays. According to K m e t ~ , ~ ~ he left the company in 1978 to join 13ell Labs and. just missed out on the breakthrough invention o f the “supertwisted-birefringent effect” (SHE) LCD, which later became known as the STN-LCD. Kmetz remarked: “this was truly elegant science: my former colleagues used the analyses developed by Dwight Herreman, my old friend and new colleague (at Bell Labs), to optimize the twist configuration and optics to achieve high contrast at a multiplexing level high enough for a laptop computer display.” When Kmetz went to I k l l Labs, he suggested to 13erreman that his research on bistable LCDs might be applied to improve twisted-nematic multiplexing. However, the BBC research group published its results before Kmetz or Berreman could carry out their experiments.

the whole idea of the STN-LCD came from computer modeling of the twisted-nematic structures. Commercial LCT>

By Scheffer’s

One

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simulation software was not available in the 1970s and early 1980s, so Nehring and Scheffer wrote FORTRAN programs for the purpose of modeling LCDs. “In running these simulations on twisted-nematic structures, we noted that increasing the twist angle beyond 90 degrees caused the electro- distortional curve to become steeper, becoming infinitely steep at around 270 degrees of twist and becoming bistable for twist angles larger than this,” said Scheffer. The BRC team immediately recognized that a system having a very steep electro-distortional curve might be highly multiplexable, but this seemed too good to be true and they were wary of having missed something. Scheffer recalled: ‘there had been a long felt need for a highly multiplexable LCD and this discovery seemed so simple that it was inconceivable to us that this idea would not have been discovered years earlier. Our group immediately built some two-pixel test cells in the laboratory and sure enough, by adjusting the polarizers we were able to achieve a good contrast ratio by simulating 100 multiplexed lines. Only later did we realize that we were extremely lucky to choose oblique evaporation of silicon monoxide as an alignment process for these first test cells. This high pre-tilt alignment suppressed the scattering texture, which would have almost certainly appeared with lower pre-tilt alignment materials and spoiled the effect we were looking for, Conventional rubbed polyimide produced very low pre-tilt angles at the time and this is probably what kept people from stumbling on STN earlier. We were also lucky enough to pick a cell gap and 1,C material that were near optimum for the ‘yellow-mode’ of operation. with this early flush of success our whole group proceeded at full speed to optimize this discovery.” A U.S. patent w a s soon applied for on the new inventiod6 and the device was described at the 1983 International Display Research Conference in Kobe, Japan.37

Unknown t o the BHC group, however, was that Colin Waters, V. Brimmell and E. Peter Kaynes, working at the Br h Ministry of Defence (the RSRE laboratory mentioned previously where a number of LCD innovations were discovered), had been independently researching supertwisted structures based on the Guest-Host effect. Scheffer first became aware of this work when Colin Waters38 presented it in a paper at the same research conference in Kobe, Japan, in 1983. However this paper made little impact in his opinion because of the low-contrast ratio of this device. S~heffet-3~ wondered why Waters and Raynes did not investigate the higher contrast birefringence interference effects as he and Nehring had done. He suspects that it went against the conventional wisdom of the time, which was that birefringent interference colors were too sensitive to cell gap


variations, temperature changes and viewing angles to be practical. Scheffer goes on to say, “we had just been lucky to stumble on the right cell gap/LC inaterial combination. Once we saw that birefringence effects worked well, hindsight analysis explained the errors of the conventional wisdom. One factor that certainly worked in our favor was that glass substrate quality had remarkably improved just prior to our discovery.”

Scheffer credits the RSKE scientists as the first t o invent the supertwisted Guest-Host effect. Their patent priority date39 was more than a year earlier than BBC’s. However, he believes that BHC was first to patent a supertwisted-t,irefringence effect based on optical interference. In 1985, the BBC group demonstrated two 270 X 540 pixel reflective displays operating in the blue and yellow modes40 at the SID conference in Orlando, Florida.

In Kawamoto’s account,l Waters and Raynes established the concept of a 270-degree twist in 1982 and they claimed that the highly twisted structure could be applied to the twisted-nematic mode as well as the Guest- Host mode. While the controversy over who had the idea first continues, Scheffer and his team are generally regarded as the inventors of the device since they produced the first practical working displays without added dye. Scheffer was awarded the Society for Information Display’s prestigious Jan Rajchman Prize in 1993 for this development; he was also made a Fellow of this organization in 1999.

Soon after the demonstration in Orlando, Nehring made a trip to Japan t o visit several Japanese LCD manufacturers. By October of 1985, Sharp, Hitachi and Daini Seikosha were able to demonstrate STN-LCDs at the Japan Electronics Show in Osaka’ and two years later, products began appearing on the market from numerous manufacturers. The Japanese manufacturers had already made impressive gains in the manufacturing process to control cell gap, so they were well situated to make STN-LCDs. They backed off from the ideal twist angle to gain manufacturability with then-existing alignment materials and charged ahead to market. New high- tilt polyimides and improved LC mixtures came along quickly and optically compensated STN-LCDs made it possible to have full-color displays for high information content.

According to K m e t ~ , ~ ~ Scheffer and Nehring hit a home run with the 270-degree STN-LCDS, but Erown Boveri was scared off by the size of the opportunity and actually dropped out of the LCD business in 1984 after it sold its interest in Videlec, the joint manufacturing company that it formed with l’hilips in 1980. And, while excellent LCD research continued to be

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performed at IISRE, no major LCD manufacturers in Great Britain emerged. (hnsequently, devices that were conceived in England and Switzerland were being manufactured in Japan.

In Orsay, France, Robert €3. Meyer, guided by an elegant physical argu- ment, proposed in 1975 that certain chiral (handed) asymmetric liquid crystal molecules, which exhibit the smectic C phase (often called the C* phase), would carry a non-zero electric dipole moment and be ferroelectric.41 Several months later, he and his colleagues prepared compounds that had the desired structure and the first liquid ferroelectric was created4’ Five years later, Noel A. Clark and Sven T. Lagerwall, research physicists at Chalmers Technical 1Jnivorsity in Goteborg, Sweden, built the first display devices using ferroelectric-smectic materials.43 After he left Chalmers, Clark continued to pyrform research in this technology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, but I believe he continued his collaboration with Lagerwall for a number of years.

The term “ferroelectric” has nothing to do with iron or magnetism, but refers to the hysteresis or memory effect originally observed in iron (ferrite) magnets. The memory property of FLCDs is especially useful in highly multiplexed displays hecause the pixel remains in its state during non-select periods. In a FLCD, the pixels respond not to the average RMS voltage, but to the most recent voltage that was above or below the O N or OFF voltage. All the driving circuitry needs to do is latch the display to its ON or OFF state. Maximum display size is limited less by the response characteristics of the liquid crystal material and more by the speed of the driving circuitry.

The ferroelectric-smectic LCD caused quite a stir in the display community in the early 1c)8Os because the display had the potential to exhibit very high speed of response and decay as well as symmetric histability (two stable, but distinct states) and a large electro-optic response. The potential to build a high information content, highly multiplexed display without the need for an expensive TFT manufacturing process was indeed quite attractive. In the mid- to late-1980s, therefore, most o f the LCD manufacturers in Japan had development programs to bring FLCI>s to the manufacturing stage.

Unfortunately, fcrroelectric-smectic LCDs were much more difficult to produce than originally anticipated, a situation 1 discovered on several of my many trips to visit Japanese LCD manufacturers in the early 1990s. Researchers, encouraged hy the rapid. development of TN and STN-LCDs, hoped that FLCDs would follow the same course. But as FLCD technology progressed, new problems and limitations emerged that were not


calculated into the original development timetables. Some of the formidable manufacturing difficulties specific to FLCDs that needed to be solved were closer cell spacing and higher power consumption than other enhanced LCD technologies. This is because smaller cell gaps lead to increased capacitance and higher drive frequencies are needed for video rate displays. Consequently, development efforts peaked in 1990, then declined.

The most successful large screen FLCDs were developed by Canon in Tokyo, Japan. In the rnid-l990s, the company began manufacturing 15-inch monochrome and color FLCDs for computer workstations. Canon also developed a 24-inch monochrome display with 16 gray levels and a 21-inch, 64-color FLCD. These displays had high image quality as a result of a cross rubbing treatment that gave high contrast. Both displays had 1,280 X 1,024 pixels and a 40: 1 contrast ratio. Gray levels were achieved using dithering. However, the technology could not compete with the high resolution color TFT-LCDs that were being made by many companies during the late 1990s, so FLCDs for mainstream personal computer monitors or notebook computers did not materialize.

The FLCI) technology, however, is still being pursued for such applications as high-speed light valves for projection systems or head mounted displays in military and industrial products.

Another important development group was formed at GEC, the General Electric Company of the United Kingdom. Dr. Cyril Hilsum, previously head of LCI) research at RSRE, joined the Hirst Research Center of GEC in early 1983 as Chief Scientist and formed a new LCD research group. Soon he recruited Dr. Piero Migliorato and Dr. Alan Mosley, who had been with Kacal Research. According to M~sley:~ Dr. Michael Clark joined from KSKE in 1985 and became head of the group in 1988. In 1984, the group began working on polycrystalline silicon for fabricating active inatrix LCI>s. The use of amorphous and polycrystalline silicon for LCDs was also underway at other laboratories around the world at that time; this will be discussed further in Chapter 12.

Mosley and his colleapes worked mainly on the supertwisted-nematic effect for passive matrix LCDs. They developed a high-tilt angle (-10 degrees) rubbed polyimide alignment, which enabled them to fabricate 270-degree STN-LCDs that gave higher contrast ratio and better temperature stability than the other STN-LCDs that used twist angles of 240 degrees. This work was spun out twice to UK-based companies. The first was EEV, another GEC company that created Lucid Displays in 19x8.

154 Liquid Gold

Another company was Hirst LCD, which was formed in 1994. Neither of these operations lasted very long because the prices of the displays were high compared to mass manufactured STN-LCDs and only a small number o f customers were prepared to pay for the higher performance. The work on high pre-tilt STN-LCDs was a process that could not be protected by a patent, so GEC decided to keep it secret.44

The GEC group also did a great deal of work on Ferroelectric LCDs and in the early 1990s, managed to produce a color 640 X 400 pixel display. This work was spun off into a company called CRL, which further developed and commercialized the technologv. Now known as CRL Opto, the company continues to work on FLCDs and uses this technology in its single channel 1,280 X 1,204 pixel microdisplay that is aimed at projectors and other applications.

The fluorescent LCD was one Hilsum’s ideas to replace the purely absorptive dye in a Guest-Host LCD with an anisotropic fluorescent dye. CRL had a joint project with the [Jniversity o f Leeds in the U.K., which provided the dyes, and E. Merck, in Darmstadt, Germany, which worked on improving the lifetime. The principle worked well, but the dye needed to be stimulated with W light to get it to be bright in the low voltage state. In the high voltage state, there was no absorption, hence no fluorescence so the dispkay was dark due t o the absence of a white reflector. Lifetime was the main problem, however, and the display could not go above about 5,000 hours.

KOREA BEGINS DEVELOPMENT

One of the first Korean companies to recognize the potential for 1,CDs was Samsung and it was Chan Soo Oh who helped. them get started in the husi- ness. Most of the following account of the early work at Samsung comes from Oh’s recollections.’2 In May 1984, while working at Beckman and after that company was out of the LCD business, Oh was contacted by C. h r k who was working with J. David Margerum at Hughes Aircraft Company’s Malibu Research Center. Margerum was a leading liquid crystal research chemist who pioneered LCD research at Hughes. Park had joined Hughes after finishing a post-doctoral appointment under Professor Mortimer Lahes of Temple University, another leading liquid crystal researcher from the 1960s. Park had recently met with some people from Samsung Electron Devices who had attended the SID symposium in San Francisco and were looking for an LCD expert. Park suggested they speak with Oh and one week later he had a meeting with Ho Young Park, group


leader of flat panel displays and Jeong Ok Park, Managing Director of Samsung Electron Devices and the head of the RMrD Center located in Suwon, South Korea.

A short time later, Oh made a trip to Samsung’s laboratory in Suwon, an industrial city close to Seoul. At that time, Samsung was manufacturing color CRT monitors using NEC’s Shadow Mask technology, which it had licensed from KCA. Samsung Electron Devices was a joint venture between NEC and Samsung, Ltd. Samsung Electron Devices was very interested in developing new flat panel display technologies to replace CKTs and Jong Hae Kim, President of the company, immediately signed Oh to a consulting contract. His role as a consultant to Samsung lasted almost ten years.

Initially, Kim wanted Oh to teach his research staff about all of the non-CRT flat panel display technologies, but in particular LCDs. Although it was 19135, Kim envisioned that flat panel displays would someday replace CRTs for computer monitors and he wanted Samsung to be a leader in the industry, a position that it ultimately achieved.

Starting with a group of ten students, which included chemists as well as electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineers, Oh provided instruction on the fundamentals of liquid crystal chemistry, surface alignment techniques and device construction. As time went by, he began helping the company to select liquid crystal materials from key vendors such as IIoffmann-La Roche, BDH, Chisso and E. Merck. He also helped Samsung select equipment to begin manufacturing twisted-nematic LCDs using polyimide alignment and polymer sealing. In many cases, the equipment was purchased from Japanese suppliers.

Samsung then began looking at a possible joint venture with a Japanese company for LCD manufacturing. At that time, NEC, Samsung’s partner in color CKT manufacturing, was not yet making LCDs, and Ilitachi was known to be working with Samsung’s main competitor, Gold Star (later to become LG Electronics), so those companies were not candidates. Proposals were made to Sharp and Citizen, but nothing materialized. Consequently, Samsung took Chan Soo Oh’s advice and decided to build the LCD manufacturing plant itself. The first LCD Factory was built in Kachun, near Pusan, in one long clean room where 14-inch X 14-inch sheets were processed using photolithography for patterning, offset printing for the alignment layer coating and epoxy sealing. The technology progressed from 20-line displays using the TN effect to displays for portable computers using the STN technology, which had recently been invented in Europe. The company employed consultants from Japan to help with additional manufacturing expertise.

156 Liquid Gold

’I’hanks to an introduction by Chan Soo Oh to Jong Hae Kim, I made a trip t o both Samsung’s R&I) Center and the Samsung Electronics CRT monitor manufacturing facility in Suwon in 1989. The purpose of that trip was to sell Stanford Resources’ market research services to Samsung. Previous t o that trip, I had no S U C C ~ S S in convincing the company’s U.S. representatives of the importance o f market analysis. By that time, the company was heavily engaged in LCD development and manufacturing as well as being a leading worldwide manufacturer o f CKTs for television and computer monitors. It was also involved in VFT) manufacturing and was beginning to start developmcnt of plasma displays. In fact, a group of some 30 scientists and engineers were present at a seminar I gave on display technology and market development. As a result, Samsung became a client of Stanford Kesources for many years, even to the present time.

Other Korean companies also started producing LCDs in the 1980s. Included in this group were Sotong, which was producing watch displays for the Hong Kong market, Orion Electronics, part of the Daewoo group, Hyundai Electronics, and Gold Star. In addition, the Korea Institute of Technology had several professors doing research looking into liquid crystals at the time.

MOVING BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

One o f the first projects that 1 became involved in at the beginning of 1979 was the transfer of digital watch and LCD manufacturing technology to a state-owned Factory in Bucharest, Romania, called Intreprinderea Mcchanica Fina, which was referred to as TMF. This was a complicated deal that involved a number of other consultants and several other companies. A Connecticut-based company called Refac Electronics, which at the time owned Optel Corporation, arranged the sale o f this technology transfer contract. In reality, however, it was George Taylor who was the driving force behind the dcal and I believe he made it happen by bringing together Refac and the Romanians, mainly through his contacts with scientists at the University of Bucharest. Taylor was effectively the project manager and we all looked t o him t o make the key decisions on various aspects of the project.

A number of experienced scientists and engineers were involved in this project. Rcfac/Optel provided the process technology and equipment, while Zantech, a company founded by Louis Zanoni when he left Optel in 1976, supplied the test equipment. Joseph Burns and George Taylor implemented


the support engineering and watch assembly, and the training was to be conducted by a number of people from Refac/Optel as well as Robert Clary, Eric Henderson and I. Clary was a consultant who had established LCD watch manufacturing for Suncnix and Ladcor in Silicon Valley. Henderson was associated with another consulting company called Mesophase, which was started by Kevin Hathdway, Eugene Koch and himself.

Because I had already designed several LCI> manufacturing facilities as described in previous chapters, one of my main tasks was to provide blueprints of the factory layout as well as the services needed (clean-rooms, air-conditioning, deionized water, process gases, vacuum service and other facilities). The other main task was to prepare a set of specifications for each step in the LC:D manufacturing proce Neither of these tasks was particularly difficult since I had done them s ral times before. Consequently, 1 spent the first several months of the year working on these designs and specifications.

After completing the plant layout and two-volume set of specifications for the Romanian factory, my next job was to travel to Princeton, New Jersey, the site of the Refac/Optel LCD and digital watch factory, to begin the training phase with the Romdnkan engineers and technicians. This took place in the spring and summer o f 1979. I was joined at one point by Clary. We immediately realized that the processes being used at Refdc/Optel were different than what was being done on the West Coast and in the Far East. The problem was that we could not change anything because this was the

two of the liomanians could speak English, and only one fluently. As we discovered later, the fluent English-speaking engineer, Constantin (nicknamed Costell) Chirila, was placed in the position of assuring that none of the others would defect or otherwise step out of line. Another important figure was Stefan Ulaier, the plant manager, who liked to be called Fani. He spoke no English, but was conversant in German, a fact that I would find useful l.ater.

Under these difficult circumstances, we were still able to carry out our training. At the end of this phase, we felt that the engineers would be quite capable of carrying out manufacturing at the IMF plant. Meanwhile, all the equipment had been delivered to 13ucharest and the Romanians were presumably outfitting the factory precisely to my carefully designed plans; this turned out to be wishful thinking.

In early December 1979, I left for my trip from San Jose, cdl Bucharest, Komnid. The purpose of my trip was to inspect the pd

process that WdS sold to the KOmdnkdnS. Another problem WdS that only

158 Liquid Gold

t o supervise the placement and set-up of the equipment. Once this was done, I was to return home and other members of our team would arrive in early 1980, after the holiday season, to bring the facility to operational status. I was slated to return later in the spring of 1980 to correct any process problems that might arise.

Shortly after I arrived, I had a dinner meeting with Chi& and Rlaier, the main purpose of which was to impress me with the fact that they were anxious to have the equipment set up so the factory could become operational, a sentiment that I wholeheartedly shared.

The IMF factory was quite a large building, but fairly old and in poor condition. The Director, Ion Congruts, as well as Blaier and Radu Costina, a young man in his 20s who spoke very good English and acted as the inter- preter, met me. we discussed the facility and layout as well as the plan for the week. The objective was to uncrate and move all the equipment into place.

Aftcr we toured the manufacturing facility on the third floor, it was clear that the watch assembly area was clean and properly organized with some people actually assembling some watches using displays made at the Kefac/Optel plant in Princeton. The display fabrication area, however, still had a long way to go. While the walls were constructed according to the specifications, the floor was covered with black epoxy paint (you could see many small particles under the coating) instead of the special inlaid material (Tarkete) specified in my instructions. When I pointed this out, they claimed that 'l'arkete was too expensive to buy and install. They said they would clean the floor and recoat it after the large pieces of equipment were in place. I knew that this would not be satisfactory, but I could not convince them to do otherwise.

There was still no exhaust ducting installed in the ceiling, but most discouraging was the piping for the pure, deionized water; it was copper tubing instead of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) as specified. The Director, Congruts, agreed to make the change, but I was never quite sure if it was ever done.

At my direction, the heavy equipment was uncrated and positioned in their places according to the plant layout that I had designed earlier in the year. The furnaces, evaporators, drying ovens and screen printers were properly placed along with several laminar flow hoods. We did discover, however, that the liquid nitrogen dewars had not been ordered, a major mistake since one cannot use the vacuum evaporators without liquid nitrogen. And, if the evaporators could not be used, displays could not be made, at least with the process used at that time. These dewars were not available in Romania, so I was to inform George Taylor that they had to be


ordered. Also, the furnaces did not have the quartz muffles that were required t o make them work, so again we had to inform the manufacturer t o have them installed as soon as possible.

Nothing at all was done in the glass shop, although Blaier claimed it would be ready in two or three days. This was the room where the glass sheets coated with the transparent conductor, indium-tin oxide, would be cut into the small, watch-size pieces using power saws. IJnfortunately, the power saws had not yet been received.

There were numerous items on the specification that were either not ordered or not delivered. In some cases, the wrong equipment was sent. For example, they delivered ovens that could operate only on 110 volts, when it is well known that all of Europe used 220volts. Not knowing or failing to check the plate on the oven, the Romanians made the mistake of turning it on, thereby blowing out the unit. Several other items had to be returned because of this same problem.

In addition, some of the equipment was damaged either during shipment or it was not properly packaged for shipment. This was the CdSe with an evaporation system, which had severed electrical cables due to poor packaging. And, one of the ovens was literally falling apart. Supposedly reputable American companies supplied these, so it was rather emharrass- ing and discouraging for me to see this.

Within the next few days, the crew removed all of the remaining large pieces of equipment from their crates and moved them into the fabrication area. This included two large conveyor furnaces and evaporators, which were placed into position without apparent damage. I was appalled at the poor way that our American equipment suppliers prepared the units for shipment. One of the ovens had loose screws all over the system. And, the evaporator in the development kah had loose bolts on the bell jar hoist and no bolts on the thin-film monitoring instrument. There was also a cut in the cables. Since I was present during the unpacking and moving of the equipment, I can attest to the fact the Romanian personnel who handled the units up to that point did none of this.

Eventually, all major items were placed at the intended locations so the electricians could run the wiring to each station and the plumbing connec- tions could be made. At this point, management was motivated to get the factory operational, so LCns could be manufactured for the watch line, which was already operational. Refac/Optel was supposed to be supplying the LCDs they needed during this interim period, but adequate supplies were not received, at least according to IMF’s management. This meant that

160 Liquid Gold

TMF could not meet its watch delivery schedule, resulting in a loss of cred- ibility with the government.

The Fact was that IMF caused many of its own internal delays due to its approval process, where every purchased item required approval from the highest ranking official of the enterprise. One example of this was the screws for the tooling and fixtures. Instead of simply buying standard screws from a nearby supplier, the factory was required to make its own screws in the rnachine shop because it would take too long to obtain approval to buy the screws. For other items, which the workers had no cdpdbility to make in- house, they would simply endure the long approval process. Another source of delay was due to the socialist philosophy of the operation. Any employee could refuse to do any work if everything was not in place. While Hlaier was a stern boss, I saw several instances where employees complained because they did not have this part or that part and would simply refuse to do anything. That’s the way it was in the “workers’ paradise.”

There were further delays in getting the factory to an operational status. I believe it was not until the summer of 1980 when the other team members went over to bring the LCII operation on-stream and many problems were encountered at that time. For example, the air-conditioning system was not adequate to keep the humidity low, so screen printing became very difficult. In addition, disputes arose about many other failings of the facility as well as the payments that were to be made to K e f x and, in turn, to our team of consultants. In the end, our team never completed the project, we never got the balance of our fees, I never got the opportunity to return to Bucharest, and I was never sure if the factory ever did produce useful LCDs.

In my view, however, it was well worth the experience for me to observe the workings of the communist-socialist system at close range, even though it was only for a short period of time. Ultimately, the communist government fell and Romania moved toward a market-oriented economy.

REFERENCES

1. Hirohisa Kawatnoto, “The history of liquid crystal displays,” Proc. ZEEE 90(4), 460 (2002).

2. George W. Gray, Kenneth J. Harrison, and John A. Ndsh, “New family o f nematic liquid crystals for displays,” Electronics Letters 9(6), 130 (1973).

3. Cyril Hilsum, “The Anatomy of a Discovery - Biphenyl Liquid Crystals,” Technology of Chemicals and Materials .for Electronics, ed. E.H. Howells (l984), pp. 43-58.


4. H.J. Ikutscher, F. Kuschel, M. Schubert, and I). Demus, Nematic Liquid Crystal Suhstunces, German Patent 105,701 (19741, applied for Jdy 2, 1973.

5. V.K. Eidenshink, D. Erdman, J. Krause, and 1,. Pohl, “Substituted phenylcyl- cohexanes - a new class o f liquid crystalline compounds,” Angewundte Chcmie English Edition 16(2), 100 (1977).

6. 1,. I’ohl, V.K. Eidenshink, G. Krause, and 11. Erdman, “Physical properties of nematic phenylcyclohexanes - a new class of low melting liquid crystals with positive dielectric anistropy,” I-’h.ys. Lett. 60A(5), 421 (1977).

7. Joseph A. Castellano and Kenneth J. Harrison, “Liquid crystals f6r display devices,” The Physics and Cbemistrj of Liquid c‘y.stal Devices, ed. Gerald J. Sprokel (Plenum Press, New York, 1980), p. 263.

8. Ilavid Coates, “Chemical structure, molecuhr engineering and mixture formulation,” Liquid Crystals: Applications and Uses, Vol. 1, ed. Birendra Hahadur (World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1990), p. 91.

9. Ludwig I%hl and Ulrich Finkenzeller, “Physical properties of liquid crystals,” Liquid Cy.stals: Applications and Uses, Vol. 1, ed. Hirendra I3ahadur (World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1990), p. 139.

10. H. Hirecki and Frederic J. Kahn, “Accurate optical measurement of small tilt angles in thin twisted-nematic layers,” The Physics and Chemistry of Liquid C’rysslalDevices, ed. Gerald J. Sprokel (Plenum Press, New York, logo), p. 135.

11. (a) Joseph A. Castellano, “Alignment of liquid crystal molecules on various surfaces: myths, theories, Pacts,” Liquid Cystals and Ordered Fluids, Vol. 4, eds. Anselm C. Griffin and Julian F. Johnson (Plenum Press, New York, 19841, p. 763. This was originally presented at the American Chemical Society Symposium, Las Vegas, NV, April, 1982.

(I?) Joseph A. Castellano, The Interaction of Liquid Cyslul Materials wilh Various Su~-aces, Stanford Resources Keport, June 15, 1980. Fairchild Camera 81 Instrument Corporation contract CL-52036.

12. Chan Soo Oh, personal communication, October 2003. 13. Ilonald C. Iloefler, Microelectronics News, August 13, 1977; http://

smithsonianchips.si.edu/schreiner/l976/h76311 .htm. 14. Kevin I-Iathaway, personal communication, December 2003. 15. Gerald earies, personal communication, January 2004. 16. C.C. Chang, personal communication, December 2003. 17. Anthony G. Genovese, personal communication, November 2003. 18. Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr., personal communication, January 2004; Lawrence E.

’Fannas, Jr. (ed.), Flat Punel Di~p1q.s and CRTs (Van Nostrand Keinhold Company, New York, 1985).

19. Frederic J. Kahn, personal communication, August 2003. 20. Frederic J. Kahn, “Electric-field induced orientational deformation o f neinatic

liquid crystals: tunable birefringence,” Appl. Pbys. Lett. 20(5), 199 (1972);

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“Orientation o f liquid crystals by surface coupling agents,” Appl, Phys. Lett. 22(8), 386 (1973).

21. Frederic J. Kahn, “IR-laser-addressed thermo-optic smectic liquid crystal storage displays,” Appi. I’hys. k t t . 22(3), 111 (1973).

22. t1. Melchior, Frederic J. Kahn, 13. Maydan, and D.B. Fraser, “Thermally- addressed elecrically erased high-resolution liquid crystal light valves,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 21(8), 392 (1972).

23. Frederic J. Kahn, Paul N. Kendrick, Jerry Leff, Linden J. Livoni, Bryan E. Loucks, and David Stcpner, “A paperless plotter display system using a laser smectic liquid crystal light valve,” SID Inlernational Symposium Digest of Technical Papcm (1987) 254.

24. ?‘.I>. Beard, W.P. Bleha, M. Hraunstein, A D . Jacobson, J.D. Margerum, and S.-Y. Wong, “Photoactivated liquid crystal light valves,” Abstracts of 17th International Electron Devices Meeting, IEEE, Washington, DC (1071) 34.

25. A.D. Jacobson, W.1’. Hleha, D.1). 13oswel1, M. Hraunstein, J.D. Margerum, and S.-Y. Wong, “Photoactivated liquid crystal light valves,” SID International Symposium Digest ofTechrcica1 Pupen (1972) 70.

26. William I? Heha, personal communication, January 2004. 27. A D . Jacobson, W.P. Hleha, D.l>. Boswell, J. Grinberg, P.G. Keif, H.S. Hong, and

S. Lunquist, “A new color TV projector,” SID International Symposium Digest of

’IBchnical Papers (1977) 106. W.1’. Rleha, J . Grinberg, A.D. Jacobson, and G.D. Myer, “The use of the hybrid field effect mode liquid crystal light valve with visible spectrum projection light,” SID International Symposium Lligest qf l&c,chnicul Papers (1977), 104. R.S. Hong, L.?’. Lipton, W.P. Bleha, J.H. Colles, and P.F. Ilobusto, “Application of the liquid crystal light valve to a large screen graphics display,” SID International Symposium Digest qf lkchnical Papers (1979) 22.

28. A.11. Jacobson, W.P. Rleha, D.D. Uoswell, J. Grinberg, I.. Miller, I,. Fraas, and G.D. Myer, “A real-time optical data processing device,” Infimnation msphy 12, 17 (1975). W.1’. Bleha, L.T. Lipton, E. Weiner-Avnear, J. Grinberg, P.G. Reif, U. Casasent, H.H. Brown, and R.V. Markevitch, “Application of the liquid crystal light valve to real-time optical data processing,” Optical Engineering 17, 37 (1978).

29. W.P. Hleha and P.F. Kobusto, “Optical-to-optical image conversion with the liquid crystal light valve,” Proceedings of the SPIE 317, 179 (1981). W.P. Bleha, “Progress in liquid crystal light valves,” Laser F‘ocus (1983) 110.

30. W.1’. Hleha and S.E. Shields, “Liquid crystal light valves for projection displays,” I’roceeding.7 ofthe SHE 1455, 1 (1991).

31. W.P. Hlclia, “l>evelopment of ILA projectors for large screen display,” Proceedings of the 15th International Display Research Con@ence (1995) 91,

32. R.11. Sterling and W.1’. Hleha, “D-ILA technology for electronic cinema,” SID International Sympo.sium Digest of Technical Papers (2000) 310.


33. Electronic Display World 1(4), 1, Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1981); now iSuppli/Stanford liesources, Santa Clara, CA, http:// www.isuppli.com.

34. Allan li. Kmetz, personal communication, September 2003. 35. Terry J. Scheffer, personal communication, August 2003. 36. Herlnann Amstutz, Dieter Heimgartner, Meinolph Kaufmdnn, and Terry J.

Scheffer, Liquid Crystal DLspluy, U.S. Patent 4,634,229 (19871, applied for June 29, 1984.

37. ‘I‘crry J. Scheffer, “Liquid crystal display with high multiplex rate and wide viewing angle,” Proceedings of the Third International Displuy Kesearch Conference, Kobe, Japan (1983) 400. Also, Terry J. Scheffer and Jurgen Nehring, Appl. Phys. Lett. 48(10), 1021 (1983).

38. Colin M. Waters, V. 13rimmcl1, and Peter E. Kaynes, “Highly multiplexable dyed liquid crystal displays,” Proceedings of the Third International Disp1a.y Ke.seurch C‘ovferencc, Kobe, Japan (1.983) 396.

39. Colin M. Waters and Peter E. Kaynes, Liquid Cysta.1 Deuices with Particulur Pitch-Cell Thickness Kutio, US. Patent 4,596,446 ( 3 986), applied for June 17, 1983.

40. T.J. Scheffer, J. Nehring, M. Kaufmdnn, H. Amstutz, I). Heimgartner, and I? Eglin, “A 24 X 80-character IGD panel using the supertwisted birefringent effect,” SIL, International 8ymposium Lligest of Technical Papers (1985) 120.

41. Pierre-Giles I k Gennes, “Soft matter,” Nobel Award Lecture, 1:)ecember 9,

42. K.H. Meyer, L. Liebert, L. Strzelecki, and P. Keller, J. PhysiqueI;ett. 36, 69 (1975). 43. Noel A. Clark and Sven T. Lagerwall, “Submicrosecond bistable electro-optic

44. Alan Mosley, personal communication, January 2004.

1991, p. 10.

switching in liquid crystals,” Appl. Z’hys. Lett. 36(11), 899 (1980).

Chapter 11

View from the Sidelines

“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardon- able sin.”

T: H. Huxley, Biologist/Authol; 1866

One of the most important events in the history of the LCD industry’s development was the first liquid crystal conference held in Japan in 1980. l’his conference provided scientists and engineers from Europe and the U.S. with their first glimpse of the advances made in LCD technology by the Japanese. It also gave engineers from other countries in the Pacific Rim the impetus t o further develop and manufacture LCIls. Shortly thereafter, LCI) manufacturing began a major shift to the Far East and it greatly accelerated in the early 1980s. As a result, opportunities for technical consulting at 17,s. firms started to decline. In addition, one o f my major clients, Conic Semiconductor, had entered a high-volume manufacturing stage with few technical problems left to solve, so the need for my services declined. However, since I had an excellent relationship with Conic’s Managing IXrector, Rue Marshall, we jointly agreed to a gradual phase-out of my activities over a period of one year. This gave me time to shift the emphasis o f my activity from solely technical consulting to information services, enabling me to analyze the rapidly growing LCD industry from an independent observer’s viewpoint. This chapter discusses these events.

THE FIRST LIQUID CRYSTAL CONFERENCE IN JAPAN

I was invited t o attend the Eighth International Liquid Crystal Conference in Kyoto in June of 1980; it was the first ever to be held in that country. The

164

View from the Sidelines 165

General Secretary of the conference was Shunsuke Kobaydshi, then professor of electronic engineering at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He invited me to chair a session on Reliability and Standards and to present a paper on the activities of a U.S. standards committee that I participated in and was its first chairman. This was a great opportunity for me to develop important contacts with the leading LCD researchers in Japan and, thanks to Kobay-dshi's help, I was able to set up visits t o the research laboratories of Sharp and Sanyo.

It is fair to say that most of the attendees from Europe and the U.S., in addition to myself, had never visited the country before, so it was an excellent opportunity for all of us to learn about the level of LCD technology development in Japan as well as to enjoy a great cultural experience. We were all very pleased with the generous hospitality shown by our hosts.

The conference was held at the International Conference Hall in the ancient and beautiful city of Kyoto. Tt was extremely well-organized with financing provided by more than 50 Japanese companies. This conference was by far the largest of its kind up to that time both in terms of attendance and number of papers. While 295 people from Japan attended, some 165 attendees from 26 other countries participated in the conference. The speakers and attendees' at this conference represented the world's top scientists and engineers working in the field at that time.

Shigeharu Onogi of Kyoto IJniversity opened the conference and Masatami 'Pakeda of Tokyo Science IJniversity gave the welcoming addre Dr. Takeda also gave a special tribute to Glenn H. Brown (Fig. 11.1>, founder o f the Liquid Crystdl Conference Series, who presided as co- chairman with Shigeo Iwayanagi of Gumma University for the opening invited lectures. The first lecture was given by George W. Gray, who discussed recent developments in the liquid crystal field (Fig. 11.2). The second opening lecture was given by Tadashi Sasaki of the Sharp Corporation, who described the development of the pocket calculator and also showed photographs of some of the LCD products being developed in Japan. These included fuel pump displays, audio level meters for stereophonic equipment, color displays and multi-character displays for language trans- lators and word processors. This was then followed by the technical sessions where 369 papers were presented. In addition, an area of the conference hall was devoted to an exhibition of various LCD products and materials by 18 manufacturers. This exhibition presented demonstrations of various color displays and their application as well as liquid crystal materials, tin oxide coated glass, polarizers and measuring instruments. Overall,

166 Liquid Gold

Fig. 11.1. Opening ceremonies at the Eighth International Liquid Crystal Conference in Kyoto, Japan. Professor Glenn H. Brown, Kent State University, is at the podium thanking the organizers for the special dedication to him. Photo from the author’s collection.

Fig. 11.2. Professor George W. Gray, University of Hull, presenting the first invited lecture at the Eighth International Liquid Crystal Conference in Kyoto, Japan. Photo from the author’s collection.

this conference provided the attendees from outside Japan with perhaps their first look at the remarkable progress made by Japanese scientists and engineers in taking LCD technology to the manufacturing stage for a whole host of applications. Frankly, many of us were astounded by this progress.

One of the things that surprised me most was that so many Japanese researchers remembered me from their visits to my laboratory at the David Sarnoff Research Center in the early 1970s during licensing negotiations


with KCA. Among these were Tomio Wada and Tadashi Sasdki at Sharp, who were kind enough to give me a tour of their laboratories as well as a private tour of the great Buddha temple in Nara. In addition, I had dinner with Hironosuke Ikeda, Director of Sanyo’s Shioyd Research Laboratory in Kobe, who also gave me a tour of his laboratory. These meetings and others led me to the realization that Japan was an excellent place to do business and over the next 20 years, I would develop long-term professional relationships with many Japanese researchers and executives.

MOVING TO MARKET RESEARCH

Although market research for consumer products had evolved over many years for consumer products, it was in its adolescent stage for electronic components in the 1970s. Most market researchers based their forecasts on information only from the supply side, that is, the manufacturers of the components. Few market research firms were examining markets from both the supply and demand sides to insure a balanced and more accurate view of the present and future.

With the rapid growth of the electronics business, there was an increasing need for information on the future markets for electronic components, which of course included displays. There was some market research being done on cathode ray tubes because this was the major component of the computer terminals and television sets being sold during that period. However, little information was avdikdbk on the growing markets for new flat pdnd displays for other applications such as those based on light emitting diodes, electroluminescence, gas plasma and LCDs. Consequently, it seemed like a good time to develop market research techniques for the fledgling electronic display industry that took into account both supply and demand.

When I decided to become a professional consultant in 1978, I sought the help of Leon Wortman, whom I met while working for Exxon Enterprises. Wortman had been a management consultant for many years2 and he was kind enough to provide me with very helpful guidance and direction. He urged me to join the Professional and Technical Consultants Association, an organization located in the San Francisco Hay Area; I served as President of this 350-member organization in 1981 and 1982. This led to my becoming acquainted with Jerry Hutcheson and James Porter, consultants who had established successful market research firms for semiconductor equipment (VLSI Research) and computer disk drives (Disk/Trend

168 Liquid Gold

Report), respectively. With their help, I formulated a plan to develop a market information service for the display industry.

The first step in this plan was to prepare a report on the market for LCDs. 1 felt this would entail a great deal of work, so I enlisted the help of Robert Clary, who was a consultant that worked with me on the Romanian LCI) project discussed in the previous chapter. I-Ie also attended the liquid crystal conference in Japan.

When we returned from the Japan conference, Clary and I prepared the report, “Liquid Ctystul Dipluys in Jupan,” the first report ever published by Stanford Resources and perhaps the first to provide data on the market for 1,CDs. The popularity and financial s~iccess of this report launched the company into the display market research field. It also shifted my focus, away from display manufacturing process development, to market analysis and forecasting, providing the industry with an independent observer’s view.

In early 1981, I decided that Stanford Resources should publish an international newsletter devoted strictly to the display industry. In those days, when the Internet was still being developed, industry participants had to sift through numerous journals and magazines to obtain information on events taking place in the industry. The monthly newsletter was named Electronic Display World and it presented forecasts and analyses of the rapidly growing display market as well as reports on technological developments, current events, people and companies. The editorial section, which 1 usually wrote, was named, “View From the Sidelines,” a title that empha- sized an inclependent view of industry developments. The first issue was published in March 1981.

George W. Taylor and Joseph K. Burns, my close friends and principals of the consulting company Ilrinceton Resources, helped me gather information and organize the document during the newsletter’s start-up phase. I also enlisted the help of Shunsuke Kobayashi, who provided information on events taking place in Japan as Far East Editor. In 1984, Michael G. Clark, joined the editorial board and as European editor reported on events taking place in Europe. Clark was a well-known Ph.D. chemist who worked at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment on the early development o f liquid crystals and LCDs. Later he moved on to GEC Marconi and in 1996, he joined IJnilever, where his many responsibilities prevented him from helping with the newsletter, so Dr. Alan Mosley, his colleague at GEC, replaced him as European Editor. Mosley was also well-known in the LCD field. He began working on the development o f liquid crystal materials in 1974 at the 1Jniversity of Hull and spent 20 years in LCD research and development at GEC’s Hirst liesearch Centre and CRL Opto.


When Stanford Resources was going through a rapid growth phase in 1996, my management responsibilities increased and I3rian T. Fedrow took over as editor-in-chief of Electronic nispluy World He did an excellent job of modernizing the face and organization of the newsletter as well as managing its conversion to a publication that became available over the Internet. ‘The newsletter had a 20-year life and was published in both print and electronic versions until the end of 2000, when the Internet made these kinds of newsletters obsolete. However, Electronic Display World has been a valuable source of historical information for this book and number of references will be made to it in subsequent chapters. Thanks to a donation hy isuppli Corporation, nearly all the issues of Electronic I1i.plu.y Worki? in either printed or electronic version are available to the general public at thc Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC (http://www.americanhistory.si.edu),

In May o f 1982, thanks to an invitation from Philip Ileytnan, my former colleague at the Iyavid Sarnoff Kesearch Center, I gave a talk at the SID International Symposium? in San Diego, California, that presented forecasts of the market for all of the display technologies then in existence or emerging. This talk generated a great deal of interest in the activities of Stanford Resources and subsequently led to the company’s growth through sales of both syndicated and custom studies. It was also at this meeting where I met Cindra K. Trish, a market research analyst then working for Gnostic Concepts, a division of McGrdw Hill. Trish soon left Gnostic and joined the staff of Stanford Resources as a contractor. She went on to help in the preparation of numerous reports and custom studies, particularly in the rapidly growing inarket for personal computer displays.

The popularity of Liquid Cy.vkxl Displays in .Japan and Electronic Display World, prompted us to expand and improve studies of the then- emerging flat panel display market as well as the established cathode ray tube (CRT) market. The result was the launch in 1982 of the first syndicated service to cover the electronic display industry in depth. First named the Electronic Displuy Intelligence Review, it quickly evolved into the Electronic I1i.plu.y Industy Swvice. The methodology used to analyze and forecast the market utilized a coordinated supply-and-demand analysis o f the various market segments. Stanford Resources was a pioneer in the development of this multi-perspective market research technique for the display industryS4

During the 198Os, the company expanded and diversified its line of multi-client reports, many of which were the first to address the various market segments in depth. David E. Mentley, whom I first met in 1976 when he was developing glass frit formulations at AVX Materials, collaborated

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with me in the preparation o f the first edition of Flut InJormation Disyluys. A Strategic Analysis in 1983 and he soon became a full-time member o f the staff. For the next 17 years, we went on to co-author numerous reports on various aspects of the flat panel display industry, especially including LCns. Many of these reports are still being published today by Stanford Kes~urces,~ which was acquired by iSuppli Corporation in 2000.

In order to learn how the LCD industry was developing and to insure the accuracy of our market forecasts, other members of my staff and I traveled to many I,CD development facilities and manufacturing plants in the [J.S.A., Europe, Japan and other Pacific Kim companies during the 1980s and 1990s. My account of the maturation of the LCD industry through the years, as related in this and subsequent chapters, is partially based on those visits.

GROWTH OF THE LCD INDUSTRY IN THE 1980s

In early January of 1986, I was contacted by Martin Schadt of Hoffmann-La Koche in Hasel, Switzerland, to ask if Stanford Resources could bid on a project to help his company with a study of the liquid CrySVdl material segment of the LCD industry. Shortly thereafter, I was on my way to Basel to meet with the firm’s executives and to present our proposal. Felix Ackermann was an executive working directly for the Vice President who commissioned the study; he became the coordinator of the project. I3ecause of our many contacts in the industry and thanks to Schadt and Ackermann’s recommendations, Stanford Resources received a contract to perform the work. Combined with the other research we were doing on the LCI) industry, this project gave us the opportunity to refine our forecasts of the industry’s growth because it involved a trip to visit the major LCI> and liquid crystal material suppliers in Japan.

The project was completed in three months and I flew to Basel to present the results of the study to the senior executive staff of Hoffmann-La Koche in April 1986. ‘I’he results of this study present a snapshot o f the industry’s status in the mid-1980s and its potential growth through the end of that decade. At that time, the five largest Japanese manufacturers were Optrex, Hitachi, Sharp, Seiko Epson and Seiko Instruments. The total number of LCDs manufactured in 1985 by this group was just over 350 million units valued at $477 million. The total world market at that time was $876 million. Watch displays represented the largest product category at 58% while TV screens (typically with a 2- to 3-inch screen in hand-held portable units) were the smallest at 0.2%. The other categories were: calculators,


instruments, computer and auto. At that time “computer” represented mainly portable word processors and multi-line, high-end calculators. In terms of value, this category represented about 41% o f the total. As displays became available in larger sizes and with higher information content, this category would increase dramatically in the years following. In 1990, the total world market for LCDs of all types and sizes topped $1.8 hillion. As will be discussed in a sulxequent chapter, the market grew by more than an order o f magnitude from 1990 to 2000.

Another finding from the study was that the amount of liquid crystal material consumed in 1985 in Japan was 5.66 metric tons valued at $23 million. The largest consumers of the material were Optrex, Ilitachi, Matsushita, the Seiko group and Toshiba. In 1985, the total world market for the material was 6.13 metric tons valued at $26.2 million.

All of the Japanese firms interviewed at that time were convinced, as was I, that amorphous silicon TFT-addressed LCIls would be the future for color television and computer monitors. Also, the consensus among the LCD manufacturers was that the major products of the future would be television screens, computers, telephones, instruments and automotive applications. 7‘hese predictions cerkainly turned out to be the case as of this writing in early 2004. However, the prophecy of some that the 40-inch diagonal, color LCD, wall-mounted television would be a reality by 1990 was off by ten years.

COMPETING DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY SCRUTINIZED

In spite of the fact that the LCD industry was growing rapidly in the 1980s, the search for a new display technology that could replace LCDs was underway at several companies. In those years, it was clearly evident that applications of LCDs to large screen, high-information content displays would require active matrix addressing with TFTs. This was a daunting prospect in terms of complexity and the cost of manufacturing. One of the technologies that seemed to show promise as a replacement was the electrophoretic image display (EPID), which exhibited bistability and presumably would not require active matrix addressing.

Isao Ohta6 at Matsushita Electric Industrial Company originally invented the device in 1973. It employed the movement of positively charged particles of a white pigment (e.g. titanium dioxide) through a dyed liquid suspension. When a DC voltage was applied between a pair of transparent electrodes in such a way that the front transparent electrode was

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negative, the white pigment particles moved electrophoretically toward the front electrode (viewing side). Consequently, the panel became white in reflective color. When the field was reversed, the transparent electrode was positive and the reflective color became dark because the white pigment particles moved to the opposite (rear) transparent electrode and were hidden behind the dark suspending liquid.

One o f the companies developing these EPID displays was Exxon Enterprises, which had established a start-up division known appropriately as WID. Another was North American Philips, which had a research program underway at the company’s central research laboratory in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

In mid-1979, Dr. Andrew Dalisa, CEO of this division, contacted me to help set up a pilot facility for the fabrication of electrophoretic displays. I knew Ilalisa from Philips Research when he was working on methods to fdiricate video disks using photochromic materials. Ilalisa knew I set up a clean-room facility for DatascreedKylex and he wanted me to do the Same for his operation. This was accomplished in 1979 and his operation began to fabricate displays in 1980.

By 1981, the company had purchased additional equipment and expanded its staff significantly. Dr. Lewis T. Lipton, whom I knew previously From his job as manager of display research at Hughes, had joined the company as I>irector o f Engineering and was formulating plans for manufacturing the displays. The company planned to rnake displays with 25 lines X 80 characters (70,000 pixels) in a size of about 7.5 inches X 10 inches (12.5 inches diagonal). The prototype displays had white characters against a blue background and the contrast was quite good. The colors could be reversed with a different addressing scheme.

In early 1982, Lipton and Dalisa contacted me about doing a compre- hensive rnanufacturing cost analysis. I subsequently did a two-phase project over a period o f nine months and developed a manufacturing cost model that was adopted from the early LcU manufacturing cost calcula- tions that I helped develop at Fairchild. Later, Pavid Mentley, who was product marketing manager for END at that time, would go on to improve and refine the model for advanced LCD manufacturing processes when he joined Stanford Resources. Mentley’s more advanced models are available today5 and are widely used in the LCD industry.

The technology was plagued by several problems including “ghosting” or what would later be called image sticking. Long term reliability was still


an unknown at that time. The EPID division survived. until about 1984 when it was dissolved along with Exxon Enterprises.

Several years later, in the summer of 1985, Steven Dittlemen, an executive who worked at the North American I’hilips headquarters in Manhattan, contacted me. Philips had been a major client of Stanford Resources since 1982 and Dittlemen was the coordinator of outside consulting services for the company. €Ie wanted our company to perform a study of the potential market for electrophoretic displays as a means to determine whether further funding o f research into this new technology was warranted. At the time, the device and material research was being conducted under the direction of Dr. Peter Murau.

The project went forward and with the help of Cindra R. Trish, some 80 interviews were conducted by telephone and through personal visits. The final presentation of the results was given in October 1985 at the KWD center before a group that included Barry Singer, the Laboratory Ilirector, Peter Murau and other key staff members. One of the conclusions we reached was that it would be very difficult to supplant the LCD in low- information content applications such as instruments, calculators, and clocks. The Philips researchers originally helieved that these would be good entry market segments for the technology, but our results showed otherwise. However, if the technology could be applied to large-screen, high-information content displays without the use of an active matrix, then a large potential market existed for the displays in portable computers or as replacements for CRT monitors on the desktop. IJnfortunately, further research later revealed the same problems that plagued the Exxon Enterprise group and Philips ended the project a few years later.

In spite of these problems, other companies continued to work on electrophoretic display technology through the 1980s and part of the 1990s, albeit at a very low level. Then in 1997, E-Ink Corporation was founded to develop an electrophoretic display technology that used microencapsula- tion o f the suspended particles to prevent the image sticking problem that plagued the earlier work. The Cambridge, Massachusetts company’s objective was to create a type of “electronic paper” that would provide the look, form, and utility of paper, but with the ability to write and erase the text electronically. In 2001, Philips, created a strategic partnership with E-Ink for further development and commercialization of the technology. Two years later, E-Ink and Philips announced7 the unveiling of joint prototypes at the Society for Information Display Exposition and Symposium in

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Baltimore, Maryiand. These engineering samples featured a resolution of 160 pixels per inch and used Philips’ custom designed thin-film transistor (TFT) backplane and driver electronics. The companies expect to be the first to commercialize true paper-like displays using this “electronic ink” technology with mass production of modules in 2004. The displays are said to be under development for applications such as hand held devices, wear- able displays and transportation signage.

This is a case where a 30-year-old technology that sat dormant for many years, has finally reached the manufacturing stage. However, instead o f replacing TFT-LCIIs, these displays have apparently found market niches that arc not being served by LCDs. Ironically, it is the TFT technology, which was developed specifically for LCDs, that made possible the commercialization of these electrophoretic displays for high resolution applications.

REFERENCES

1. Proceedings of’the Eight International Liquid Crystal Conjkrence, Kyoto, Japan, June 1980.

2. Leon A. Wortman is a retired management consultant and popular lecturer who wrote some 20 books on management and computer programming. He was also a member of the Office of Secret Service (predecessor of the CIA) during World War 11 and his experiences are related in To Catch a Shadow (1st Books Library, Hloomington, IN, 2002).

3. Joseph A. Castellano, “Current U S . and world markets for displays,” SILI International Symposium Digest of Technicul Papers (1982).

4. Joseph A. Castellano, ‘The cost and value o f display market information,” Itz/brmation DispZu.y 8(11), 11 (1992). The market research and forecasting techniques developed by Stanford Resources were also described in a seminar given in I3oston, MA, at the 1997 Society for Information Display International Symposium.

5. Information on Stanford Resources’ display industry reports is available at: http://www.stanfordresources.com or http://www.isuppli.com.

6. Isao Ohta, el ul., Proc. ZEEE 61, 832 (1973). 7. Press release from E-Ink Corporation, May 12, 2003, http://www,eink.com.

Chapter 12

The Elusive Transistor

"I believe that the strength of the active matrix principle is precisely its near- universal applicability. Thus, if the nematic liquid crystal is replaced by a superior electro-optic fluid (or solid), it wi l l almost certainly still be addressed by an active matrix circuit."

7: Peter Brody, Thin-Film Transistor Pioneer; 1995

Active matrix addressing is a technique for enhancing the addressing and writing o f LCDs. Multiplexing uses the timing of the signals to select and write a particular line of the display. As more and more lines are written, the amount of time which the controller can spend writing to each individual line (the duty cycle) decreases. Eventually, the molecules of liquid crystal do not have time to react fully to the applied voltage and contrast diminishes. When the addressing function in the display is Sepdrdted from the process o f writing, then each line can be written quickly, it can maintain its image, and the next line can then bc written. This separation of addressing and writing has been attempted by several methods. A dual input method where two frequencies, two voltages or two different types of energy, such as thermal and electrical, were attempted, but they usually had some drawback such as slow speed, high power or complex circuitry.

The technique of active matrix addressing makes the display hardware more complex by adding a switch to each pixel. The switch can be turned on very rapidly (in a few microseconds) and a storage capacitor can then I x used to maintain its condition while the other lines are being written. Several approaches to making individual switches have been investigated. 'These include diodes, varistors, transistors and various combinations thereof. Not only have many different devices been investigated but there have been many different materials from which to make the devices.

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The thin-film transistor (TFT) approach has emerged as the most successful technique for active matrix addressing in terms of the display’s performance. As described in Chapter 4 , the use of active elements t o drive dynamic scattering LCDs was first demonstrated in 1966 at RCA’s David Sarnoff Research Center by Lechner and his colleagues. The idea of using thin-film transistors to address LCDs was being pursued simukmeously by RCA and Westinghouse during the 1960~.’ ,~ However, T. Peter Brody and his team a t the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were the first t o build working displays using TITS.’ This chapter traces the early history of TFT-LCDs as they evolved from the conceptual stage to practical working devices.

A THIN FILM OF TRANSISTORS

‘llie concept o f the thin-film transistor was being explored at RCA Ihoratories by a group headed by Paul Weimer, who started working at JICA in 1942, shortly after receiving a 1’h.D. in physics from Ohio State LJniversity. His early work involved the development o f some of the first television camera tubes, including the image orthicon and vidicon. In 1960, he shifted t o working on semiconductors and thought that the coplanar structures his colleagues were working on might be useful for a solid-state television camera, so he began fabricating thin-film transistors on glass

In the fall of 1960, Weimer started making TFTs using vacuum deposition o f cadmium sulfide, a polycrystalline semiconductor material, in a coplanar process that was similar to the one he used to make the tricolor vidicon. When he deposited an insulator between the gate and the semiconductor material, he obtained acceptable performance.j “We would evaporate cadmium sulfide down, which would connect the source and the drain and then we would evaporate silicon monoxide as an insulator and then we would evaporate the gate. And the gate was aluminum. If you applied the voltages t o the gate, well, of course that caused the current between source and drain to be modulated,” stated ~ e i m e r . * “we got very nice characteristics, and we went on from there. Frank Shallcross, who was working as part of my group, found that you could actually make thin- film transistors using cadmiurn selenide. Cadmium selenide seemed nicer than cadmium sulfide so we all switched to cadmium selenide for our N-type transistors. But then I had also found that tellurium could be evaporated and could produce a Ij-type transistor, which just had the inverted

SubStrdtes.

The Elusive Transistor 177

characteristics using holes instead of electrons. Well, now having an N-type of transistor and a 11-type transistor, o f course, one tries to invert and see what he could do with it. I submitted a disclosure on the complementary inverter. This was a complementary storage element in the form of a flip- flop with 1)- and N-type transistors, which draws current in neither state. So it is a very low power drain type of thing and it has really become the basis o f the solid-state memory element. That was a by-product of thin-film transistor work and we were able to get this basic patent on that type of device before those two devices were well-known in silicon. We had an early start.”

Weimer’s paper3 attracted the attention of T. Peter Brody, who started working with tellurium films on glass and flexible substrates. By his own detailed account,5 13rody was not given much encouragement by the company’s management, which had little confidence that TFTs would ever be practical. However, he was driven by the conviction that thin-film elcctron- ics would indeed be important in the future and was able to secure government contracts to support his research.

Brody began working at Westinghouse in 1959 shortly after receiving his 1’h.I). in theoretical physics from the IJniversity of London. Over the period from 1967 to 1979, he pioneered the development of practical TFT technology for use in displays. In 1967, Brody and his colleague Derrick Page designed and constructed a vacuum deposition system in which TFTs could be fabricated in a single pump-down cycle, eliminating contamina- tion from atmospheric impurities, which had previously been a major cause of non-reproducibility. Shortly thereafter, Brody and Page were depositing TFTs and by 1968, I5rody had expanded his research team into what became known as the Thin-Film &vices Department. This group eventually grew to some 15 scientists and engineers. It was at this time that he began looking at displays as a possible application for 1’PTs.

The first foray into displays by Brody’s group was not LCDs, but electroluminescence and a 14-segment EL character display controlled by a set of high voltage TFrs was built in 1968. This led Brody to the concept of a control element at each pixel, the basis for active matrix addressing. It is belicved that I3rody was the first to coin the term “active matrix,” which he introduced into the literature in 3 975.

Because the LCD work at RCA was still under wraps, Urody was probably not aware of its potential until after the public announcement in 1968. However, by 1971, Brody knew that LCD technology looked promising as a candidate for his active matrix addressing scheme and he was able to

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secure a U.S. Air Force contract to help support the research. One year later, Dr. Fan Luo, a key member of Hrody’s team, produced active matrix circuits that had adequate performance to drive liquid crystals. The team then spent another year developing fabrication techniques for cadmium selenide TFT-LClk In 1973, a 6-inch X 6-inch panel with 120 X 120 pixels was built and demonstrated.b This was the first working active matrix LCD t o be d e ~ e l o p e d . ~ In 1978, Luo demonstrated the first TFT-LCD with a video picture in black-and-white at the SID Symposium.8 Brody received numerous honors and awards for this pioneering work including the Karl Braun Prize from the SID, the Rank Prize (Great Britain) and the Eduard Rhein Prize (Germany).

Brody left Westinghouse in 1979 and formed Panelvision, the first company to introduce active matrix LCDs to the U.S. market in 1983. One year later, IJanelVision built a 9.5-inch LCD with 640 X 400 pixels, a product that was of great interest to potential customers. Unfortunately, the company lacked the financial resources to mass produce the panels and Brody was forced to sell the company to Litton Industries in 1985.

After the sale of Panelvision, Rrody went on to work in the field as a consultant, an activity that he continues to pursue as of this writing. Brody’s tenacity in continuing to champion active matrix display technology in the face of numerous financial obstacles was truly remarkable. The reader is encouraged to read his personal memoirs5 for candid comments on these events.

While Rrody opened the way for TFTs in LCDs, other groups were looking at silicon to replace cadmium selenide as the semiconducting material in the devices. By the late 1970s, silicon was deeply entrenched as the material of choice for the fabrication of transistors. Crystalline silicon was a material that was well-understood for building high-density integrated circuits. However, the question remained as t o whether thin films of amorphous or polycrystalline silicon would have adequate performance (e.g. high electron mobility) to make them practical for displays. Many researchers throughout the world were working to find the answer to this question.

THE SHIFT TO SILICON

The semiconducting properties of single-crystal silicon made it an ideal material for use in transistors and integrated circuits. Its additional ability to convert sunlight into electricity, also made it an excellent material for use in the space program to power satellites. Consequently, studies of the


electronic properties of the material go back more than 60 years. The major problem with single crystal silicon for solar cells was the limitation in size imposed by the diameter of the single-crystal boules that could be grown. Silicon “wafers” are cut as thin slices from the boules, so the diameter of the boule determines the diameter of the wafer. In 1970, wafer diameter was 55mm o r less (the newest facilities today use 300-mm-diameter wafers), so it was necessary to connect many wafers together to form an array that would provide enough energy to power a space satellite. Thus, the search for ways to deposit silicon in thin films over large areas began in research laboratories throughout the world.

The two materials that were being investigated were amorphous silicon (often designated as a-Si) and polycrystalline silicon. Stanford Ovshinsky9 was one of the pioneers who worked on the development of a-Si solar cells when he formed a company called Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) in 1960. Many of the early patents on a-Si solar cells were held by ECD, a company that is now known as ECD Ovonics. The company had a joint venture with Sharp Corporation in the 1980s to make large area solar cells using a-Si.

In addition, there were many other US. companies doing research on amorphous silicon. Among these were the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (now Exxon Mobil Corporation) and a spin-off company called Exxon Solar Power Corporation as well as Bell Laboratories, General Electric and RCA Laboratories, to name a few. Paul Rappaport, a pioneer in the development of these devices and the first Director of the U.S. Solar Energy Research Institute, initiated the KCA solar cell work. David E. Carlson was an RCA scientist who performed work specifically on amorphous silicon and made significant advances in the processes used to manufacfure solar cells based on the materidlo Dr. Carlson later went on to form Solarex, a manufacturer of solar panels that is now part of BP Solar, a unit of BP, the giant oil company.

In Japan, most of the large electronics companies had programs to investigate the use of a-Si for solar cells. And, in Europe, corporate as well as university and large government research laboratories in England, France, and Germany were also investigating this material.

By the late 1970s, many of these researchers were also looking at the application of amorphous and polycrystalline silicon to thin-film diodes and transistors. The attractive feature of a-Si was its ability to be processed at a low enough temperature to deposit a thin-film on a glass substrate. This would presumably make it possible to fabricate arrays of transistors over very large areas. However, the main problem that plagued its use for

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general purpose transistors was its low electron mobility. In 1978, while I was working for Exxon Enterprises, I learned that research on hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) was being performed at Exxon’s central research laboratories (now located in Clinton, New Jersey). I suspect other groups were also investigating this material, but mainly for use in solar cells.

A significant breakthrough occurred when a research group at the IJniversity of Dundee in Scotland, led by Peter G. Le Comber and Walter E. Spear, and Anthony J. Hughes at RSRE,”-’2 discovered that a-Si:H had performance characteristics that made it suitable as a field-effect, thin-film transistor for LCP) panels. These papers are generally regarded5i7>l3 as the ones that sparked the worldwide effort to develop active matrix LCDs based on a-Si:H TFTs. One of the senior authors of those papers, Professor Spear, presented a series of lectures in Japan on the application of a-Si:H to solar cells and displays7 in 1982. This generated great interest on the part of researchers at a number of Japanese firms, as evidenced by the work that followed shortly thereafter. Some examples are summarized below.

S. Kawai and his group at Fujitsu Laboratories in Kawasaki fabricated a 5 X 7 dot matrix single-character display using a-Si TFTs with the Guest-Host effect.’* They also developed a “self-alignment” process for fabricating a-Si TFT arrays for use in LCD panels.lb me process used a combination of RF glow discharge depositions, vacuum evaporation and photolithography to form the TFT array on a glass substrate. Arrays of 32 x 32 elements were fabricated and tested.

At Canon’s research center in Tokyo, Y . Okubo and his colleagues demonstrated 240 X 240 pixel panels using both the twisted-nematic and Guest-Host effects with a-Si TFTs.15 The following year, M. Sugata and his group at Canon fabricated a twisted-nematic color LCD that used vacuum- evaporatcd stripes of red, green and blue pigments in conjunction with amorphous silicon TFTs.17 The display, which was back-lit by a fluorescent lamp, had a screen size of 30mm (1.2 inches) X 34.8mm (1.4 inches) and 50 X 174 pixels.

A group of researchers at ’kshiba’s research center in Kawasaki, led by K. Suzuki,16 produced a-Si TFT arrays to construct displays that were 44 X 6Omm in active area and had 220 X 240 pixels, making the devices compatible with conventional CMOS integrated circuits. A graphical display using the ‘1” effect and a television display using the Guest-Host effect were demonstrated; both were back-lit by a fluorescent lamp. The displays were scanned at 60 frames/second for 400 lines/frame. A number


of defective rows and columns were apparent in the photographs of the displays, but this was typical of all the early experimental devices.

Mitsuhiro Yamasaki and his group at Sanyo Electric Company in Kobe, collaborated with S. Sugibuchi and Y. Sasaki of Sanritsu Electric Company in Tokyo to fabricate a color LCD-TV using a-Si TFTs to drive 220 X 240 pixels on a three-inch diagonal screen.” The colors were obtained by using internal red, green and blue stripes of color polarizers.

Soon, Sharp, which had originally built TFT devices with tellurium, switched over to a-Si and began building larger screen displays. Hitachi, Mdtsushita, Hosiden, Citizen, Suwa Seikosha, Daini Seikosha, Mitsubishi and Asahi Glass also began working on TFT-LCDs based on a-Si or polycrystalline silicon at about that time.

Meanwhile, other groups in France began investigating TFTs for LCDs based on a-Si. In Lannion, France, M. Le Contellec and his colleagues at the National Center for Telecommunications Studies (CNET) described the work they were doing to build large arrays of TFTs for LCDs using a-Si at the 1982 Society for Information Display Symposium in San Diego, California.14 The following year, Francois Morin and his group at CNET fabricated a a-Si TFT addressed LCD with 320 X 320 pixels.18 The TFTs did not have a storage capacitor, but could still be operated at television rates. And, another group led by Michel Hareng at the Central Research Laboratories of Thomson CSF in Orsay, France, fabricated test cells that used a-Si back- to-back Schottky diodes and the Guest-Host color LCD display technique.l’

In England, active matrix approaches to TFT-LCD fabrication were being explored at GEC, RSKE, CKL, and other university and corporate laboratories. Philips in the Netherlands also formed a team of scientists to investigate these materials.

A group at the University of Stuttgart led by Dr. Ernst Leuder became heavily involved in active matrix LCD research and ultimately published more than 270 papers on the subject. According to Leuder,19 his group was one of the first to fabricate TFTs with photolithography instead of evaporation and sputtering through aperture masks20 as was common in thin-film technology at that time. Later, they were one of the first groups to Fabricate a 14-inch diagonal TFT-LCD with a-Si:H using just four masking steps.21 They also developed LCDs on plastic substrates including the first 14-inch diagonal plastic-substrate LCD with a resolution of 200 dots per inch.22

Work on TFT-LCDs based on thin films of silicon was also beginning in the US. In 1982, for example, Stanford Resources and Princeton Resources did a joint custom study of the future market for displays in general and

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active matrix LCDs in particular for Re11 Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Our main contact there was Dr. Stuart Blank, who was responsible for advanced display research at the laboratories. Allan Kmetz headed one of the groups in Blank’s organization, and at that time, his group was doing some early work on TI.“T-LCI)S.~~ Among the conclusions of that project was our strategic opinion that LCD panels addressed by TFTs would tic the displays of the future. This was in line with what Kmetz believed, but Blank showed some serious skepticism because he had a former LED group in Reading, I-’ennsylvania, that was working on plasma display panels (PDPs) as well as a new group developing a miniature CRT with epitaxial phosphor for projection. Despite our recommendation that AT&T focus on active matrix LCD development, the company decided to pursue PDPs instead and later announced that a 1’DP product would be manufactured in Reading with a novel interconnection scheme based on lead-frames.23 The product was withdrawn almost immediately as the many existing competitors simply lowered their prices. All display research was stopped in 1986.

Seven years later, AT&T management finally realized that many o f AT&T’s future products would have active matrix LCDs. Suddenly it became important for AT&T to insure a supply of vital components, since by that time they were all made in the Far East. Thus, a new active matrix LCD program was started in Murray Hill in 1993 and AT&T joined with Xerox to obtain government funding through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DAIWA). This was done presumably as way to get 1J.S. industry back into the display manufacturing business and insure a reliable supply o f displays for military application. However, DAKPA steered most of the government funding to 01s Optical Imaging Systems (OIS), a company that planned to build displays for aircraft instruments, as described on the following pages.

The shift of government funding to OIS, coupled with the failure to devclop partnerships with Japanese manufacturers, caused Bell Labs to end its active matrix LCD research program in 1995.23

The story of 01s is important for two reasons. One is that the company was one of the first to recognize the importance of a-Si as a material for active matrix devices. The other is that it provided technology to Asian companies like Unipac in Taiwan and Korea’s Samsung, a company that would go on to become one of the worlds leading suppliers of TFT-LCDs.

According to Zvi Yan i~ ,~* in the fall of 1982 when Yaniv was completing his 1Jh.D. work at Kent State University, he was invited to join Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) by Stanford Ovshinsky, President, and


Dr. Robert Johnson, Senior Vice President. They wanted to start a new group related t o the use o f wSi devices with liquid crystals. In 1983, Ymiv started working as the manager o f the semiconductor group at ECD and six months later, his group expanded to 20 people doing contract research for inany companies on a-Si devices and their applications. The group’s mission was to create active matrix LCDs using a-Si diodes instead o f transistors. The reason, at that time, was that everyone in the field predicted that there would be serious difficulties in using or-Si transistors due to the low electron mobility and problems with the interface between the gate dielectric and a-Si layer. Learning from the experience of the solar cell group at ECI), it became clear that diodes would be easier to manufacture than TFTs over large areas and in high-yield. By early 1984, Yaniv’s group demonstrated the first active matrix LCD using a diode switch and established an intellectual property base for the company.

In May of 1984, Optical Imaging Systems (01s) was formed as a subsidiary of ECD with 12olm-t Johnson as President and Zvi Yaniv as Vice President to further develop the diode type active matrix LCII and eventually bring it to manufacturing. In 1985, Yaniv’s team at OK, which included David M. Wells, and Dr. Vincent Cannella, reported a 32 X 32 pixel LCD with NIN diodes and one with a TFT that had no capacitors in parallel with the pixeLZ5 The company expanded the prototype to a 640x400 pixel display in 1986.

Unfortunately, it was very difficult to raise capital to build manufacturing facilities. Therefore, 01s decided to go public in 1986 and Yaniv was named President o f the company. By 1987, OIS established an engineering line for production of LCD prototypes using both a-Si TFTs and diodes. The company soon demonstrated an alpha-numeric diode-type active matrix ICD that was 3.5 inches square and delivered it to Allied Signal Aerospace. The success of that development prompted Allied Signal to invest $4.5 million in 01s and to co-develop a full-color, high-resolution display that was eight inches square to replace the conventional instrument read.outs and CIiT displays in military and commercial aircraft cockpits. That Same year, the 1J.S. Air Force contracted OIS to develop a 6-inch X 8-inch LCD for a militarized portable computer to be used by maintenance crews.

Over the next two years, the OIS-Allied Signal development program led to the demonstration of a series of high-resolution, full-color avionic displays as large as eleven inches diagonal and with 1.7 million sub-pixels, which at that time was the largest known active matrix display designed for

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military aircraft.24 Another project with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) led 01s to produce displays for the Army’s LHX heli- copter. The company also was invoived in avionic programs such as the Navy A-12 advanced tactical fighter, retrofitting the horizontal system indicator (HIS) for the F-15, and in the avionics of KC-135 aerial tankers.

Samsung Electron Devices heard about the 01s development and soon dispatched their U.S. consultant Chan Soo Oh to find out more about it. After Oh confirmed that 01s had a promising technology in development, Samsung’s management asked him to set up a joint venture project with 01s to develop a portable computer display. According to Oh,26 01s was agreeable to a joint product development project with Samsung, so he made numerous trips between the 1J.S. and Korea to draft and finalize a one-year development contract between the two companies. In 1989, an agreement was signed24 that enabled Samsung personnel to be trained by 01s in Michigan. The contract also included a license agreement to allow Samsung to manufacture active matrix LCDs using the intellectual property portfolio of 01s.

Several engineers from Samsung were sent to the 01s Facility to learn the process and indeed by the completion of the contract, they returned to Korea with working prototypes of LCDs made with thin-film diode arrays. It was not long before Samsung was able to replicate the process for fabrication of a-Si devices in Suwon, Korea. And, as will be described in subsequent chapters, Samsung went on from this early technology know-how to develop their own advanced TFT devices for manufacturing LCDs.

Another important milestone for 01s was achieved in 1990 when the company joined with UMC (United Microelectronics Corporation) of Taiwan to form Unipac Optoelectronics Corporation based in Taiwan.24 01s received 1OOh of the stock in Unipac by granting certain licenses to that company. Today, Unipac, in a joint venture with Acer known as AU Optronics, is one of the largest manufacturers of active matrix LCDs in Taiwan.

Starting in 1990, OIS focused exclusively on displays for military and commercial avionics instruments and avoided the computer and consumer market. The avionics market application was unusual in that it was neg- lected by most of the large TFT-LCD manufacturers in Japan. The conventional wisdom was that these markets were very Small (in terms of units) and required significant engineering support. As a result, all of the avionics contractors were seeking to set up a supply of display components, but with little success.


Recognizing the need to establish a manufacturing facility devoted to military/avionic displays, 01s began seeking an investment partner in 1991 and later that year Guardian Industries, a glass manufacturer based in Michigan, gained a controlling interest in 01s and installed new management, prompting Ymiv to leave the company at year's end.24 However, the infusion of capital enabled the company to build a new facility2'" for active matrix LCDs in 1993 in Southeastern Michigan. This facility was slated to be the first volume active matrix LCD production facility in the U.S. and 01s was selected by DARPA to build a plant that would demonstrate manufacturing technology for active matrix LCDs. The facility was expected to cost $100 million with a 50-50 sharing of the cost by the company and DARPA. Capacity of the facility was expected to be 50,000 units per year. Unfortunately, this was more than enough to satisfy the military cockpit display market for many years to come and many people, including myself, questioned whether the company would be profitable under these circumstances.

While 01s was successful in developing high-quality active matrix LCDs for military applications, it could not turn a profit. The military display market had not yet reached the point where there was enough volume requirement to sustain a profitable, ongoing business. Consequently, Guardian Industries refused to provide further financial support and the company closed down in 1998.27"

Richard Flasck was a former employee of ECD who formed a company he named Alphasil to develop active matrix LCDs. Alphasil began operations in 1983 in Sunnyvale, California.28 Flasck soon recruited Scott Holmberg, who helped build some of the first prototype TFT-LCD panels using a-Si. A seed round of financing led by the Bay Venture Group of San Francisco initially funded Alphad. Over the course of 1984 and 19-35, the founders explored a variety of options to obtain sufficient capital for a volume manufacturing facility. In July of 1986, the firm concluded an agreement with the Sperry Corporation to provide a direct investment; Sperry's Aerospace and Marine Group that was subsequently sold to the Honeywell Corporation led this transaction. As part of this acquisition, Honeywell received certain interests in Alphasil technology, including exclusive marketing rights in the worldwide defense and aerospace markets.

Alphasil was based in Fremont, California, where it established one of the first TFT-LCD fabrication lines in the U.S. using the customized semiconductor equipment designed to handle glass substrates up to 12 inches

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on a side. In its aim t o focus on the most favorable technological path, Alphasil incorporated many of the standard steps of wafer fab processing into its proprietary production process. In 1987, Alphasil announced introduction o f a series of active matrix liquid crystal displays29 with up to 640 X 480 pixels on a 4-inch X 5-inch screen at a resolution at 128 lines per inch. IJnfortunately, the parent company’s interest was in displays for military applications and by the late 1980s, new contracts for military applications had all but vanished, forcing Honeywell to close down Alphad in 1~)89.3~

After Alphasil ceased operations, Scott Holmberg began making plans to establish another start-up company to manufacture TFT-LCDs and in 1992, he formed Image Quest Technologies with funding from Hylindai Electronics America. I3ased in Fremont, California, the company produced high resolution TFT-LCDs for the avionics and military markets. By 1997, the company had 85 employees working three shifLs and was building color panels in sizes of ten inches with 640x480 pixels and 12 inches with 1,024X768 pixels. Unfortunately, the size of the specialty market for its products was not sufficient to sustain the operation and the company closed down in 1998.

As mentioned previously, Xerox began working on LCDs in the 1960s at its Webster, New York research center. Xerox had another research center in California known as the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (often called Xerox PARC) where research work on LCDs was started in 1970. At that time, Xerox PARC’s scientists were developing the “office of the future” and the “architecture of information.” In the mid-l980s, PARC scientists developed page-size a-Si image sensor arrays for high-speed copiers. In the early lC)c)Os, the effort shifted to displays and Xerox developed some of the first high-resolution color active matrix LCDs. The company then established a wholly-owned subsidiary called dpiX to manufacture these products for state-of-the-art military cockpit applications. But as Honeywell, OIS, Image Quest, and others found, the military market for these displays was much too small to sustain a viable manufacturing business for active matrix L C I k Consequently, dpiX stopped making displays in 2001 and returned t o work on image sensors. Today, the company is a supplier of X-ray sensors to medical tnarkets where its sensors are used in image sub- systems for radiography, fluoroscopy, cardiology and portal imagings1 The significant improvements in versatility and productivity of real-time X-ray images using these devices has benefited medical practitioners and allowed them to share visual data in real-time with colleagues in remote locations for immediate analysis and consultation.


In 1982, at the International Display Research Conference in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Dr. Andras Lakatos, who led a group at the Xerox Kesearch Center in Wehster, New York, that was investigating or-Si TFTs for LCDs, gave a reviewY2 o f the state-of-the-art of the technology at that time. He predicted that it will be possible to fabricate larger arrays of a-Si TFT devices with adequate performance for dot matrix displays. He also said it would be possible to build drivers and. shift registers as well as active switching elements on a single substrate using polycrystalline Si TFTs. These comments from an authoritative source gave impetus to many researchers to work in this field. and years later, these prophesies were ful- filled. Unfortunately, major U.S. manufacturers were not prepared to invest the time and money required t o take the technology from the laboratory to the market place. As a result, the manufacturing of TFT-LCDs developed and matured in Japan, Korea and Taiwan during the 1980s and 1990s.

REFERENCES

1 . Ikrnard Lechner, personal communication, June 2003. 2. T. Peter Hrody, personal communication, May 2002. 3. Paul Weimer, “The TFT - a new thin-film transistor,” Proc.

able at http://www.ieee.org. 4. Paul Weimer, RCA Engineers Collection, transcript of 1975 interview:

http ://www , ieee .org/organizations/history_center/oral-histories/trdnscripts/ weimer22. html.

5. ‘I: Peter Hrody, “The birth and early childhood of active matrix - a personal memoir,” Journal ofthe Society for Information Display 4/3, 113 (1996).

6. T. Petcr Hrotfy, J.A. Asars and G.D. Dixon, “A (;-inch X 6 inch, 20 lines per inch liquid crystal display panel,” IEEE Transuctions on Electron Devices 20, 995 (1973).

7 . Hirohisa Kawamoto, “The history of liquid crystal displays,” Proc. IFXE 90(4), 49.3494 (2002).

8. F.C. Luo, W.R. Hcster, and T. Peter Rrody, “Alphanumcric and video performance of a 6-inch X 6-inch, 30 lines per inch TFT-LC display panel,” Proceedings of the [email protected] Injormation Display (1978) 94.

10. David E. Carlson, et wl., “Properties of amorphous silicon and a-Si solar cells,” WCA Review 38, 21 1 (1977).

11. P.G. 1.e Combcr, W.E. Spear, and A. Ghaith, “Amorphous silicon field-effect device and possible applications,” Electronic Letters 15(6), 179 (1979).

12. A.I. Snell, K.D. Mackenzie, Walter E. Spear, Peter G. Le Comber, and AnthonyJ. Hughes, “Application of amorphous silicon field-effect transistors to addressable

9. Margot Hornblower, Time, March 1, 1999; see also, http://www.ovonic.corn.

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liquid crystal display panels,” Appl. Phys. A24(4), 357 (19811, published by Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany. Anthony J. Hughes did his work at R S E in Malvern, while the other authors worked in the Carnegie Laboratory of Physics at the University of Dundee, Scotland.

13. E. kaneko, Liquid Crystal 7VDlspluys (KTK Scientific Publishers, Tokyo, 3 9871, p. 244.

14. Electronic Disp1a.y World 2(5) 7, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1982); now iSuppli/Stanford Resources, Santa Clara, CA, http://www.isuppli.com. This issue summarizes work reported at the 31) International Symposium held in San Diego, CA, in May 1982.

15. Y. Okubo, T. Nakagiri, Y. Osada, M. Sugata, N. Kitahara, and K. Hatdnaka, “Large-scale LCDs addressed by a-Si TET arrays,” Proceedings of the Society, for Information Display (1982) 40.

16. Electronic Display World 3(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983). This issue summarizes work reported at the SID International Symposium held in Philadelphia, PA, in May 1983.

17. Electronic Display World 3(10), Stzdnford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983). This issue summarizes work reported at Japan Display ’83, the International Display Research Conference held in Kobe, Japan, in October 1983.

18. Electronic Displuy World4(6), 29, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1984). 19. Ernst Leuder, personal communication, March 2004. 20. Ernst Leuder, et al., “Processing of thin-film transistors with photolithogrzaphy

and application for displays,” SID International Symposium Digest qf Technical Pupers (1980) 118.

21. J. Glueck, E. Leuder, T. Kallfass, H.-U. Lauer, D. Straub, and S. Hutelmaier, “A 14-inch diagonal a-Si TIT-AMLCD for PAL-TV,” SID International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers (1994) 263.

22. R. Uunz, R. Hurkle, S. Uecker, T. Kallfass, and E. Leuder, “Cholesteric LCDs on glass and plastic substrates with resolution up to 200 dpi and 14 inches diagonal,” Displays and Vacuum Electronics, ITG-Tagung Garmisch- Partenkirchen (1998) 153.

23. Alpan It. Kmetz, personal communication, August 2003. 24. Zvi Ymiv, personal communication, March 2004. 25. Illectronic Display World 5(10), 5, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA

(1985). This issue summarizes work reported at the Flat Information Display Conference held in San Jose, CA, in October 1985.

26. Chan S o 0 Oh, personal communication, October 2003. 27. (a) Electronic Display World 13(4), 12, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA

(b) Electronic Display World 18(9), 3, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA

28. Electronic Display World 3(7), 2, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983).

(1 993).

( 1998).


29. Electronic Uispluy World 7(9), 19, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987).

30. Electronic Display World 9(5), 5 , Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1989). 31. dpiX wehsite at http://www.dpix.com. 32. Electronic Uispluy World 2(11), 10, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA

(1982). This issue summarizes work reported at the International Display Research Conference held in Cherry Hill, NJ, in October 1982.

Chapter 13

Te I evi s i o n Arrive s

"In years to come, the liquid crystal display concept may yield a practical thin- screen competitor to the cathode ray tube used in radar and television displays."

George H. Heilmeier, Appliance Engineer Magazine, 1969

From the time that the above prophecy was made, some 14 years elapsed before LCD displays in small screen television sets became available on the market. As mentioned previously in Chapter 7, Seiko reported the first color LCD for television with a two-inch diagonal screen in 1983. The quality o f the image on the Seiko color television compared very favorably with that of a small color CR'T. This paved the way for scientists and engineers from all the major consumer electronics companies in Japan to intensify their efforts to build sets with larger and larger screens. Consequently, there was tremendous progress toward the development of LCD television starting in 1984.

This chapter traces the early development of LCD television as it evolved in Japan from small portaMe sets to larger screen units. By the end of the 1980s, millions of portable television sets with LCL) screens in sizes of two inches to six inches were being sold at retail stores in Japan. By the early 1990s, small screen LCD televisions were appearing in other countries in the Pacific Rim as well as the IJ.S., and Europe. Towards the end of the 1990s, the growth of the market for LCD television sets accelerated rapidly and the displacement of conventional CRT-based sets began in earnest after 2000.

PORTABLE COLOR LCD TELEVISION DEBUTS

In the late 1970s, several Japanese electronics makers announced the successful development of small LCD televisions using the dynamic scattering

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Television Arrives 191

mode, but it was not until 1982 that Sony Corporation marketed the first handheld black-and-white set, the FD-200, with a newly developed flat, thin CKT. Then, in April 1983, Sony launched the FD-20, a lighter, cheaper (then about $130), and smaller handheld set only four-fifths the size of the FD-200. There were also improvements in the construction of the picture tube, the electron gun, the deflection yoke and the phosphor. The small set measured 78 mm (3 inches) wide X by 162.5 mm (6.4 inches) high X 36 mm (1.4 inches) deep and weighed about one pound with batteries installed. Power consumption, however, was two watts and the batteries would last for only about three hours of continuous operation. The product became quite popular among sports enthusiasts who liked to watch replays while attending live events. The handheld set with a CRT had a much sharper picture than the early LCDs, but they were not available in color and consumed more power. Low power consumption was crucial to the success of thin, handheld television sets, so the low power feature of the LCD made it the ideal technology.

In Ikcember of 1982, Hattori Seiko introduced the world’s first television on a wristwatch,’ the DXAOOl. It consisted of two units, a wristwatch and a receiver joined by a cord. The wristwatch had a 1.2-inch diagonal monochrome (blue-and-white) Guest-Host mode LCD measuring 25.2 mm X

16.8mm and with 152 X 210 pixels. The active matrix LCD was built directly on a silicon wafer. The product had a digital clock display on the upper part o f the watch showing the hour, minute, second, date, day of the week, and whether the alarm or 24-hour time system was on. Other features included: tuning, volume, TV-FM selection, VHF-UHF selection, brightness controls, video jack, AC adapter jack and mini stereo headphone jack. The watch was also featured in the motion picture, 0ctcpussyL Despite the publicity, the product’s relatively high price ($400 and $450) resulted in sluggish sales and

Casio Computer launched its handheld product, the TV-10, in June of 198.3 in Japan and in early 1984 in the 17,s. The 2.75-inch diagonal LCD in this set was not driven by an active matrix, but a multiplexing scheme called a dual matrix drive system, which had a duty ratio of U65.6 and, as result, a low contrast picture. In 1985, Casio started selling the TI -21 pocket monochrome LCD television with a two-inch diagonal screen that weighed just 200 grams and was priced just below $100.415 That Same year, Casio introduced the TV-1000 pocket color television with a 2.6-inch diagonal screen. The entire unit was 83mm X 160mm X 34.5mm and weighed about one pound with batteries and backlight. This unit was introduced at

it was discontinued in 1984.

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under $300, but was soon discounted in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, a major shopping area for Japan’s consumer electronic products. The uniqueness of the handheld television coupled with the relatively low prices of its products enabled Casio to sell hundreds of thousands of these sets in Japan.5

Citizen Watch Company unveiled a prototype of an LCD television in October of 1983. This was one of the smallest and lightest handheld, black- and-white television of its time with a battery life of ten hours. The set featured AM radio as well as VHF and UHF television channels. Weighing less than a half pound, the set measured 54 mm X 40.5 mm with a 2.7-inch diagonal 1,CD screen.

In 1984, Shinji Morozumi and his Suwa Seikosha team, which included K. Oguchi, 7’. Misawa, R. Amki and H. Oshima, reported on the fabrication of a full-color LCD television using polysilicon TFTs on a quartz substrate.3 The first handheld color television model using this active matrix LCD was brought to market by Seiko that same year. The unit had a two-inch diagonal screen and it measured 76 mm ( 3 inches) X 152 mm (6 inches) X

32mm (1.25 inches). The set weighed less than one pound with batteries installed. Color was obtained using electro-deposition of the dyes that formed the three primary colors. The unit was priced at $500 when it was introduced. The same Seiko team also succeeded in fabricating a 4.25-inch diagonal color television using the same process.

The progress made by Japan’s major watch companies to develop color LCD televisions soon caught the attention of Japan’s large electronic companies and in October of 1983, Sanyo Electric Company announced and demonstrated a three-inch diagonal color LCD television using a-Si TFTs and internally deposited polarizer light filters composed of the three primary colors in stripe format. l h e Sanyo prototype display measured 60 mm X 45 mm and had a format of 240 x 220 pixels. However, it was not until 1985 that the firm began selling a commercial color LCD television using this display.

In 1986, Panasonic Industrial Company, a unit o f Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, Osaka, Japan, began selling‘ its model CT-301E, a three-inch diagonal color television with a liquid crystal display incorporat- ing a-Si WTs and the firm’s unique “multi-gap” color filter system, which had been reported at the Society for Information Display Symposium in 1985. The television was introduced at a suggested retail price of $299. Ileveloped jointly by the company’s Central Research Labs and Video Equipment Division, the multi-gap process optimized the thickness of each filter layer to closely match the color gamut of a color CKT. The color filters


were arranged in triangular fashion to produce a display with 240 X 378 pixels. The set measured less than an inch from front to back and it weighed less than one pound. With alkaline batteries it could provide up to 5.5 hours o f continuous viewing. When I saw the prototype panel in 3 985, it showed the best color quality, broadest viewing angle and highest contrast of any LCD televison demonstrated up to that time.

Manufacturing process improvements and increases in screen size also began to be reported in 1986. At Fujitsu Laboratories in Atsugi, Japan, for example, researchers believed that the key to success in applying a-Si TFTs to color LCDS was to use its so-called, “self-aligned” process.(‘ This process enabled the Fujitsu engineers to fabricate a large number of very small TFTs on a large substrate. By arranging the color filter stripes in a linear format (each pixel trio measured 125 X 375 microns), a full-color display capal)k o f presenting dot matrix characters as well as television pictures was demonstrated. The 5.7-inch diagonal color panel with 208 X 228 pixels had good color chromaticity and very few defects.

LJsing a much more complex process with some seven masking steps, engineers at Sharp Corporation in Nard, Japan, developed6 a 3.2-inch diagonal color LCD television with 240 X 360 pixels using a-Si TETs and color filter stripes. The Sharp panel used color triads instead of the in-line arrangement and a back illumination system using a Fresnel mirror.

Sales o f portable LCD television sets in 1987 reached nearly three million units7 as more and more models were introduced. Casio, for example, had 12 models on the market in 1.987. Citizen, Seiko, and even the camera company, Pentax, introduced LCD portables with screen sizes in the three-inch range.* Sharp chose a moderate three-inch size with 240 X 384 pixels for its first model,‘ which was driven by a-Si TFTs and priced at $339. Soon larger screen models began appearing and in October of 1987, Hitachi‘ introduced a five-inch diagonal color LCD driven by a-Si TFTs, the largest screen size at the time. The screen had 115,200 pixels in a matrix of 240 by 480 pixels. This was Hitachi’s first portable LCI) television, which sold for $647.

The growing market size plus the popularity of portable LCD televisions prompted companies in Europe to begin offering similar models. Ferguson, a European television supplier, which was owned by Thomson of France, introduced the first color portable I,CD television set suitable for British transmissions.’” The one pound, model PTV01, with a 2.6-inch screen was priced at &250. Perguson’s achievement was to design electronics to receive signals on the European PAL 625-line standard rather than

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Japan’s 525-line NTSC. This involved producing new microchips to trigger each pixel at a different rate. However, executives admitted that apart from the work of reconfiguring the electronics to European standards, the television was entirely a Japanese product made by Seiko Epson, which did most of the development work. At the time, Ferguson said the deal gave the company a foothold in LCD television while allowing its engineers time to develop larger screen sets.

N.V. I’hilips of the Netherlands also introduced a portable color LCI) television based on a-Si ‘I‘FT technology that was acquired from Japan’s Sharp Corporation. The display had a three-inch diagonal screen with 106,752 pixels organized in a 278 X 384 pixel matrix. Back-lighting was used to ensure high picture quality, but it could he turned off to cave power cinder battery operation. And, in 1988, Mdgnavox, a brand name used by Philips in the US., introduced the CH-1000, a three-inch LCD color television packaged with a ledtherette case with a flap that acted like a viewing hood. The set was called Personal View and it was priced at $449. The report1] indicated that Philips’ management believed TFT-LCD technology wodd enable larger LCD screen sizes to become available in the future.

THE SHIFT TO MIM DIODES FOR LCD PORTABLES

The use of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) devices to drive liquid crystal displays was first proposed and demonstrated hy David I3araff and his co- workers at Bell Northern Research in Ottawa, Canada in the early 1 9 8 0 ~The use of these devices instead of transistors was seen as a way to simplify the manufacturing process, thereby reducing cost.

A MIM-addressed display relied upon the extremely non-linear current- voltage characteristics of a thin layer of tantalum pentoxide. The MIM allowed current to flow when a threshold voltage was exceeded, similar to a diode. A line was selected by writing a high voltage signal to it and sending data signals that were added to the select signal. The resistance of a non-addressed pixel was high so that the pixel acted as a capacitor and stored the image until the next addressing signal arrived.

There were two types of MIM devices, each identified by its structure. One was called a lateral MIM because the active area was grown on the side of a thin-film layer of tantalum. The other type was called a cross- patterned MIM and the semiconductor was grown on the surface o f a thin film of tantalum. The cross-patterned MIM display was formed using a plate of borosilicate glass as the substrate. A layer of tantalum metal (Fa)


was first sputtered on the glass substrate to a thickness of 3,000 angstroms. The Fa was then patterned to make what were essentially the column buses of the display with tiny spurs that were used to connect to each of the pixels. The Ta film was then oxidized by anodization to form a tantalum pentoxide layer about 600 angstroms thick. The anodization was done by applying a voltage to the circuit while it was immersed in a solution of 0.01% citric acid. The oxide grew at the linear rate of 15 to 20 angstroms/volt applied. After anodization, the indium-tin oxide (ITO) pixels were deposited and patterned. No electrical contact was made to the Ta columns. Chromium metal (Cr) was then used to connect the IT0 pixels to the Ta/l'a,05 columns. The semiconductor device was formed by the Cr/Ta,Oj/Xa layers. The rest of the liquid crystal cell including the rows was formed by traditional methods.

The cross-patterned MIM was very simple in construction, but suffered from a serious drawback. The intersection of the Cr and Ta conductors with the tantalum pentoxide in between created a very efficient capacitor. The larger the capacitance, the more time or voltage it took to charge the capacitor and thus to address each pixel. It was therefore required to make the capacitor as small as possible. Two ways to reduce the capacitance were to increase the thickness of the dielectric layer or to decrease the area of the electrodes. The thickness, however, was fairly well defined by the desired voltage characteristics needed to address the display. The only remaining choice was to reduce the area of the electrodes. This meant reducing the line widths of either the Cr or Ta spurs. Both choices directly increased the manufacturing problems regarding open circuits and reproducibility of very small relative geometries.

There was one important feature in the fabrication of MIM devices that attracted LCD manufacturers. Tantalum pentoxide was known to be an unusual material in that it exhibited a type of self-healing process during fabrication and when heated. Due to surface diffusion, pin holes in thin films of tantalum pentoxide were found to diminish after annealing. It was this property that enabled LCDs based on MIM devices to yield high- quality products at high-volume levels, especially for small portable LCD televisions. This was recognized early on by Shinji Morozumi and his team at Seiko Epson and by 3983 they began developing LClh based on this technology. l3

In 1987, the Seiko Epson team built prototype color LCD television sets in sizes of 2.6 inches, 3.3 inches and 6.7 inches.'14 With a format of 640 X 440 pixels, the 6.7-inch set had a contrast ratio above 30:l and a response time

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of fewer than 50 milliseconds at room temperature. It conformed to the full NTSC format. The viewing angle was said to be %40" in the horizontal direction and -20" to +30" in the vertical direction. The color filters had a thickness of 1.6 to two microns and the patterns were arranged in a triangular mosaic. The IT0 electrodes were deposited between the filter layer and glass plate; each pixel was surrounded by black cross stripes with double or triple color filter dyeing.

The MIM acted as a switch that turned the device into a low resistance conductor when a high voltage was applied. The MIM was placed in series with the liquid crystal cell, which was equivalent to a capacitor and a resistor. Scanning signals contained the higher voltage pulses and were applied to the rows. Data signals containing the lower voltage information to be written to each line were sent down the column ekctrodes. Many lines could be addressed with very high equivalent duty cycles.

Liquid crystal displays based on the MIM had the advantage of a longer history of development than other types of two terminal devices and also of having a simple fabrication process. The only process that needed to be consistently controlled for device performance was the anodization of the Ta electrode to form the insulator. This was a significant advantage over TFTs and even over diodes that required annealing and hydrogenation. As a result, Seiko Epson built millions o f displays for small portable televisions using this technology over the years. However, the driving voltages for MIMs were high (15 to 20 volts) due to the conduction mechanism and properties of the insulator film. This was one factor among several that prevented the technology from competing with TFTs for large screen LCD televison displays.

THE DRIVE TOWARD LARGER SCREENS INTENSIFIES

Between 1985 and 1987, engineers succeeded in jumping from two- or three-inch diagonal screens to five-inch and larger color TFT-LCDs for television. It was clear even then that screens with dimensions of 14 inches and more were in the near horizon. In March of 1986, I went on a fact- finding tour in Japan and visited the offices and plants of 22 companies. The major focus of my trip was to review the technology and market potential for liquid crystal displays. Nearly every firm I visited was performing research on one or another of the active inatrix techniques to address conventional 90 degree twisted-nematic LCDs. The TIT-addressed color television prototype displays that I saw made it patently clear to me


that this was the ultimate solution to obtdining the highest performing LCDs. Many of the Japanese television set makers had plans to increase the diagonal screen size in stages in the years following to six, 14, 20, 25 and ultimately 40 inches. The early LCDs that I saw in 1986 displayed many color shades (16.777 million colors, generally regarded as “full color,” was still on the horizon) and had broad viewing angles as well as high-contrast and high background brightness obtained through back-lighting. The results of my visits strengthened my conviction that TFT-LCD technology was still evolving and its market size potential was quite large.

In September of 1987 at the Eurodisplay conference held in London, a research team from Fujitsu Laboratories in Atsugi, Japan, reported a new active matrix LCD architecture for larger size flat television di~plays.’~ With this new architecture, each TFT drain contact was connected to an adjacent gate bus line to simplify the bus line configuration and to eliminate metal- lization crossover. The driving scheme reduced crosstalk by lowering the peak-to-peak voltage o f data bus line waveforms. This architecture promised higher yields due to the well-matched redundant designs and was suitable for larger television displays. The Fujitsu team fabricated six-inch panels having 960 X 240 pixels using an inverted staggered a-Si:H TFT structure with the KGB color pixels arranged in stripes. The process was simpler than previous ones, because no multiple-insulating layer was needed for a cross-over structure. It demonstrated that the driving scheme eliminated the interference between black-and-white regions previously created by data crosstalk. In the displayed television image, a contrast ratio of over 20:1 was obtained and no open-line defects appeared.

Also in 1987, a large team of researchers from Philips Research Laboratories, Redhill, England, reportedI5 on the development of a six-inch diagonal, full-color LCD television display with 468 X 288 pixels. The panel used active matrix addressing with a-Si TFTs and operated as a half resolution television display using the standard PAL system. The active matrix had no additional storage capacitor and the response speed of the display showed a black-to-white transition time of less than 20 milliseconds. Flicker was completely eliminated by using a line inversion drive scheme, in which the video signal was inverted every line as well as every field. An excellent video picture was obtained with good horizontal resolution due t o the diagonal arrangement of color pixels and the sequential sampling of the R, G and B signals.

An effort to develop larger screen color LCDs was also underway at the central research center of General Electric Company (GE) in

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Schenectady, New York. Research on LCDs had begun in the late 1960s at this location, one of the nation's largest and most well-known research centers. In late 1985, General Electric agreed to purchase RCA Corporation lor $6.2 billion in a definitive cash deal that created a services and technology company with a worldwide revenue base of $40 billion.16 The merger brought together two of the oldest and most prominent corporations in 17,s. industry. The GE acquisition also created the fourth largest defense contractor with total sales of more than $5.6 billion. Thus, GE's interest in displays focused mainly on equipment for military and avionics applications. At the same time, GE decided to consolidate its central research activities in the Schenectady ldbordtOIy and in 1986 donated the David Sarnoff Research Center, KCA Laboratories, to SKI International, a non- profit research and development contracting ~rganization.'~ Eventually, GE sold the television tube and set manufacturing plants as well as the RCA brand name to Thomson o f France.

Shortly after the merger, some of the RCA researchers decided to move to GE's laboratory. Thomas Credek, who was developing displays for flat panel television, was one of the key engineers who moved to GE's laboratory to rnanage a display research group. He gave a description and demonstration of a high-information-content active matrix LCII in full color then in development at GE in October 1987 at the F h t Information Displuy C,'~nJert.nce.~' The display was developed by Donald E. Castleberry and George E. Possin and was aimed at building displays for avionics applications. Credelle demonstrated a color LCI> panel that was made with a-Si TFTs and was 6.25 inches square (8.8 inches diagonal). The color panel had 512 X 512 pixels, a contrast ratio of 40:1, and a brightness range of 0.1 ft- Lambert to 250 ft-Lamberts controlled by a hack-lighting scheme. The panel was viewable over a horizontal angle of t h o " and a vertical angle of k45" to meet military specifications. It was one of the first color active matrix LCD panels in this size range to display more than 260,000 pixels, and is believed to be the world's first to employ more than one million TFTs.l3

In order to avoid flicker, the display was refreshed at 120Hz; since the data polarity was inverted every other frame; the LC pixels saw a drive frequency of 60Hz. Thus, the line address time was about eight microseconds. At these very fast line times, the sampled video data drivers like those used in pocket televisions were not practical since extremely high analog video data rates would be required and valid data is required on the column for most of the line address time to accurately control the pixel voltage. These problems were solved with custom drivers that provided a


four-bit digital-to-analog converter at each output. On each output line one o f 16 analog switches could he selected to connect the output to one of 16 independently adjustable voltage levels. The 16 analog voltage levels could be changed for each line of the display; this allowed a different set of drive voltages for each color in the quad color pixel, which consisted o f one red, one blue, and two green color filter dots. This was necessary for good greyscale since each color had a slightly different transmission versus voltage characteristic.

Everyone who viewed the panel agreed that it was very impressive indeed both in its multi-color capability as well as its broad viewing angle. The few isolated point defects that were present were barely visible. The details o f the panel’s construction and operation were reported the following year at the SIII International Symposium in Anaheim, California.20

In 1987, a ICinch diagonal TFT-addressed color LCD was described and demonstrated” in New Orleans, Louisiana, by Hideo Tanaka and his co-workers at Seiko Instruments in Chiba, Japan. This group used a thin- film transistor t l u t was fabricated through only three photolithographic steps and was named “V2-TI;T” (very simple and very thin-film transistor). The main configuration o f the V2-TFT was an inverted staggered structure. The panel consisted of two substrates. The upper substrate had the color filters formed in a diagonal mosaic arrangement o f red, green and blue elements. The IT0 common electrode was sputtered on the color filters. The lower substrate had the V2-TFT array with lead out electrodes for supplying drive signal voltages t o the pixel electrodes on an IT0 layer.

On the inside surface of each substrate, polyimide resin was coated and rubbed for use as a molecular alignment layer for the liquid crystal. The thickness o f the liquid crystal layer was maintained at six microns by scattered plastic beads. The panel size was 314 mm X 224 mm X 2 mm; its active area size was 288 mm X 198 mm. The 640 X 440 pixel panel was used to demonstrate television pictures from recorded signals. Although it had several dozen defects and the color still needed much improvement, it was one of the first color panel prototypes made in such a large screen size and with more than 280,000 pixels.

Another company developing larger screen active matrix LCDs was Oki Electric Industry Company in Tokyo, Japan. In 1988, a nine-inch diagonal, multi-color LCD addressed by a-Si TFI3 with high-field-effect mobilities was reported22 by Mamoru Yoshida and his research team. The multi-color LCD addressed had 640 X 400 pixels with a contrast ratio of 461. The high mobility TFTs were said to provide high reliability and

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productivity because the operating voltages were much lower than the breakdown voltage of the insulator. The devices were said to make possible larger size and higher resolution LCDs because of the small stray capac- itances and large aperture ratio by reducing the TFT size.

Other groups from Japan also reported the development of large screen panels in 1988. Among these were NTT’s Applied Electronics Labs in Tokyo where an active matrix fabrication technique called the I’lanarized Active Matrix (PAM) process was developed.23 The PAM process, which used top-gate, a-Si TFTs, was used to fabricate a 14-inch diagonal monochrome active matrix panel with 1,500 X 1,680 pixels. Another group developing larger screen LCDs was Seiko Epson in Nagano, Japan. Shinji Morozumi and his colleagues used polycrystalline silicon TI% to make a 9.5-inch diagonal LCD with 960 X 440 dots,24 although no mention of color was made in the paper.

HANG-ON-THE-WALL LCD TELEVISION APPROACHES REALITY

Sharp Corporation was one of the most aggressive Japanese firms to develop active matrix LCDs for television. Sharp had been concentrating on tellurium TFTs, but in 1985 it began to seriously investigate a-Si TFT-LCDs. Kawamoto gives an excellent report of Sharp’s early d e v e l ~ p m e nAccording to his account, the company formed a Liquid Crystal Division and in 1986 appointed Isamu Washizuka as General Manager. Wdshizuka wanted to jump ahead of the competition and move toward the mainstream television market, so in 1987 he directed Hiroshi Take and Kozo Yano to develop a 14-inch display using existing manufacturing equipment in Sharp’s plant. In February of 1988, the Sharp engineers produced the first panels and in June the company announced the development publically.

the first 14-inch active matrix 1,CD made with a-Si TFTs at a meeting in San Diego, California, in October 1988. The panel, which included a back-light, was 27mm thick and weighed 1.8 kilograms. The LCD had 642 X 480 pixels with built-in redun- dancy and produced a contrast ratio of greater than 1 O : l over a viewing angle o f 120 degrees. The TIT used an inverted-staggered structure with amorphous silicon as the semiconductor and tantalum as the gate metal. KedUnddncy was achieved by dividing each pixel into four sub-pixels (a total of 1,232,640 sub-pixels) so that even if one sub-pixel was damaged,

Sharp’s team demonstrated26


all of the pixels could still be viewed. It was very difficult for the naked eye t o identify the sub-pixels that were inoperative. Color reproducibility was very close t o that of a conventional color CKT.

One year later, Sharp demonstrated two 14-inch panels with even higher r e ~ o l u t i o n . ~ ~ One of the TFT driven displays had a format of 960 (1,920 sub-pixels) X 480 pixels (921,600 triads) while the other had 1,920 pixels X 480 pixels. Both were as good or better than CKTs in terms o f color and overall performance. The resolution of the former display was 55 pixels/inch vertical X 88 pixels/inch horizontal while the latter unit had a resolution of 55 pixelshch vertical and 175 pixelshch horizontal. Sharp developed a non-interlaced scanning technique made possible by decreased line resistance and parasitic capacitance.

These two displays were not one-of-a-kind prototypes since a number were also shown at the 1989 Japan Electronics Show in Osaka that I toured. Most observers hailed these as the best LCDs shown up to that time. This work was recognized in 1990 when the Sharp team received the prestigious Eduard Rhein Prize for Technology.

The display size of 14 inches placed the Sharp product in the Same category as the 13-inch viewable color CRT televisions that were being sold in the tens of millions of units at that time. While it took another ten years of development to lower the manufxturing cost of such panels enough to bring the retail price within the reach of the average consumer’s pocket- book, this milestone development proved that active matrix LCDs could be produced in sizes that represented the mainstream of the huge television market. Over the decade that followed, Sharp and its competitors focused intensely on reducing manufacturing cost and increasing production efficiency.

Another important event that played a role in the development of large screen TFT-LCII televisions in Japan was the formation28 of a government- sponsored consortium in 1988 charted to develop a 40-inch diagonal display. Twelve Japanese companies joined the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in a project to make a large, wall-hung LCU television by March of 1995. The plan was for MITI to invest about $55 million and for the companies to put in another $25 million. Hitachi, NEC, Sharp, Seiko Epson, Casio and Sanyo were directed to develop the electronics while Toppan Printing and Dai Nippon Printing would develop printing techniques for the color filters. Asahi Glass would develop the large glass plates, while Chisso would provide the liquid crystal material, Nihon

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Synthetic Rubber would develop other materials, and lJLVAC would be responsible for the process equipment.

The schedule for this project called for the elementary technology development to be completed by 1991 with prototypes to be developed from 1992 to 1994. The tasks, objectives and expected difficulties were described in a September 1988 report from MITI entitled “Development of Fundumental Technologies of Giant Electronics Devices ” The objective o f the project was the development of elementary technologies required for the realization of a one-meter diagonal color back-lit LCD. While the ambitious objective of a commercial 40-inch diagonal hang- on-the-wall LCD by 1995 was not achieved, succeeding events showed that the technologies developed by the individual participating companies involved in this project clearly helped to advance the development and production o f 30-inch and larger LCD televisions that would eventually emerge.

REFERENCES

1. Electronic Disyluy World 2(12), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1982); now iSuppli/Stanford Keso~irces, Santa Clara, CA, http:// www.isuppli.com.

2. Octopussy, a John Glen film produced by Albert R. Broccoli, 1983. Roger Moore appeared in the role of secret agent James Bond.

3. Electronic Disp2u.y World 4(6>, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1 984). This issue summarizes work reported at the SID International Symposium held

4. Electronic Disyluy World 5(1>, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1985). This issue summarized products shown at the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV, in January 1985.

5. Electronic Disp1u.y World 5(6>, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (19851. 6 . Electronic Diqluy World 6(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1986).

This issue summarized work reported at the Society for Information I X q h y Symposium in San Diego, CA, in Mdy 1986.

7. Electronic Disp1u.y World 7(7) , Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987). 8. I?lectronic Disp1u.y World 7(11), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, C h (1987). 9. Electronic Disphy World 7(10), Stanford liesources, Inc., San Jose, CR (1987).

10. Electronic Displuy World 7(8), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987). 11. Electronic Display World 8(1), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1988). 12. 1).R. Uaraff, J.K. Long, I3.K. MacLaurin, C.J. Miner, and R.W. Streater, “The

optimization o f metal-insulator-metal nonlinear devices for inultiplexed liquid crystal displays,” Proceedings ofthe Society,for Information Disphy 22,

o, CA, in May 1984.


330 (1981); SID International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers (1980) 200; Proceedings of the 1980 International Displuy Research Conference (1980) 107.

13. S. Morozumi, et al., “A 256 X 240 element LCD addressed by lateral MIMs,” Proceedings of the 298.3 International Displuy Research Conference (1983) 404.

14. Electronic Display World 7(8), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987). 15. Eleclronic Ui.yi1u.y World 7(9), Stanford liesources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987).

This issue summarized work reported at Eurodiqday, the 1987 International Display Kescarch Conference, London, United Kingdom, September 1987.

16. Electronic Display World 5(12), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1985). 17. There was never a business connection between SKI International, Menlo

Park, CA and Stanford Resources Incorporated, San Jose, CA. Confusion often arose because SRI had once been named Stanford Research Institute. There was also never any connection between Stanford Resources and Stanford University.

18. Electronic Displuy World 7(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987). This issue summarized work reported at the Flat Infiwmation Display Coyfirence, San Jose, CA, October 1987.

19. Thomas Credelle, personal communication, February 2004. 20. Donald E. Castleberry and George E. Possin, SID International Symposium

Digest qf Technical Papers (1988) 232. 21. H. Tanaka, S. Motte, M. Hoshino, K. Takahasi, M. Ohta, T. Sakai, and

T. Yamazaki, “A 14-inch diagonal active matrix addressed color LCD using cy-Si:II V2-TFTs,” SID International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers (1987) 140.

22. M. Yoshida, T. Nomoto, Y. Sekido, I. Abiko, and K. Nihei, “A 9-inch multicolor LCD addressed by a-Si TFTs with high-field effect mobilities,” SZD International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers (1988) 242.

23. K. Kato, N. Kakuda, N. Naito, and T. Wada, “Planarized active-matrix for large- area high-resolution LCIIs,” SKI Internalional Symposium Digest of’ Technical Papers (1988) 412.

24. 11. Ohshiina, ?’. Nakazawa, T. Shimobayashi, H. Ishiguro, and S . Morozumi, -LCD with new transistor configuration,” SII) International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers (1988) 408.

25. H. Kawamoto, “The history of liquid crystal displays,” Proc. 90(4) , 494-495 (2002).

26. T. Nagayasu, T. Oketani, T. I-Iirobe, H. Kato, S. Mizushima, H. Take, K. Yano, M. Hijikigawa, and I . Washizuka, “A 14-inch diagonal full-cokx a-Si TFT LCD,” Proceedings of the Eighth International I1ispla.y Research Conference, San Diego, CA (1988) 56.

"9.5-inch poly-Si TFT-LCD with new transistor configuration," SID) International

IEEE

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27. Electronic Dzjpluy World 9(10>, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1989). This summarized reports from the Japan Electronics Show and Japan Displuy 39, the International Display Research Conference, Kyoto, Japan, October 1989.

28. Electronic Displuy World S(lO), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1988). This issue also summarized work reported at the 1988 International Display Research Conference, San Diego, CA, October 1988.

Chapter 14

The Personal Computer Revolution

”In those days, there was no idea there was going to be a huge computer market; that they were going to enter everyone’s lives so pervasively as they have. At our computer club, we talked about it being a revolution. Computers were going to belong to everyone, and give us power, and free us from the people who owned computers. . . .”

Steven Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, from a 1996 interview with the San Jose Mercury News

Computers began t o be developed and manufactured on a large-scale following World War 11. Those early machines were behemoths that required a room full of equipment to perform operations that can be done today on handheld devices. But even when the first mainframe computers became avdikdbk, people started thinking about computers that could be used on a desktop for personal use. One of the first to discuss personal computers was Edmund C. Berkeley,l who first described “Simon,” in his 1949 book, Giant Bruins, or Machines mat nink , and went on to publish plans to build the Simon computer in a series of Radio Electronics issues in 1950 and 1.951. In 1955, Berkeley designed the GENIAC, a unit that was sold by both Berkeley Enterprises and several distributors. It was small, affordable, digital, and user-programmable, but had limited computing features.

In 1959, the Heathkit EC-1, a desktop computer in kit form, was sold for under $200. While it was an analog machine, it could be used to solve certain types of problems, but it was not what most people think of as a personal computer today.

Most of the early computers available to the public were sold in kit form and appealed mainly to hobbyists. However, scientists and engineers working at major corporations, universities and government laboratories were looking for smaller machines that could help speed their

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computations. One of these was the PDP-8, which became available from Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts, as a desktop model in 1968. It was too expensive for consumers and it required additional equipment t o be useful, so it did not make an impact as a personal computer. Another was the HP 9830 introduced by Hewlett-Packard Company in 1972. This was the first desktop all-in-one computer that even had I3ASIC programming, but few people outside the scientific community knew about it.’ Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP 65 as a “personal computer” in 1973. It was a fully programmable calculator that could also

Another company that was developing personal computers for scientific use was Xerox Corporation. In 1972, the company introduced the Alto computer, whose name came from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where it was developed. The Alto was reported2 to be the result of a joint effort by Edward McCreight, Charles Thacker, Butler Lampson, Kobert Sproull and David Boggs, who were attempting to make a device that was small enough for office use, but powerful enough to support a reliable operating system and graphics display. The Alto was designed to provide a user with personal computing capability as well as a communications facility that would allow users t o share information easily. In 1978, Xerox donated a total of 50 Alto units to Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, and the Massachusetts Institute o f Technology, where these machines were quickly assimilated into the research community and rapidly became the standard against which other personal computers were judged.

The Alto consisted of a graphics display, keyboard, graphics mouse, and a box containing the processor and disk storage. With the exception of the disk storage/processor box, everything was designed to sit on a desk or tabletop. The concept of using a visual interface originated in the mid- 1970s at Xerox PAKC where a graphical interface was developed for the Xerox Star computer system introduced in April 1981. With a price tag of $32,000, however, the Alto was obviously not suitable for the consumer market.

According to Knight’s historical account,3 the first personal computers aimed at the consumer market appeared in 1975 with the introduction of the MITS Altair 8800, followed by the IMSAI 8080, both available in kit form and with the Intel 8080 central processing unit. That was also the same year Zilog created the 2-80 processor, MOS Technology produced the 6502, and William (Bill) Gates with Paul Allen wrote a BASIC compiler for the hltair while forming Microsoft Corporation.

be uscd to play games.

The Personal Computer Revolution 207

In 1976, Steven Jobs and Steven Woznidk designed and sold the Apple I as a kit computer that was based on the 6502 processor. That Same year, Alan F. Shugart introduced the 5.25-inch diameter floppy disk drive that would become a key component in the personal computer revolution. One year later, the new industry began to take shape when Apple introduced the Apple 11, a color computer with expansion slots and floppy disk drive support. In addition, Radio Schack unveiled the TRS-80, Commodore introduced the PET, and Iligital Research released Cl-’/M, the eight-bit operating system that provided the template for Microsoft’s Disk Operating System (nos).

Along with the hardware, software such as word processing and spreadsheet programs soon became available. In 1978, for example, Daniel Ih-icklin and Robert Frankston introduced VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, which turned the personal computer into a useful business tool, not just a game machine or replacement f o r the electric typewriter. WordMaster, soon to become Wordstar, was released and went on to dominate the industry for several years. The third important software category WAS the database, which came on the scene in 1979 with Vulcan, the predecessor o f dRase I1 and it’s successors. That was also the year Hayes introduced a 300-bit-per-second modem and established telecommunication as another aspect of personal computing.

Soon others such as Atari and Texas Instruments entered the market, while Cornmodore, Radio Schack and Apple introduced new machines. Personal computers soon attracted somewhat o f a cult following by technically-oriented individuals (perhaps the term “techie” originated at atmut this time) and by 1980, it was estimated that some one million personal computers were in use in the U.S.’ Thus, a viable new industry was being created and it caught the attention of IRM, the largest computer manufacturer in the world at that time.

IBM had developed its own personal computer, the IBM 5100, introduced in September 1975, but at $8,975 for a machine with just 16 kilobytes of random-access-memoT, it was too expensive for the mass market. That changed by August of 1981, when IBM introduced the 5150, its first personal computer, at a price o f a few thousand dollars, making it easily affordable for both small and large businesses. This computer had five expansion slots, included at least 16 kilobytes of RAM, and had two full-height 5.25- inch drive bays. Buyers could get a machine with a floppy controller, two floppy drives, a 12-inch diagonal monochrome (green characters on a black background) CRT display and the Disk Operating System, later to be known

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as MS-DOS. While most people in the technical community recognized that the IBM PC was based on ideas perfected in the Apple 11, particularly the use of expansion slots, the IBM label captured the attention of the general public and legitimized the personal computer as a serious business tool. As a result, it was estimated* that II3M sold some 30,000 units in the fourth quarter of 1981.

Another important factor that contributed to the success of the personal computer was IBM’s agreement t o allow Microsoft t o license its DOS to other personal computer manufacturers. This enabled other companies t o begin producing machines that were “IBM-compatible” and a huge industry was in the making. Time magazine called 1982 “The Year of the Computer.” In 1983, it was estimated3 that ten million personal computers were in use in the United States alone. Soon the term “PC” became synonymous with IUM-compatible personal computers. Today, the acronym is used t o describe all types o f personal computers.

THE PORTABLE PC OPENS THE WAY FOR LCDs

Almost at the same time that desktop personal computers were becoming available in volume, people started thinking about portable machines. Starting about 1979, serious efforts were begun to develop and market personal computers that would be portable enough to carry in a briefcase or hand l~ iggage .~ Batteries would not necessarily operate the computer, but that capability would of course be the ultimate goal. The concept was that a husinessman could perform such tasks as limited word processing, sales forecasting, market planning, accounting, tax computation and other tasks in his office, home or on the road. He could also communicate with a host computer via a modem that would be built into the portable machine.

Thus, in early 1981, Adam Osborne, a former book publisher, founded a company called Osborne Computer Corporation, which introduced what many consider t o be the first portable computer.6 The Osborne 1 was about the size o f a sinall suitcase, ran the CP/M operating system, included a pair of 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, and had a five-inch diagonal monochrome CKT display. The innovative machine weighed 24 pounds and was bundled with software; it sold for $1,795. The company had a very successful start, which saw its sales increase from zero to $60 million in less than two years. It is estimated that the company sold more than 25,000 units. Ilnfortunately, profit and positive cash flow were not cominensurate with the high sales and the company closed down at the end of 1983.’


Nevertheless, Osborne proved that a market indeed existed for a portable computer and he paved the way for others to follow.

Compaq Computer Corporation, established in 1982, was the first to make a “portable” IBM-compatible PC that was called The Compaq. The company’s first product (see Fig. 14.1) was introduced in 1983. It did not operate on batteries, but was small enough to be carried from one place to another, prompting many people to call it a “transportable computer.” It had a nine-inch diagonal monochrome CRT display and used an Intel microprocessor. It was estimatedX that 26,000 units were sold in 1983. The Compaq had a detachable keyboard that folded into the base of the unit for transportation. At 31.5 pounds it wasn’t particularly light, but it was def- initely transportable. A system with two double-sided, double-density disk drives and color graphics board could be purchased for about $3,200. The Compaq quickly became very popular with IBM PC users who liked the idea o f being able to take their work home. Three years later, Compaq shipped the first 80386-based PC with a speed of 1 6 ~ ~ 2 , making it one of the fastest machines of its time. The Compaq’s popularity propelled the company to generate sales of about $100 million in its first full year of production and Compaq Computer Corporation later became a major manufacturer of all types of PCs.

Fig. 14.1. Compaq’s first transportable computer in use at Stanford Resources’ office in 1983. The unit had a carrying handle on the back. After the keyboard was folded into the space in front of the display and disk drives, the unit could be carried like a suitcase.

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Another early portable was the Grid Compass, which was designed in 1979 by William Moggridge for Grid Systems Corporation and introduced9 to the market in April of 1982. The unit had a flat, thin-film electroluminescent display supplied by Sharp Corporation. The display measured 4.75 inches X 3.5 inches and had 30 lines of 64 characters each. The computer had a 16-bit 8086 microprocessor, an 80-bit 8087 floating-point processor, 256,000 bytes of both RAM and non-volatile magnetic bubble memory, a 57-key full travel keyboard and a switchable (1200 or 300 bits/second) modem with auto-dialer all in a package small enough to fit into a briefcase. The unit measured 11.5 inches X 15 inches X 2 inches thick. At a price of $8,150, this computer was more than the price of the most expensive personal computer on the market fully configured with a letter quality printer, so sales were quite limited. However, some units were purchased by NASA and used on the space shuttle program in the early 1980s.

Plasma display panels were also coming on the Scene in the early 1980s, and MicrOddtd Computers, Middlesex, England, introduced a briefcase-size terminal with a monochrome (orange characters on a black background) plasma panel in 1981.''" The display measured 210mm (8.3 inches) on a side and was Capable of displaying 12 lines of 40 dot matrix (5 X 7) characters per line for a total of 480 characters. The system had 12 kilobytes of magnetic buhl~le memory in addition to 64 kilobytes of semiconductor random-access- memory (RAM) and came equipped with a modem for telephone communication with a host computer. The unit was priced at $2,500 and was designed into a one cubic foot briefcase, complete with carrying handle and weighing less than 17 pounds.

A number of portable computers with LCDs were also introduced in 1981. For the most part, these had one line of segmented or dot matrix characters. Companies such as Sharp, Tandy (Radio Schack) and Matsushita developed handheld units with single line 24-character LCDs. These small computers had limited memory and essentially no word processing capability. One of the first to use more tlian one line was a terminal introd~iced" by Computerwise o f Grandview, Missouri. The TransTerm 1 had a two-line, 64- character dot matrix LCI) and was designed for use as desktop or portable terminal that communicated with a host computer via a serial connection. The terminal had 53 keys, measured 297mm (11.7 inches) X 175mm (6.9 inches), and was priced at $450.

The first portable computer that some considered6 to be the first "laptop" model was the Epson HX-20, which was letter-size and about two inches

The Personal Computer Revolution 21 1

thick. The unit used a microcassette to store data and had a four-line LCD with 40 characters per line above the standard full-size keyboard. Introduced to the 1J.S. market in 1982, the Seiko Epson portable weighed about three pounds and ran on internal batteries.12 The HX-20 featured 16 kilobytes o f RAM, 32 kilobytes of read-only-memory (KOM) and a built-in printer.

Seiko Epson soon began manufacturing a line of multi-character displays not only for its own line of computers, but for other firms as well. For example, in 1982, ’I’eleram Communications Corporation began selling12 a compact computer that could fit into a briefcase and weighed only 9.75 pounds. It had a four-line, 80 character-per-line dot matrix LCD manufactured by Seiko Epson. This was one of the first LCD portable computers to display as inany as 320 characters. The Teleram 3000 had a full typewriter- like keyboard, 128 kilobytes of internal non-volatile, magnetic bubble memory, 64 kilobytes of RAM, eight kilobytes of ROM, RS 232 interface, internal rechargeable battery and a CP/M operating system. It was priced at $2,795.

LAPTOP COMPUTER!3 PROLIFERATE

If 1982 was “The Year of the Computer,” as Time designated it, then 1983 was the year of the portable as more and more computer firms entered the market with larger screens and higher information content LCDs. This came at an ideal time for LCD manufacturers, which were mainly based in Japan during this period. Hecause of dwindling profit margins in LCD watch and calculator display components, nearly every Japanese company that had been involved in the manufacture and marketing of small LCDs shifted to production of multi-line, multi-character twisted-nematic displays using various multiplexing driving schemes. Included in the group were Sanyo, Sharp, Kyocera, Matsushita, Toshiba, Epson, Hitachi and NEC. These displays were designed for use as alpha-numeric and graphic displays in portable PCs that were fast becoming known as “lap computers” or “laptop computers,” a name that survives t o this day.

In March of 1983, Tandy Corporation, through its chain of Kadio Schack stores, introduced the TRS-80 Model 100, a portable PC with an 8-line X 40-character LCD.I3 The unit was very similar to N K ’ s PC-8201 (Fig. 14.2). Kyocera was the manufacturer of both machines as well as the Olivetti M10 and by 1984 was the wc.)rld’s leading producer of laptop computers.’/’ The multiplexed display had good contrast and an adjustable

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Fig. 14.2. The Tandy TKSXO Model 100 (top photo), one of the first fully-functional laptop computers. Note the similarity t o the NEC PC8201A (bottom photo). Both computers were manufactured by Kyocera in 1983. Source: www.old- compiiters.com

voltage control to enable the viewing angle to be changed to suit the user. The Model 100 was priced below $1,000 and included extended BASIC, a text editor, scheduling program and communications support. The unit also had a full-size keyboard and ran on four batteries, making it a true portable. Because of its relatively low price and wide availability through the thousands of Radio Schack retail outlets, the Model 100 soon became one o f Tandy's bestselling products. It was one of the first LCD-based portables t o gain wide acceptance by the general public.

Several months later,'j Gavilan Computer Corporation, Campbell, California, introduced its first product, a portable computer with an N i n e X 80-character/line LCD, which had more information content than Tandy's Model 100. The nine-pound, briefcase-size portable came with a printer, built-in floppy disk drive and a sizable internal memory of up to 336 kilobytes. The Gavilan was one o f the most powerful portables of its time. However, despite the numerous innovations used in this machine, the Gavilan suffered from hardware and software problems. Moreover, it was


not fully IBM IY-compatible and at a price of about $4,000, it was one of the most expensive portables on the inarket. Many changes were made to the initial machine and first sales did not start until June of 1984, one year after the machine was first announced. Although a 16-line LCII version was also produced, competition intensified as new Japanese portables entered the inarket. As a result, Gavilan production stopped in 1985 and the company went out o f business shortly thereafter.

A year after Tandy introduced the Model 100, some 15 other companies entered the market with similar products.16 These computers all used LCDs made in Japan and most suppliers were in a race to secure displays with more lines o f characters as well as more powerful CMOS memory components. ‘[’he leading supplier of LCIls for laptop computers was Sharp and in 1984, the company began manufacturing LCDs with 25-line X 80-characters per line, thereby inaking it possible to build portables that had the same inforination content as desktop units with CRT displays. Shortly thereafter, most o f the laptop computer suppliers started using the higher information content displays.

While these early LCDs suffered from the same case of low contrast and narrow viewing angle, they continued t o be sold and incorporated into laptop computers because there was nothing else availalile that could offer the low power consumption and low cost per character that these displays provided. Thus, the search for higher performance LCDs intensified.

One way to enhance the performance of LCDs was to use color. In 1984, Seiko Instruments, another major LCD maker in Japan, introduced the world’s first commercially available multi-color LCD One module had a 720 X 44 pixel display capacity with eight colors, which featured the use o f a new electroplating process for the color filters. The modules used fluorescent back-lighting to enhance visibility in all lighting conditions. While these early multi-color LCI> modules were aimed at use in electronic games, audio equipment and test instruments, the manufacturing techniques would later be applied to larger display with higher pixel counts for laptop PCs.

Another way t o improve the overall appearance of LCIls was to use the European development of the supertwisted-nematic effect, which was ctescritied previously in Chapter 10. The new effect, which became known by its acronym, S‘I’N-LCD, was a inajor breakthrough in the mid-1980s to greatly increase the readability of higher inforination content displays for laptop computers.

modules.17

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ENTER THE “SUPERTWISTED-NEMATIC” LCD AND THE NOTEBOOK

In 1985, Brown Boveri & Company, Baden, Switzerland, demonstrated the first STN-LCD.18 The display had higher contrast than comparably sized multiplexed type units with more than about eight lines of characters in a dot matrix format. Even when viewing conventional multiplexed LCDs on-axis, the contrast ratio was usually no better than 41. As the viewer’s head moved off to the side or away from the “viewing cone,” the information all but disappeared. With the STN-LCD, however, the display achieved a contrast ratio of about 1 O : l when viewed at normal incidence. From an angle of 45-degrees, the contrast ratio was still a respectable 41. The prototype had an active viewing area of 4.8 inches X 9.6 inches and displayed 27 lines of 89 characters per line. The display was about 0.5 inch thick (which included the thickness of the integrated circuit drivers in back of the screen) and had graphics capability, providing 145,800 pixels in a 540 X 270 dot matrix format. Information switching time was about 300 milliseconds at room temperature, which is slow by today’s standards, but adequate for laptop computers of that era.

Brown Boveri made it clear at that time that it did not plan to manufacture LCDs based on this concept, but to license the technology to other LCII manufacturers. Indeed, by December of 1985, four Japan-based LCD makers were licensed to manufacture displays based on the concept and others soon followed.

By the fall of 1986, nearly every LCI) manufacturer in Japan added a line of STN-LCDs to its catalog. Sharp, Kyocera, Hosiden, Seiko Epson, Oki, Seiko Instruments, Citizen and Hitachi all showed panels with up to 640 X 400 pixels at the Japan Electronics Show in Tokyo in October.19 Laptop computers with STN-LCDs made by these and other Japanese suppliers such as Toshiba, Sanyo and Matsushita began appearing on the market that same year. One of the first American suppliers to adopt the new technology was Zenith Data Systems,20 which introduced the 2-181, a 12-pound porlable that was IRM-PC compatible. The 2-181 had a STN-LCD made by Sanyo that was back-lit by an electroluminescent panel and displayed blue characters on a yellow background. With a 12: l contrast ratio, the display was easily readable even if the viewer was 45 degrees off the normal axis.

The large-scale replacement of conventional LCDs with STN-LCDs took place in 1987 and 1988 when Toshiba, IBM, NEC, Sharp, Compaq and others began introducing laptops with the new displays. Meanwhile, the pixel format

The Personal Computer Revolution 21 5

increased t o 640 X 400 t o take advantage of the higher contrast offered by the new technology. In addition, the panels became available with black chardc- tcrs on a light gray background (often called “black-and-white”) instead of the the-on-yellow that was characteristic of the early panels.

Another innovation t o appear in 1987 was Kyocerd’s Chip-on-Glass (COG) technology,” a manufacturing technique that allowed the driver chips t o be placed directly on the glass eliminating the need for a printed circuit board and the resulting interconnections. This not only dramatically increased reliability, h i t it also allowed Kyocera to offer the thinnest LCDs on the market at that time. Kyocerd’s innovative COG approach to STN- LCI> fabrication made the back-lighting o f panels easier while minimizing components and reducing packaging size. The firm’s model KL6440AS had a format o f 640 X 400 pixels and a thickness of only 4.5 mm (0.18 inch).

The reduction in LCI) panel thickness endbled thinner and lighter laptop computers t o be made. In 1989, NEC introduced the first laptop machine that was both powerful, thin and extremely light.6 Weighing less than five pounds and thin enough t o fit in a standard briefcase, the NEC IJltralite model (Fig. 14.3) was considered t o be the first “notebook” style

Fig. 14.3. The NEC Ultralite portable computer with a n advanced STN-LCD introduced in 1989. It is considered by many to be the first “notehook computer.” Source: www.obsoleteconiputermuseum.org

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computer. One year later, there were a dozen or so companies that demonstrated models they considered to be notebook computers. All were attrac- tively thin and lightweight (5.8 to 7.5 pounds), ranging in prices from a low of $2,600 to about $6,000.

Perhaps the most important innovation to appear during the late 1980s was the introduction of color to laptop computer displays. In 1989, Toshiba, Sharp and Mitsubishi exhibited color STN-LCD screens installed in portable computers at a business machine show in Tokyo.22 These color screens performed at higher speeds and had better contrast than monochrome STN-LCDs, but the computers were rather expensive for their time. For example, Toshiba introduced a portable computer that was equipped with an eleven-inch, 16-color STN-I,CI> with 640 X 480 pixels priced at $8,000. Sharp unveiled a laptop with a 14-inch display that was priced at $9,000. And, Mitsubishi introduced an eight-color, 640 X 480 pixel, eleven- inch screen in a laptop computer priced at about $6,000.

Despite the advances made in the performance of STN-LCDs, the panels still did not measure up to the performance of the emerging active matrix types in color purity, cursor speed or viewing angle. Clearly, the next step in the evolution of LCD technology for computers would he thc development of color TFT-LCDs, which would provide the performance that equaled or exceeded that of color CRTs.

ACTIVE MATRIX LCDs APPEAR

As the leading mainframe computer maker and the company that was perhaps responsible for stimulating the rapid growth of the personal computer, IBM had a major interest in the emerging laptop computer segment. As mentioned in previous chapters, IBM had been performing research in LCDs since the late 1760s. One of the early researchers to recognize the importmce of the technology was Webster E. Howard, who received his B.S. from Carnegie-Mellon University and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from IIarvard LJniversity, all in physics. He joined IRM in 1761 at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, as a research staff member. Howard spent his first 12 years at IBM working in semiconductor physics, including pioneering work on two-dimensional electron gases in Si inversion layers and on semiconductor superlattices In 1973, he began working on display technology and became involved in managing projects in plasma displays, thin-film electroluminescence, CRTs, and later on thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays.


According to Howard’s account,23 most o f the liquid crystal work in IBM ended in 1974. However, Howard hired Kei-Hsiung Yang in 1975 to maintain a small monitoring effort and to look at bistable LCDs. When the IJniversity of Dundee researchers published their a-Si TFT paper in 1979, Howard was persuaded that a-Si was the right material t o use for TFTs. Unfortunately, Howard was unable to get any real support for the approach, partly because everyone was still thinking in terms of monochrome displays. This changed when Morozumi presented his paper on the small color LCD-TV in 1983 and prompted Howard to push hard within IBM to initiate a program to develop TIT-LCDs based on wSi. He felt that the technology would be very scalable to large sizes and that it was the way to make a portable computer display. The key task force was established in early 1984, when Howard and his colleagues recommended against further investment in plasma and urged that a major effort be started in TFT-LCDs. This led to further task forces on the physical feasibility, manufacturing factors t o determine if perfect arrays could be made cost-effective, and marketing issues to establish the nature o f the first product as well as the initial premium cost.

In the summer of 1984, Stanford Resources was contracted to prepare a detailed market analysis and strategic opinion for IBM on the future of the various display technologies that would be used for computer terminals, monitors and personal computers. We were approached to do this project by Robert Durbeck, who was then a research manager at IBM’s Research 1,aboratoi-y in San Jose, California. The final report was written in and I traveled to IBM’s facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, to present the results of the study.

The meeting was held in a hotel and about 30 people attended. Webster Howard presided as chairman of that meeting. Although Howard and Ihrbeck accepted our conclusion that IBM personal computers, which had only been on the market for two years, would soon become a very popular product, a number of people in the room expressed skepticism. I made the point that LCDs would lead t o the proliferation o f the portable computer and that it would become a major product for IBM. In fact, I predicted that active matrix LCDs using TFTs would replace the conventional multiplexed types by the early 1990s. While some in the room also met this with skepticism, Howard was very supportive. It confirmed his own idea23 that people wanted portable computers that could be easily carried and they wanted to see the same data they could get at their desks. Thus, the product would have great value and give IBM a foothold with laptop

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computers, enabling it to lower costs and move the technology onto the desktop, eventually replacing the CRT.

The whole decision process at IBM took almost two years to receive approval, but in the meantime, Howard had gotten some resources to get started, so that by 1986, IBM was making TFTs suitable for high quality displays. At this point, IBM began looking for another company to share the development costs and identified Toshiba Corporation in Kawasaki, Japan, as its partner. The two-year joint development project with Toshiba met all of its objectives and in 1988, the firms announced the development of a prototype that was claimed to be the world’s largest color LCD for office automation equipment.25 Measuring 14.3 inches diagonal, the display used a-Si TFTs to create a device with a dot matrix format of 1,440 X 1,100 dots (sub-pixels) and 770 X 550 pixels, where each pixel was composed of a red, green, blue and white dot. The panel could display up to 16 colors simultaneously. The distance or pitch between the dots was 200 microns, so the panel gave a high resolution image.

Howard was amazed23 at how right his team got everything in their planning, from choosing wsi over polycrystalline Si to recognizing all of the new products that would be enabled by the technology. He left IBM in 1993 and joined AT&T where he directed work in high resolution display technologies. When AT&T/Lucent Technologies terminated its display activity in 1996, Howard led the development of a microdisplay technology based on organic light emitting diodes on silicon at eMagin Corporation; he retired from eMagin as Chief Technology Officer in 2002. For his contributions to the advancement of flat panel display technology, he was awarded the prestigious Jan Rajchman I’rize of the Society for Information Display in 2003.

Even before II3M and Toshiba started their joint development project, Toshiba was heavily engaged in the development of TFT-LCDs. In 1985, Toshiba demonstrated2(‘ a ten-inch diagonal, back-lit active matrix LCII with a reported viewing angle of up to 120 degrees. Toshiba claimed it was the worlds brightest LCD of its size. The LCD was made with a-Si TFTs and had a luminance of 300 candeladsquare meter about the same as a CRT color TV set of that time period. The panel had a format of 640 X 480 pixels, fluorescent back-lighting and the capability to display eight colors.

Although the IBM-Toshiha joint development project was successful, the huge investment required to enter manufacturing was a stumbling block. This was resolved by forming a manufacturing joint venture called Display Technology Incorporated (DTI), whereby IBM shared the risk with T~shiba.~’


This was IBM’s first joint production agreement. Each company owned 50% of the venture, and the board seats were split evenly, but the President, Tom Shima, was a Toshiba executive. Both firms hoped to increase their presence in the laptop computer market, although Toshiba’s market position was already very significant. The company established its plant in Himeji City, west of Tokyo, at a cost of $110 million and started manufacturing in 1991. This was the first large-scale source of active matrix color LCDs for portable computers. The initial product was a ten-inch diagonal display with 640 X 480 pixels capable of just 16 colors. DTI went on to build active matrix LCDs with larger screens, higher pixel formats, higher resolution (higher pixels per inch), and millions of colors. A 12-inch diagonal screen made for an IBM ThinkPad manufactured in 1998 is shown in Fig. 14.4.

The formation and ultimate success of DTI in the cost effective manufacturing of active matrix LCDs raised the stakes for the other Japan-based vertically integrated users of displays for computers to accelerate plans for a shift toward manufacturing active matrix LCDs. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Amagasaki, Japan, for example, developed a ten-inch diagonal, TIT-addressed color LCD with 640 X 450 pixels that it planned to manufacture for laptop computers.2x

Fig. 14.4. The IBM ThinkPad Model 560Z that used a 12-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD. This unit was manufactured in 1998. The ThinkPad became one of the most popular notebook computers on the market in the 1990s.

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In 1990, NEC set up a production line in Kagoshima Prefecture to mass-produce color TFT-LCDS.~~ The company produced 9.3-inch panels with a pixel format of 640 X 480 pixels for its PC-9801 line of personal computers. Another example was Sharp, a company that developed and would start manufacturing ten-inch color TFT-LCDs for laptop computers in the early 1990s. Sharp’s panels had 640 X 480 pixels and could perform six-bit processing for each RGB color.so The units displayed colors from a palette of 16.7 million hues in 256 gradations. Thus, the term “full color” could now be applied to commercially available 1,CDs.

The fact that IBM and Toshiba had insured themselves an exclusive supply o f color TFT-LCDs, prompted other user firms, such as Apple, <hmpaq and Zenith to develop their own sources of high-quality color flat panel displays to remain competitive and they looked toward Japan and Korea to supply these vital components. As a result, a number of new plants were built to make active matrix LCDs in high-volumes in the early 1990s. The impact of this on the LCI) industry was enormous and by the end of the decade, millions of portable PCs with color active matrix LCDs were being sold annually.

The notebook computer industry cieveloped because the LCI) technology ultimately offered the system designer a display that could provide low power, a thin profile, and a high-quality image that equaled or exceeded that of a CKT desktop display. It is a prime example of how a new technology madc it possible to create a product that did not previously exist and a vast industry that grew in its wake.

REFERENCES

1. Hlinkenlights Archaeological Institute, Personal Computer Milestones, http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml

2. Kbiography, “The Xerox Alto computer,” PC Museum, http://www. fortunecity.corn/pcinLiseum

3. Dan Knight, Tersonal computer history,” Low End PC, September 2001. http://www.lowendpc,com/history/index.shtml

4 . f&xlronic Displuy World 1(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (19x1).

5. lilectronic Disp1u.y World 2(9), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1982). 6 . I3ook I-’C History, “Rvolution from personal computer to book PC.” http://

www.thehookpc.com/history.html; also, http://inventors. about.com/library/ inventors/bllaptop. htm


7. Hectronic Displuy World 3(12), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983). 8. Electronic Di.sp1a.y World 3(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983). 9. Electronic Displuy World 2(4), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1982).

10. Electronic Displuy World 1(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 21 (1981). 11. ITlectronic Di.splu.y World 1(4), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 8 (1981). 12. Illeclronic Displuy World 2(9), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1982). 13. Ikclronic Displuy World 3(3), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983). 14. i!’lectronic Displuy World 4(2), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1984). 15. Illectronic Displuy World 3(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1983). 16. Idcclronic Di.sp1u.y World 4(5), Stanford Kesourc:es, Inc., San Jose, CA (1984). 17. I&?clronic DLspluy World 4(8), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1984). 18. Electronic DLsp1u.y WorZd 5(4), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 19 (1985). 19. Illcctronic Displuy World 6(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 21 (1986). 20. Electronic Disp1u.y World 6(6), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 14 (1986). 21. Ik l ron ic Disspluy World 7(11), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1987). 22. i!’lcclronic Displuy World 9(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA,

30 (1989). 23. Webster I?. Howard, personal communication, November 2003. 24. Joseph A. Castellano, Electronic Displuy Technology Review and Forecast,

Stanford Resources Report, A L I ~ L I S ~ 23, 1984. Prepared for IBM Research IXvision, 5600 Cottle Koad, San Jose, CA.

25. tllectronic Displuy World 8(6), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 22 (1988). The work was later reported at the 1989 Society for Information Display Symposium in Haltimore, Maryland by K. Ichikawa, S . Suzuki, €-I. Matino, T. bolii, T. Higuchi, and Y. Oana, “14.3-inch diagonal 16-color TFT-LCD panel using a-Si:H I‘PTs,” SIU Intwnationul Symposium Dig& of Technical Puprs, (1989) 226.

26. ITlectronic Displuy WorZd 5(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1985). 27. I&?clronic Di.sp1u.y World 9(8), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 1

(1 989). 28. Electronic Disspluy World 8(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA (1988).

This issue summarized work reported at the Society for Information Display Symposium in Anaheim, CA in May 1988.

29. fh?ctronic Disphy World l0(6), Stanford ltesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 21 (1990). 30. Electronic IX@a. World 10(12), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 25

(1990).

Chapter 15

Coming of Age

“Science advances, not by the accumulation of new facts, but by the continuous development of new concepts.“

James Bryant Conani, President of Harvard University, 1933-1953

During the early 1990s, the LCD industry grew rapidly. In 1991, new color television sets with four- and five-inch screens using TFT-LCDs were coming on the market in Japan, while more and more laptop and notebook computers with impressive-looking color TFT-LCDs were becoming available worldwide. In addition, LCD projectors for consumer television, business presentations and educational applications were introduced. At the same time, the technology spread to many other products and, as predicted’ in 1979, LCDs soon appeared in “automobiles, boats, airplanes, kitchen appliances and cash registers” in addition to computers and television.

Meanwhile, manufacturing of TF’I-LCDs began to receive serious attention by companies in South Korea and Taiwan. By the mid-1990s, other competing technologies, such as plasma display panels and organic light emitting diodes were being developed in earnest. At the Same time, high- definition television was coming into use and by the end of the decade, both LCD and plasma panels were appearing in sets that would make the new medium even more attractive to consumers. ‘This chapter presents a discussion o f the maturation o f the LCI) industry as well as the impact of these developments during the 1990s.

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS ABOUND

The laptop computers of the late 1980s became the notebook computers of the early 1990s. These products, which were then about the size of the NEC IJltralite, the first notebook-size personal computer, became extremely

222

Coming of Age 223

popular in the Japanese business community.2 This occurred because most Japanese office areas were very cramped, so desk space was precious. In an area of ahout 1,500 square feet, a typical Japanese office might have 40 workers. By comparison the same area in the IJ.S. would have ten or less. Hence, large, desktop PC systems with CKT monitors were not used as extensively as they were in the 1J.S. Instead, many Japanese office workers used notebook computers ranging in price from $750 to $3,450, with the capability of handling both English and Japanese.

Ultimately, the popularity of notebook computers with color TFT-LCDs spread throughout the world, the units became much more powerful, screen sizes grew to 14 and 15 inches and pixel counts increased, while prices were reduced to under $2,000. This resulted in a steady decline in the use of STN-LCDs for portable computers starting in 1993 when some 66% of the units sold had the displays. By 1996, the STN-LCD market share declined to 38% due to the superior performance of TFT-LCDs and the dramatic reductions in their price.3 As new generation production lines became operational throughout the 1990s, the price gap between the STN- LCDs and ‘I’FT-LCDs practically vanished, thereby leading to total domina- tion of the market by the TET-LCDs. In the year 2000, some 22 million portable computers with TFT-LCDs were sold on the world market.*

In the early I990s, memo type portables also began appearing. These were small handheld units priced under $100 with a two-line LCD that had 12 characters per line, enabling the user to store telephone numbers, addresses and short memos. Another category was the “organizer,” which had eight lines of characters with 40 characters across on a LCD that measured one inch high by about four inches wide. These products had a full (but very small) keyboard. A number of models were available from Casio and priced in the $150 to $200 range. Later this product would be expanded with more features, evolving into the personal digital assistants

’The replacement of CRT-based display monitors for PCs was a long-range god of all LCD manufacturers. In this case, the performance of the display needed to match or exceed that of the CRT while the price premium for a flat, thin panel had to be relatively small. Consequently, it took quite a bit o f time before 1,CDs began to replace CRT monitors in any kind of volume. The process began in 1997, when numerous monitor manufacturers started to offer LCD monitors as part of their product lines. The earliest models had dkagonal screen sizes of 13 and 14 inches, but soon 15-, 17- and even Winch panels began t o appear. By the year 2002, however, the 15-inch diagonal

(PDAs) that are S O popular toddy.

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screen became the volume leader due the fact that its viewing area was comparable to a 17-inch CRT monitor and its price was under $300. Shipments in 2002 exceeded 22 million units,4 a 70% increase over the previous year.

Meanwhile, developers were increasing the pixel density (resolution) as well as the total pixel count t o meet specific application requirements. One o f the most advanced TFT-LCDs of its time was the 6.3-million pixel monochrome TFT-LCD with a 13-inch diagonal screen fabricated in 1993 at Xerox PAARC in Palo Alto, Cal i f~rnia .~ This display had the largest number o f pixels of any TFT-LCI) reported up to that time. It was intended for office automation applications where there was a requirement for electronically-controlled image reproduction with characteristics similar to those o f a conventional laser printer. This display achieved the resolution, brightness and viewing angle required for these applications through a binary driving scheme. A 13-inch diagonal color display using the same active matrix design was also produced. This panel had 1.6-million pixels, more color pixels than any previously reported LCI). Another high resolution panel was a 13.6-inch diagonal TFT-LCD for workstations with 2,280 X 1,024 pixels and 4,096 colors made in 1993 by a joint development team from Toshiha and IBM JapanGs

In 1998, scientists at IBM Research developed a prototype color TFT- LCD with a 16.3-inch diagonal screen and a pixel density of 200 pixels per inch, making it the highest resolution LCD demonstrated up to that time.‘ Codenamed Roentgen, the screen showed 5.2-million color pixels and any text character, diagram or image had four times as many pixels as a CKT monitor. The panel had 2,560 X 2,048 pixels, 15,728,640 a-Si TFTs and 1.64 miles of thin-film wiring (low-resistance aluminum alloys). The prototype monitor was 2.5 inches thick, weighed less than 20 pounds and dissipated less than half the power of a 19-inch CRT monitor. The development proved that TFT-LCIh could have better performance than comparably sized CRT monitors and paved the way for LCDs t o be used in medical instruments and other applications requiring high resolution.

WAU-MOUNTED LCD TELEVISION FINALLY REALIZED

13y the mid-l990s, color TkT-LCDs with larger screen sizes began appearing. Sharp was perhaps the first to announce development of a 21-inch diagonal panel in 1994.’ The following year,8 Sharp began selling color television sets with 8.4-inch and 10.4-inch diagonal TFT-LCD screens at suggested retail prices of $1,209 and $1,648, respectively. The company

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also demonstrated a 28-inch color TFT-LCI) prototype television that was made by joining together two 21-inch panekg Using a black matrix, refrac- tive index matching, very straight glass cutting and a cell seal width of only 150 microns, the junction between the two panels was nearly completely hidden, although it was visible when a light background was displayed. The panel had 3.67 million colors and a luminance of 150 cd/m2. I attended a press conference at Sharp’s headquarters in Osaka in the fall of 1995 and was impressed when the company’s newly developed products were demonstrated. It was clear that Sharp planned to be a major supplier of color TFT-LCl>s for television sets in all sizes.

In 1996, Samsung Display Devices, Seoul, Korea, reported the development of a 22-inch TFT-LCII panel, the largest single panel shown to up to that time.’O The panel had 1.8 million total pixels, 75% aperture ratio and power consumption of 15 Watts. Samsung also announced that it was developing a 30-inch panel aimed at wall-mounted television. Also reported in 1996 was a 20.1-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD with 1,024 X 768 pixels developed by NEC.

The competition to become the first to offer the largest LCI) television intensified during 1996, and in November, Sharp demonstrated a 29-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD, manufactured from a single 650 X 550 mm substrate.” One month later,I2 Sharp announced the development of the “world’s largest LcI) panel,” a 40-inch model that was indeed the largest direct-view 40-inch color TFT-LCI) built up to that time. However, this was not built on a single substrate, but used seamless joining o f two 29-inch TFT-LCD panels to make a “tiled” display.

One year later, Samsung re-claimed the ‘‘world’s largest” title when it announced’3 development of a 30-inch TFT-LCD television display built on a single substrate. Samsung reportedly spent $1 1 million to develop the 30-inch model, which provided the Same effective screen area as conventional 33-inch CRT-television, but weighed just 4.5 kilograms. Samsung’s 30- inch ’I’kT-LCn operated on 45 watts, had a maximum pixel format of 1,600 X 1,200 and a response time of 40 milliseconds.

I had a meeting in 1998 at the International Display Research Conference in Seoul with Jun H. Souk, now Executive Vice President of Samsung’s LCI> R&D Center, when I expressed skepticism that such large TFT-LCDs could be manufactured cost-effectively in under ten years. I-Iowever, Souk insisted that it would happen more quickly and he was proven to be correct as large screen LCD television sets were selling on world markets as this book was being completed.

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The battle to become the developer of the world’s largest LCD television continued throughout the late 1990s, but after 2000, the race shifted to one between Samsung and LG.Philips LCD, both based in South Korea. The latter company was formed as a joint venture between Korea’s LG Electronics and Philips of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. (The historical development of LCDs in Korea will be discussed later in this chapter.) By late 2003, both companies were vying for the “world’s largest” title. First LG.Philips LCD showed a 52-inch model and shortly thereafter Samsung demonstrated a 54-inch display. Rut it was not long before LG.Philips LCD showed a slightly larger 55-inch model (Fig. 15.1). This was soon followed by Samsung’s introduction of a 57-inch display (Fig. 15.2). Larger models will be introduced by the time this book is published.

THE CELLULAR TELEPHONE EXPLOSION

The cellular telephone or “cell phone” market began to develop in the 1980s and has been growing ever since. This portable device was a very successful marriage of LCD technology and product utility. With the increasing amount o f data available through telephone transmission, the value of the display to the product’s applications has increased over time. While the mobile phone started as a tool for business customers, it shifted dramatically t o the consumer market. In highly industrialized nations, cell phones were positioned as more convenient alternatives to conventional

Fig. 15.1. A 55-inch diagonal TFT-LCD television capable of displaying HDTV images. Developed in 2003 by LG.Philips LCD, the display employs in-plane switching technology to provide a very wide viewing angle. Photo courtesy of 1,G.Philips LCD.

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Fig. 15.2. A 57-inch diagonal TFT-LCD television capable of displaying HDTV irnages. Ikveloped by Samsung Electronics, this was the world's largest LCD television at the time of this writing. This model had the capability to display HDTV images. Photo courtesy of Joe Virginia, Vice President of Marketing, Samsung Electronics.

wired telephones, while in developing countries they became popular because of unreliable or unavailable wired telephone service. Higher levels of competition in the market fostered rapid growth by forcing price reductions.

The market for cell phones began accelerating rapidly in the 1990s and at the end o f 1997 there were more than 200 million cellular telephone subscribers w o r l d ~ i d e . ' ~ In 1997, the U.S. cell phone market received another boost with the introduction of Personal Communication Service (PCS). In this market, retail sales account for a large portion of the cellular telephone distribution channel. A continued shift to digital systems in the IJ.S. and strong turn-of-the-century markets in such countries as Vietnam, India and Taiwan, have driven further growth.

The cellular telephone market started with analog technology and simple, one-line, inorganic light emitting diode (LED) displays. With the shift to digital technology and more powerful batteries, display screens soon shifted to LCDs. New features such as caller ID, paging, voice messaging, Fax and e-mail were added in the late 1990s. At the same time, the LCDs moved from character to graphic displays and color panels began to appear in 2000. By 2001, many models had color TFT-LCDs and today, many models have built-in cameras for transmitting images. There were

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some 640 million LCDs shipped with cell phones in 20034 with the market expected to reach over 800 million units in 2007. However, organic light emitting diode displays may eventually emerge as a major competitor to the LCD in this application. Displays based on this technology, which grew from laboratory experiments done at Kodak's research laboratories in the 1c)8Os, already rival LCUs in performance and may be even cheaper t o manuFacture in the future. A more detailed discussion o f these devices will appear later in the following chapter.

THE AGE OF CONSORTIA

A consortium is a group or assembly of individual organizations that come together to accomplish some objective for their common good. During the early 1990s, numerous firms engaged in developing electronic displays embraced the concept. One o f the first was the United States Display Consortium (LJSDC), which was formed in 1993 and partly fundedL5 by AlWA, the [J.S. Defense Department's research and development agency. 7'his consortium was an industry-led, public and private partnership that included flat panel display manufacturers, developers and users, as well as equipment and material suppliers. Its mission was to focus on active matrix liquid crystal displays, but it also addressed the manufacturing needs of a variety of other flat panel technologies. 'The emphasis o f the consortium W;IS on developing new inanufacturing equipment, materials and processes that would allow U.S. display manufacturers t o compete more effectively in global markets while materials and processes are verified on existing pilot production lines and later incorporated into existing full scale production facilities.

The initial members o f the consortium were AT&T Corporation, 01s Optical Imaging Systems, Standish Industries and Xerox. Over the years, other firms entered and the consortium grew. Its major success was in helping equipment makers to develop improved systems for high-volume manufacturing of LCDs and other displays, but it also provided funding for the development of new technologies such as organic light emitting diodes and liquid crystal on silicon devices. ?'he USnc continues to support and develop an infrastructure for supply of next generation process equipment, materials and components to the worldwide display market.

Another U.S. consortium, tho Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), was formed in part to explore field emission displays (FEDs).I5 The group included IBM, Hewlett-Packdrd, Control Data

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International, Harris Semiconductor, Zenith Electronics, Litton Systems, Schmidt Instruments and Digital Equipment Corporation. This consortium performed research in the technical feasibility and manufacturing requirements for PEDs.

Consortia building were not confined to the [J.S., however and the European K&D Consortium was formed' 5,16 to pursue LCI) technologies, materials and production equipment for high volume manufacturing. The consortium included 17 companies and universities and received funding from the European Community under the Esprit program. Meanwhile, three key members o f the consortium, Philips (Eindhoven, the Netherlands), Thomson Consumer Electronics (Paris, France) and Sagem (Paris, France) formed a European joint venture15 called Flat Panel Display Company B.V., which was organized to produce active matrix LCDs. Philips held the majority o f the company's shares at 80%, leaving 20% split between Thomson and Sagem, a French electronics company that had been working on 1,CI)s with France's National Telecommunication Research Center, Centre National d'Etudes des Telecommunications (CNET). Ilhilips contributed its flat panel display business with 450 employees, an operational pilot production plant and a factory. The company had invested about $168 million in the two plants. Thomson added the resources of its LCD operation in Grenoble, France, that included a pilot production line and Sagcm provided the CNET patent that simplified the manufacture of thin- film transistors used in active matrix displays. Eventually, Philips gained total control of the joint venture company and consolidated it with other mergers and acquisitions.

In late 1994," a consortium was formed in Japan t o develop high- definition television displays using plasma display panel (P1)P) technology. Known as the Hi-Vision PDP Consortium, which included some 30 o f Japan's leading industrial companies, it was created to develop a 40-inch diagonal Hi-Vision (HDTV) PDP that would t x ready for practical use at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. Part o f the work was already in progress at the NHK Science and Technical Kesearch Laboratories in Tokyo, where engineers were concentrating on DC-PDYs. IJnder study were the manufacturing technologies and related element technologies, including electric discharge and light emission mechanisms. The consortium included not only potential PDP manufacturers, but equipment and material suppliers as well.

The first Secretary General of the consortium was Dr. Mitsuhiro Kurashige, a vice president of NHK, who visited my office in 1995 shortly

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after the organization was formed. As a result of that meeting, the consortium contracted with Stanford Resources to perform a study of the potential world market for PDPs. When the project was completed later that year, David Mentley and I presented the results of our study first to a group of the top ten PDP developers and later to the entire assembly of representatives from all the member companies. Our study showed that a significant market would be available for a 40-inch diagonal PDP television if the price were in the range of $3,000 to $4,000. This was met with some con- sternation by the firms that expected to manufacture the panels because these price points seemed too far in the future. Nevertheless, the consortium was quite successful in meeting its objectives and indeed large PDP televisions were fabricated and demonstrated in 1998 in Nagano. A great deal o f credit should go to Dr. Kurashige, who managed to keep such a large and diverse group of companies on track to meet the organization’s goal. Today, we see hundreds of thousands of 42-inch PDP televisions with HD’I’V capability being sold at prices of under $3,000.

Other consortia were also formed to develop LCDs during the 1990s in Taiwan and Malaysia. Why so much interest in display consortia? The feeling was that by pooling resources and therefore reducing financial risks, member companies could obtain access to technology that might allow them to build new products and grow their businesses. While not all were successful, the age of consortia coincided with the rapid growth of the LCI) industry over the ten-year period since these groups were formed. Consequently, it could be said that many goals and objectives of the consortia were indeed achieved.

INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATIONS

As the LCD industry matured in the mid-l990s, competition intensified, leading t o the inevitable trend among manufacturers and material suppliers toward consolidation. In 1996, for example, E. Merck, Darmstadt, Germany, acquired the nematic liquid crystal material business from HOffnldnn-Ld Koche of Basel, Switzerland.l7 In addition to the sales activities, the deal included a 400-patent portfolio for nematic materials. This acquisition strengthened Merck’s product line and maintained its world market share leadership in liquid crystal materials for LCDs.

The most active company to consolidate its position in the LCI) industry was Philips of the Netherlands. In October of 1996, Philips signed an agreementI8 with Hosiden, Osaka, Japan, a leading developer of high

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resolution color TFT-LCDs, to form a joint venture company called Hosiden and Philips Display Corporation (HAPD), based in Kobe, Japan. The agreement called for financial and technology cooperation with plans to significantly expand production capacity at Philips’ manufacturing facility, Flat Panel Display Company B.V., in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Hosiden incorporated its LCD division into the joint venture.

By 1998, Philips had invested19 nearly $200 million in the joint venture, increasing its equity in the Japanese flat panel maker to 80%. It was about this time that Philips created a Flat Display Systems global business group with headquarters in San Jose, California, under the direction of Matthew Medeiros, who was named President of the group. In 1999,20 Philips trdns- ferred production and supply of medium-site active matrix LCD panels from its Waalre site in Eindhoven to IIAPD. Philips then integrated design, development and marketing activities for medium-site active matrix LCDs, as well as customer support services, into the existing activities of Philips passive LCD operations in Heerlen, the Netherlands.

I had the opportunity of meeting with Medeiros several times in 1998 and 1999 to discuss the future of the LCD industry. He was concerned that HAPD would not have the capacity to produce the quantity of LCDs needed to make Philips the number one world supplier. Consequently, he said he would be looking at another possible merger or acquisition. Shortly thereafter,21 Philips announced that it signed an agreement with LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, under which Philips would acquire a 50% share in the active matrix LCD division of LG Electronics. Philips invested approximately $1.6 billion in the new joint venture, which was officially launched in September 1999 and named LG.Philips LCD. All the active matrix LCD production activities of both companies were incorporated into the plants in Gumi, Korea. Today, the company has five LCD manufacturing plants in Gumi as well as a module assembly plant in Nanjing, China. As o f this writing, LG.Philips LCD is the world market share leader in active matrix LCD manufacturing. Thus, it is clear that Medeiros made the right move at the right time. The historical development of TFT-LCDs at LG Electronics and LG.Philips LCD is presented later in this chapter.

SHIFTS TO SOUTHEAST ASIA

South Korea became an important country for the development of LCDs in the late 1980s. One of the first companies in the country to recognize the potential for the technology was the Samsung Group, which consisted of

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several entities. Samsung Electronics produced all the consumer electronics such as washers, dryers, refrigerators, microwave ovens, television sets and audio equipment. Samsung Electron Ikvices, on the other hand, was a component company that made all the CRTs used in television sets made by Samsung Electronics. I recall watching this process when I visited Suwon in 1989; CliTs lxiilt in one plant in the Suwon complex would be crated and transported by truck to the Samsung Electronics plant in another part of the complex where television sets were assembled.

At that time,22 Samsung Electronics had sales of about $25 billion, whereas Samsung Electron Devices, its smaller sister company where LCDs were being developed, had about $900 million in sales. Thus, Samsung Electronics was more powerful and was the source of funding for large capital projects. In the early 1980s, Samsung Electronics invested upwards of $100 million to build a new memory chip factory that produced the first Korean made 64K RAM chip and the company went on to become a world-class chip manufacturer. It also invested in a plant to manufacture I,CD driver chips instead of relying on a Japanese company or a Silicon Valley-based firm.

Shortly after the 01s joint development project ended, Samsung Electron Devices decided to follow the lead of the Japanese companies and invest in TFT-LCDs instead o f diodes. This decision was a difficult one because Samsung was well aware that American companies were reluctant to enter the business due to the huge anticipated investment, while the Japanese companies as a group had already invested several billion dollars to build T€TLCI> Factories.22

Samsung eventually invested billions of dollars to enter the color TFT- LCD panel manufacturing industry in the 1990s. According to Jun H. Souk,23 the company established its first pilot line in Kiheung in 1991 and began manufacturing 9.4-inch panels for notebook computers in 1993. Hy 1995, the company shifted to 10.4-inch panels made on 370 mm X 470 mm substrates, the “mother glass” from which a number of panels would be cut. The larger the mother glass, the more panels that can be produced per unit time. One year later, substrate size was increased to 550mm X 650mm enabling 12.1-inch panels to be manufactured in volume. This size quickly hecame the most popular for notebook PCs.

In addition t o notebook PCs, Samsung was quite interested in the desktop monitor market and, like other LCD manufacturers, it hoped to replace bulky CKT monitors with flat, thin LCD panels. Thus, Samsung’s engineers developed a 14-inch panel with 1,024 X 768 pixels in 1997 and

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began manufacturing 17-inch and 18-inch monitor models with 1,280 X 1,024 pixels in 1998. That same year, Samsung became the market share leader with 18% of the world market for panels that were ten inches and lager. It also shifted to a production line that was capable o f processing 600 mm X 720 mm substrates. By this time, the company was also shipping large volumes of 3 4-inch and 15:inch panels for notebook computers.

Samsung also began manufacturing 1 &inch TFT-LCDs for cell phones in 2001 and unveiled its color 40-inch TFT-LCD for HDTV that same year. After this, developments came quickly and by 2002, the company opened its fifth generation plant that processed 1,100 mm X 1,250 min substrates, while larger television displays were announced and the company built a TIT-LCD module assembly plant in Suzhou, China. Recently, Samsung broke ground for a plant to manufacture TF7’-LCDs in Tdngjung, Asan, that will process substrates measuring 1,870mm X 2,200 mm (2.887 meters diagonal!).

Another Korean company t o emerge as a leading manufacturer of ’TFT-LCDs was LG.I-’hilips LCD. As mentioned previously, this company was created as a joint venture between Philips of the Netherlands and South Korea’s LG Electronics (once known as Lucky Goldstar). Research on 1,CI)s began in 1987 at the Golclstar R&D center in but shifted t o another R&D center in Anyang that was established in 1990. The company broke ground for its first TFT-LCD plant in Gumi in 1993 for notebook computers.

In August 1994, D.S. (Ilavis) Lee and Duke M. Koo, executives from LG Electronics, visited my office in San Jose and later commissioned Stanford Resources to perform a custom study of the market for TFT-LCDs in notebook computers. Upon completion of that project in the spring of 1995, I was invited to visit the Gumi plant when it was still not fully operational, but I was truly impressed by the high level of automation that had been incorporated into this new facility. By the fall of 1995, the first 9.5-inch panels began shipping out of the new plant.

Once the company was committed to entering the industry, it invested heavily in new plants and facilities as well as research and development. By 1997, the first 14-inch panels with 1,024 X 768 pixels for notebook computers were developed and a second plant was established at Gumi. Only one year later, LG Electronics was shipping 18-inch panels for desktop monitors and the firm achieved annual sales of $500 million, making it one of the worlds largest manufacturers of TbT-LcDs. Shortly after the creation of LG.Philips LCD in 1999, the company’s sales topped $2 billion and just three years later it had four plants operating in Gumi with another under

Seoul, 24

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construction. The company began making TFT-LCDs for television in 2000, when it introduced panels with diagonal screen sizes of 20- and 29-inches.

By 2002, the company had developed LCDs for HDTV in diagonal screen sizes of 42 and 52 inches; a 55-inch model was demonstrated in 2003. Meanwhile, the size of the mother glass kept increasing with each successive generation of manufacturing. In its fifth generation factory, LG.Philips LCD can produce nine 21-inch panels from one 1,100mm X 1,250mm mother glass plate as shown in Fig. 15.3. The company will soon open its sixth generation plant with the capability to handle plates measuring 1,500 mm X 1,850 mm (2.38 meters diagonal). LG.Philips LCD was ranked as the world’s number one manufacturer for all of 2003.24

In addition t o Korea, another country that became engaged in high- volume manufacturing of LCDs was Taiwan, officially known as the Republic o f China. The assembly of laptop computers in Taiwan had already begun in 1985, although displays were obtained from Japanese manufacturers. One of the first companies to offer a product was Lei Chu Enterprise Company, which released2’ the PHC-16, a six kilogram IBM

Fig. 15.3. A 1,100mmX 1,250mm mother glass plate that was processed at LG.Philips LCD’s fifth generation manufacturing facility in Gumi, Korea in 2003. Photo courtesy of Bnice Berkoff, Executive Vice President of Marketing, LG.Philips LCD.

Coming of Age 235

PC-compatible portable microcomputer with a 320 X 200 pixel passive LCD. The computer was developed jointly with a Japanese manufacturer not named at that time.

The shift of portable computer production to Taiwan accelerated rapidly in the late 1 9 8 0 ~ ~ ~ and by 1990 manufacturing of locally-made laptop computers grew to six million units valued at $11 billion. Taiwan’s industrial firms soon realized their need to keep up with technology innovations, including LCD and plasma displays, while improving the design of ASIC chips and other components. Therefore, many firms began seeking technology-transfer relationships with major Japanese vendors as well as developing marketing channels.

An important development that helped shape the industry in Taiwan was the announcement o f the Taiwan government-sponsored Electronics Research and Service Organization’s (ERSO) five-year project to develop electro-optical technology for information processing application^.^^ The $60 million project began in July of 1986 and focused on five areas of electro-optical technology including CCD image pickup modules, TFT- LCDs, image processing systems, image transfer technology and optical disk drives with related media. With this government assistance, several of Taiwan’s industrial organizations were able to begin developing TFT-LCDs for computers. This led to the formation o f another government-sponsored project in 1990 to develop TFT-1/31 technology.28 Four Taiwanese companies, Sampo, Tatung, Chung Hsin Electric & Machinery Manufacturing Corporation and Taiwan Kolin Company, were involved in the venture, which was led by Peter T.C. Shih, executive director of the electro-optics group o f the National Science Council.

Meanwhile, Japanese companies began to recognize the advantages of manufacturing in Taiwan and moved production of passive LCDs to that country. Hitachi was one of the first to establish twisted-nematic and STN- 1,CD manufacturing in Taiwan, when it moved production of those displays t o its subsidiary, Hitachi Television (Taiwan) Ltd. located in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan.27 The other early entrant was Sharp, which began producing STN-LCI) modules for notebook computers at about the same time.3O

During the 1990s, the trend continued and many more Japanese joint ventures were established for LCU production in Taiwan. Eventually, numerous locally-invested companies entered the business and many became major manufacturers of not only passive, but also TFT-LCDs. Today, Taiwan is challenging Korea as the leading TFT-LCD manufacturing region.31 Taiwan

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is expected t o increase its TFT-LCD output t o over 57-million units in 2004. The industry is now led by seven major companies: AIJ Optronics, Chi Mei Optoelectronics, Chungwha Picture Tubes, HannStar, Quanta Display, BOE I-Iydis Technology and ID Tech. Capital spending on TFT-LCD production in Taiwan is expected to reach $4 billion in 2004 as makers upgrade their plants and manufacturing technologies.

The next major country o f opportunity for low-cost LCD manufacturing is the People’s Republic of China. Well before Hong Kong became part o f the PRC, industrial firms in Hong Kong had established facilities in Mainland China, mostly for production o f small passive displays for watches, calculators and instruments. Conic and Varitronix, whose activities were previously mentioned, were among the first, but many others followed in the late 1990s. A lrding t o I’aul Semenza,32 China currently holds a key position in display manufacturing with half of all CKT and LCD desktop PC monitors now produced in that country, although most of this production serves export markets. One-quarter of televisions are produced in China, but this output is mostly for domestic consumption. Television exports are rising and an increased role for China in the production of LCD televisions is expected. The shift in the television market from bulky, heavy CKT-based systems t o flat panel based products cuts shipping costs, one factor that favors low cost manufacturing regions like China. In 2004, production o f ?‘Fl‘-LCDs will begin in China when the first manufacturing plant, h i l t jointly by SVA and NEC as a 5th generation factory, comes on- stream in Shanghai. Orient Electronics, which has acquired the display operations of IIynix of Korea, is also expected to build a TFT-LCD plant in China. Capital investments for such plants are approaching $2 billion.

Chinese companies are also pursuing advanced display technologies, such as organic light emitting diode displays, with Truly Semiconductor in Hong Kong and Visionox in Beijing now known to be developing the technology.32 In general, Chinese companies are strong players in computer and television markets, making them well positioned to take advantage of the continued growth of the display industry.

SUPPLEMENTARY LCD TECHNOLOGIES APPEAR

While the development o f TF’I‘-LCDs was underway, a number of other technologies based on the use of liquid crystals emerged. Since the TFT technology was so complex and required such huge capital investment,

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many scientists and engineers were searching for display technologies that could eliminate the need for TFTs. The technologies that advanced to the commercial or semi-commercial stage were LCDs based on ferroelectric- smectic materials, polymer-dispersed liquid crystals and plasma addressing, while the technology that has recently become important for television projection systems is liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS).

In 1992, Canon, based in Tokyo, Japan, developed monochrome and color ferroelectric LCDS”~ (FLCDs) aimed at desktop workstation applications. The 15-inch diagonal color display had 1,280 X 1,024 pixels and could show 16 colors. It had a contrast ratio of 40:l and a 70-millisecond response speed. The appearance of this display was excellent although there were some very small non-uniformities in the panel I saw when I visited Canon’s laboratory that year. The company was planning to build a production Facility that was scheduled to go on-stream in 1993. Canon planned on using 15-inch diagonal monochrome FLCDs in its desktop publishing system with the display oriented in the portrait mode. The company hoped to ship color samples and supply displays to OEMs as well as its own finished products. Canon was the only company that successfully solved the fabrication problems associated with this technology. However, the displays were never competitive with color TFl-LCDs in either price or performance and the products were later discontinued.

Polymer-dispersed LCns (P1,Cns) use a nematic liquid crystal encapsu- lated in micro-sized polymer droplets. The droplets are suspended in an emulsified film several microns thick that is sandwiched between glass plates having a transparent conductive coating on the inner surfaces. In order to obtain color, the polymer droplets contain a small amount of dichroic dye, so that the display will modulate between a colored state with no field applied and a colorless state of high transmittance when the film is activated by an electric field. A detailed description of the technology with all its embodiments is given by J. William Doane,34 one of the inventors of the technology at Kent State University’s Liquid Crystal Institute.

Several companies were formed to commercialize the technology. One was Taliq, a company that was founded on the basis of James Fergason’s invention called NCAP (nematic curvilinear aligned phase). while Tahq built some impressive prototypes that it planned to commercialize for large screen electronic signs, the company never reached profitability and went ou t o f business. Two others were Advanced IXsplay Systems, Dallas, Texas and Kent Display Systems, Kent, Ohio; both companies currently make flexible LCDs based on the PLCD concept.

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Kent Display Systems started out as Kent Digital Signs and was based on another form of PLCD called Polymer-Stabilized Cholesteric Texture (PCST) that was developed by Ilr. Deng-Ke Yang at Kent State IJniversity’s Liquid Crystal Institute. Kent Digital Signs was formed in 1992 to commercialize the PSCT technology that it licensed from Kent State University for making electronic signs.35 ’The major investor was William Manning, Chairman of Manning and Napier and Dr. Zvi Yaniv, Dr. J. William Doane and the Kent State University Office of Technology Transfer were minority investors. Yaniv, who had left 01s (Optical Imaging Systems), was named President of the company and Doane was a technical advisor who continued in his tenured position as Director of the Liquid Crystal Institute. Gerald Garies was contracted to assist with the technology transfer. In 1993, the company name was changed to its present name, Kent Display Systems.

In 1993, Thomas Huzak of Tektronix, Beaverton, Oregon, reported on the development of a 16-inch, color plasma-addressed active matrix The 16-inch color display had 640 X 480 pixels with 4,096 colors and used plasma-addressed liquid crystal (PALC) technology to achieve display performance that compared with existing color TFT-LCDs, but without transistors at each pixel location. Instead, the row electrode was formed during scanning by the plasma generated in an etched channel. A thin glass sheet separated the plasma from the liquid crystal cell. Engineers from Sony Corporation were so impressed with this demonstration that they persuaded Sony’s management to license the technology from Tektronix. The technology transfer was successful and two years kater,3’ Sony demonstrated a 25-inch diagonal television display that it called the Plasmatron plasma-addressed 1,CD panel. This display had a wide viewing angle and was only four inches thick. Sony soon formed a partnership with Sharp and l’hilips to help co-develop the technology and a 50-inch version was planned for future television use. However, with the emergence of large screen color TFT-LCD and Plasma Display Panel televisions, the companies lost interest in this hybrid technology and no further products emerged.

Of all the types of active matrix LCDs, liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) devices most directly use semiconductor manufacturing techniques, as the active matrix array and associated driver circuits are designed and built on a silicon wafer, using complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing techniques. The LCOS displays are currently the most heavily researched micro display^.^ Instead of thin-film transistors on glass, LCOS displays use bulk silicon devices to control the pixels from outside the optical path. The silicon-based CMOS chip serves as both the active matrix

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and the reflective layer, on top of which a thin layer of liquid crystal, glass plate and polarizer are deposited. Instead of the a-Si or polycrystalline-Si TFTs used in transmissive LCD cells, LCOS devices use the high-speed switching capability provided by single-crystal silicon. These devices also have a simplified LCD structure because the device is reflective, not transmissive like most LCDs. For example, only one polarizer is required and the thickness of the layer of liquid crystal can be reduced, allowing for faster switching.

Two important design choices are made when developing an LCOS device: the type of liquid crystal material and the type of control circuit to be used. The nematic and ferroelectric liquid crystal modes are the most popular types for such a display. The nematic types provide a good contrast ratio and are typically coupled with a DKAM (dynamic random access memory) switching array. Ferroelectric liquid crystals provide very fast switching speeds, but they do not allow for grayscale, so the pixel is either black or white. Grayscale can be created temporally by taking advantage of the fast switching speed to dither the binary value within a frame period. Ferroelectric liquid crystals are typically coupled with SRAM (static random access memory) devices, which provide the Fast frame transfer rates needed to provide temporally dithered grayscale and which are also binary devices.

Liquid crystal microdisplays can also be configured to modulate unpo- larked light, an approach that has the advantage of much greater light transmission by eliminating the significant absorption of polarizers. There are two ways to use unpolarized light. In one approach, light is scattered when the liquid crystal molecules are arranged in one fashion and reflected when the molecules are rearranged, a process that is controlled by the application of a voltage across the cell. Scattering dispkays typically use polymer-dispersed liquid crystal materials. The second approach uses the principle of diffraction, in which a periodic arrangement of O N or OFF pixels (forming a grating) causes light to constructively or destructively inter- fere. This interference pattern can then be filtered by a Schlieren stop to pass light when in certain grating modes; by altering the grating structure, amplitude and color may be controlled. Twisted-nematic liquid crystal material is the most common type used in diffraction systems.

Color can be achieved in LCOS devices in several ways. The most popular approach for projection applications is to use three LCOS chips and dichroic mirrors to separate red, green and blue components. Color-filter wheels have also been used to present sequential color to a single chip. For personal viewers, red, green and blue light sources (typically light

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emitting diodes) are used to illuminate sequential frames of data at three times the normal video rates.

The main applications for LCOS devices are front projectors, viewfind- ers (camera and camcorder), viewers integrated into cell phones and other handheld devices, head-mounted displays and rear projection monitors and televisions. Products in all these categories have appeared and rear projection consumer television sets are now on the market. Consequently, there is great interest in and resources devoted to microdisplays at the present time. While there is potential for high growth in the coming years, market acceptance will be contingent on improvements in the price, performance and ergonomics of these products.

REFERENCES

1. Joseph A. Castellano, “Applications o f liquid crystals,” Liquid Crystals; The Fourth State of Matter, ed. Franklin D. Saeva (Marcel Uekker, New York, 19791, p. 455.

2. Hectronic Display World 11(2), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 1 (1991). 3. Electronic Display World 16(3), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 1 (1996). 4. Liquid Cryslal Ui.spluy<s: Murket and Technology Trends, 11th edn., Stanford

Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 2001. 5. Ihclronic Display World 13(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 16-17

(1993). 6, Ihclronic IXpluy World 18(9), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 5 (1998). 7. Idectronic Display World 1451, Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 16 (1994). 8. 1;lectronic Diplay World 15(9), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 12 (1995). 9. Electronic Disp1a.y World 15(12), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, (1995).

10. filectronic Disp1a.y World 16(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 15 (1996). 11. Electronic Display World 16(11), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 10

( 1 996). 12. Electronic Display World 16(12), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA,

11 (1996). 13. ITlectronic Di.sp1a.y World 17(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA,

11 (1997). 14. Electronic Display World lS(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 1 (1998). 15. ITlectronic Displa,y World 13(3), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 1 (1993). 16. I<lectronic Disp1a.y World 13(4), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA,

12 (19931. 17. Electronic Di.pla,y World 16(5), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 16 (1996). 18. Electronic Disp1a.y World 16(10), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 7 (1996). 19. Electronic Displa,y World 18(4), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 5 (1998). 20. Electronic Display World 19(4), Stanford liesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 10 (1999).

Coming of Age 241

21. Electronic Ui.spluy World 19(5), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 6 (1999). 22. Chan Soo Oh, personal communication, October 2003. 23. Jun H. Souk, personal communication, January 2004. 24. D.S. (Davis) Lee, Duke M. Koo, Bruce Herkoff, and Emily Cho, personal com-

munication, January-February 2004. 25. Electronic Displuy World 5(11), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 20 (1985). 26. Electronic Display World 8(2), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 21 (1988). 27. Electronic Disphy World 5(12), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 13 (1985). 28. flZeclronic Display World 10[6), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 22 (1990). 29. Electronic Dkpluy World lo@), Stanford I<esources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 21 (1990). 30. Electronic Displuy World ll(/t), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 24 (1991). 31. “Taiwan challenges Korea’s No. 1 position in TFT-LCD,” The Korea Herald,

March 3, 2004. 32. Paul D. Semenza, “Chinese companies tap into booming display market,”

Electronic News, March 11, 2004. 33. Electronic Display World 12(3), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA,

21 (1992). 34. J. William Iloane, “Polymer dispersed liquid crystal displays,” Liquid Crystuk:

Applications and Uses, Vol. 1, ed. Hirendra Rahadur (World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, 1990), p. 361.

35. Gerald Garies, personal communication, March 2004. 36. Filectronic Displuy World 13(5), Stanford Kesources, Inc., San Jose, CA,

18 (1993). This issue summarized work reported at the SID International Symposium held in Seattle, WA in May 1993.

37. filecironic Displuy World 15(12), Stanford Ilesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 4 (1995). This issue included a report by Iaura Barretto on the COMDEX exhibition in Las Vegas, NV in November 1995.

Chapter 16

Competition f rom Other Flat Panel Technologies

" 1 know of nothing so pleasant to minds as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable; for nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery."

Abraham Lincoln, circa 1860

During the years that LCDs were being developed, numerous other technologies were also being investigated. Among the more important technologies that became commerckally available are vacuum fluorescent displays, inorganic light emitting diode devices, electroluminescent displays, plasma display panels, field emission displays and organic light emitting diode displays. A detailed discussion of the development of these technologies is beyond the scope o f this book; indeed, separate books could be written about each one. A good review of the major flat panel display (FPD) technologies along with the history of their development up to about 1985 is presented in the anthology by Tannas,' which includes chapters by the leading developers of each type.

This chapter will be confined to brief discussions of those technologies that became, or in my opinion may become, serious competition for LCDs in large screen displays for television and computer display monitors. Included are FPD technologies based on gas plasma, electroluminescence, organic light emitting devices and field emission.

PLASMA DISPLAY PANELS

The plasma display panel (PDP) can be thought of as a descendant of the neon lamp, which was invented in 1915 by Georges Claude in France. The

242

Competition from Other Flat Panel Technologies 243

term plasma refers to a gas that consists of electrons, positively charged particles known as cations and neutral particles. The plasma display has sometimes been referred to as a gas-discharge display because it operates by passing electricity through neon gas causing it to become “charged” or ionized temporarily; light is produced when the gas spontaneously dis- charges. Plasma panels can also be viewed as a series of fluorescent lamps. The displays operate at high voltage, low current and low temperatures, resulting in long operating lifetimes.

The main advantage of PDPs, over nearly all other display devices, is that they can be made into large display panels, with diagonal sizes of 20 to over 70 inches currently in the production or advanced prototype stages that are no thicker than four inches, including drive electronics. Moreover, these large panels can provide high information content and full-color images. This has made the PDP another ideal technology for flat, thin television and a competitor to the LCD in this market segment.

One of the first commercial products based on the use of direct current (DC) gas plasma was the NIXIE tube, which was developed by Saul Kuchinsky and his colleagues at Burroughs Corporation.’ During the period from about 1950 to 1965, this display was manufactured by Burroughs and became the major type of electronic digital display used in measuring instruments and other applications. The NIXIE tube had a common anode and ten cathodes, each shaped in the form of a digit and contained in a tube that resembled vacuum tubes used in radios and early televisions. The tube was filled with neon and the selected digit was displayed by applying 100 volts between the appropriate cathode and the common anode. These early devices ushered in the era of the digital display as a replacement for needlepoint gauges. After the NIXIE tube, segmented and character type DC plasma displays were developed and were used in many types of applications including cash registers and ticketing machines.

In 1965, scientists at the University o f Illinois, which included Donald L. Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow and Kobert Wilson, developed the alternating current (AC) plasma display panel, which provided improvements in performance over the DC version and later became the dominant type for large screen televison applications. The University of Illinois group soon expanded to include Roger L. Johnson and Larry F. Weber, both of whom went on to form companies that later commercialized the technology.

Work on PDPs during the 1960s and 1970s was mainly aimed at developing displays for military applications. The rugged nature of AC-PDPs

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made them the most popular for fully militarized flat panel display systems, so the panels were used in a wide range of systems, from compact battle- field computers used for fire control, to 1.5-meter diagonal displays used in war rooms. This experience gave the AC-I’DP a solid reputation as a long- lived, highly reliable display system that could he used in many commercial applications. Ilowever, these displays were monochrome, which generally displayed orange images on a dark background, while the need for color was becoming more and more important.

According to Johnson,2 the University of Illinois group was working on ways to incorporate color in IJ13Ps as early as 1967. The approaches to achieve color operation in a plasma display utilize the ultraviolet light generated by the plasma discharge. A fluorescent material, such as zinc sulfide o r zinc oxide, placed in the vicinity o f the discharge, converts this ultraviolet light into visible light. This is the same principle employed in the ordi- nary fluorescent tube lamp used in offices around the world. If the fluorescent material, called a “phosphor” (it does not contain phosphorous) is doped with a small amount of a rare earth or other compound, it can emit light of various colors depending on the specific compound selected. This is similar to the way color cathode ray tubes for television and computer monitors are made. By using red, green and blue (the primary colors) phosphors, multi-color and even full color can be achieved by forming arrays of these phosphors on the inner surface of the panel. Controlling the intensities o f the red, green or blue phosphor deposited on the wall of each discharge cell allows full color representation. Rare earth materials (from the Group IIIb, “Lanthanide Series” of elements in the periodic table) are used as activators by most of the high-performance ultraviolet light- sensitive phosphor powders.

Dr. ’18utae Shinoda and his colleagues at Fujitsu Laboratories in Akashi, Japan, were pioneers in the development of color PUPS for large screen television. They announced3 the development of the surface-discharge color AC plasma display panel in 1981. I had an opportunity to visit Shinodd’s laboratory in 1983 and saw the first color experimental device that his group built. It showed the Fujitsu logo with kanji characters in red, blue and green. The surface-discharge color PDI-’ and its later modifications enabled Fujitsu to build the first commercially available color television panels.

By thc early 1790s, development of color lJDIJs accelerated. In 1992, for example, the Fujitsu group built a 31-inch color plasma display panel that used a reflection type three-electrode surface-discharge technique.*


The panel could display 640 X 480 pixels with 64 gray levels, but a luminance of only 64 cd/m2. At the same SID Symposium,4 Dr. Peter Friedman of Photonics Imaging, Northwood, Ohio, reported on the development of a color 19-inch I’DP video monitor that had 640x480 pixels with 64 gray levels and a luminance of 88 cd/m2. In addition, a joint effort by Y. Takana and his colleagues at NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories and T. Komatsu’s group at Oki Electric Industry Company in Tokyo, Japan, resulted in the development/’ of a 25-inch color PDP with 512 X 768 pixels and a high contrast ratio of 50:l. The light output (luminance) of all these early panels was low by today’s standards.

Perhaps the major turning point in taking the technology from the laboratory to the marketplace was Fujitsu’s sale of one thousand 21-inch, 262,000-color PDPs to the New York Stock Exchange in 1994 when it remodeled its trading floor.5 With the publicity generated by this announcement, Fujitsu began shipping these 640 X 480 pixel panels to other exchanges and industrial customers, enabling it to establish an early lead in the PDP industry.

By the mid-l990s, the development of color PDPs for television became concentrated in Japan; the establishment of the Hi-Vision PDP Consortium, which was described in the previous chapter, sparked additional firms to join the fledgling industry. The list of companies developing color PDPs for television expanded to include Matsushita, Mitsubishi, NEC, Hitachi, Pioneer and JVC. Soon, displays with screen sizes of 26 to 50 inches were being shown.

The PDP developments in Japan prompted the Korean companies to accelerate their PI>P development programs. In 1998, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, developed a four-inch thick, 60-inch diagonal PDP, which was the world’s largest at the time.6 The set was demonstrated at the 1998 Korea Electronics Exhibition. The company also demonstrated a 50-inch PDP display with a 16:9 aspect ratio that was aimed at public information display applications in venues such as convention centers and sports are- nas. This panel used LGE’s Selective Erase technique that provided high resolution and reduced the number of ICs needed by half, thereby cutting manufacturing costs by about 30%.

One year later,’ Plasmaco, based in Highland, New York, built one of the first (,@inch panels to provide HDTV images. The panel had 1,366 X 768 pixels, a luminance of 450 cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 500:l. The display was capable of presenting 16.777 million colors and it measured just 133 mm (5.3 inches) thick. Plasmaco, which had been acquired by

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Matsushita in January of 1996, was co-founded by Larry F. Weber, one of the early developers of PDP technology at the University of Illinois. Weber invented unique schemes to improve the electrical addressing of the panels. With the added financial and technical resources afforded by Matsushita, Weber’s group was able to develop large screen, high resolution color l-’IlPs.

Shortly thereafter,8 NEC Corporation announced its success in the development of a plasma display monitor with a diagonal screen size of 61 inches in the widescreen format (16:9), The plasma monitor moved into mass production in 2001. NEC was a major player in the lJDI-’ industry for years and was one o f the first to develop a production line capable of producing two 42-inch PDP panels from a single mother glass. The NEC panel had a peak brightness of 600 cd/m2 and could display 1.05 million pixels in a format of 1,365 X 768 pixels to present 16.777 million colors. NEC also produced 42-inch and 50-inch panels.

By 2001, Samsung SDI, which had also been manufacturing large screen PIIPs, showed 63- and 65-inch I-’DP prototypes for Hn’I’V presentations.8 Similar to what happened with LCDs, the race between Samsung and LG Electronics to be the first with the largest PDP was on. In October 2003, LG Electronics reclaimed the “world‘s largest” title with a PDP television having a diagonal screen size of 74 inches.9 ‘The new model came only months after the company introduced a 71-inch PDP television. The 76-inch PIIP supported high-definition broadcasting with a format of 1,920 X 1,080 pixels and was capable of displaying 2.07 million colors.

Just a decade earlier, Korean electronics makers were imitating products made by Japanese companies, but now the two Korean giants are dedicated to rivaling each other for claim to the largest market share of the very large screen color PDP televison market.

In order to compete more effectively with the Korean companies, Japanese firms began consolidating by merging their operations. In 1999, for example, Fujitsu and Hitachi announced” the formation of a joint venture, Fujitsu Hitachi IJlasma Display Limited, to develop, manufacture and market large screen PDPs. The two companies had been working together to develop next-generation PDP technology and volume production technology since signing a joint development agreement in July 1998. The two companies transferred their operations to the new joint venture company with production in the Miydzaki plant that had been owned by Fujitsu. ‘Ihe company rcccntly announced” plans to build another plant in Miyazaki at a cost of about $670 million to manufacture 150,000 PDPs per month. And, as this


book was being completed, Pioneer Corporation announced that it would acquire NEC Plasma Display Corporation in April 2004. Pioneer will take over NEC’s plasma manufacturing facility and research and development resources in Kagoshima, Japan, in an effort to become one o f the largest plasma display suppliers in the world.

As the processes for PDP manufacturing improve and production volume increases, prices will decline and the market for these displays in flat panel television will grow. According to iSuppli/Stanford Resources, ’’ there were nearly 740,000 plasma television sets valued at $2.8 billion sold worldwide in 2003 and the number is expected t o approach 1.36 million units in 2004. By 2007, worldwide shipments are expected to top six million units valued at nearly $9 billion. However, as LCD tekvision sets increase in screen size and become available at comparable or lower prices than PDP sets, it is likely that LCDs will capture a large share of the market for sets with diagonal screen sizes of under 40 inches, while PDP sets will dominate the market for 50-inch and larger screens.

ORGANIC LIGHT EMITTING DIODES

One of the most important display technologies t o arrive on the scene in the late 20th century was that based on light emission from synthetic organic materials. The materials can be classified broadly as organic light emitting displays, but are often called organic light emitting diodes (OLEIls), Light Emitting Polymers (LEI’S), polymer LEDs (PLEDs), or sometimes Organic Electroluminescent displays (OEL). This technology is fairly young, dating back t o work on conducting polymers in England in the early 1970s and at the University of Pennsylvania in 1977 on “synthetic metals.” Organic semiconductors are formed as aggregates of molecules that are amorphous, that is, noncrystalline and without a definite order.

There are two general types of organic light emitters, distinguished by “small” and “large” molecule sizes. According to a recent review article by Webster E. Howard, I 3 the first practical p-n-type organic LED, h s e d on small molecules, was invented in 1987 by Ching W. Tang and Steven A. Van Slyke of Eastman Kodak. The two scientists recognized that by using two organic materials, one a good conductor o f holes and the other a good conductor of electrons, they could ensure that photon em place near the contact area, or junction, of the two materials, as in a crystalline, inorganic LED. They also needed a material that held its electrons tightly, meaning that it would be easy t o inject holes. For the light to

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escape, one of the contacts must be transparent and the scientists benefited from the fortunate Fact that the most widely used transparent conducting material, indium-tin oxide, bound its electrons suitably for p-type contact material

The structure they came up with has not changed much over the years and is often called the “small molecule” type or the “Kodak-type,” because Kodak holds the basic patent. The Kodak researchers soon modified the design by adding a small amount of the fluorescent dye coumarin to the emitter material tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum. The energy released by the recombination of holes and electrons was transferred to the dye, which emitted light with greatly increased efficiency. Deposition of additional thin layers of indium-tin oxide and other compounds next to the electrodes altered the interaction of the thicker layers and also improved the efficiency of the injection of holes and electrons, thereby further increasing the overall power efficiency of the fluorescent OLED.

I saw one of the first implementations of the device in 1994, a bright green digital display, which was demonstrated at my office by Dr. David Williams, who was then manager of Kodak’s OLED research project. Both my colleague David Mentley and I were truly impressed with the luminance level and the results of tests that had been done by the Kodak group at that time. We immediately became convinced that this would be an important flat panel display technology of the future.

The second type of organic light emitter is the large-molecule polymer light emitting diode. Reported in 1990 by Jeremy Hurroughs and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge,13 this device incorporated a polymer called polyphenylene vinylene (PPV) between dissimilar metal contacts such as indium-tin oxide and calcium, as in an OLED, to provide injection of both holes and electrons. Indium-tin oxide is a metal that tends to inject holes and calcium is a metal that tends to inject electrons. Current PLEDs use a second polymer layer for hole injection and transport. The polymer PPV produces yellow light, with good efficiency and lifetime. n o w Chemical Company has developed other polymers and mixed polymers (two different polymers in solution) based on polyfluorene. These configu- rations can be modified to produce a full range of colors, from red to green, by varying the lengths of the segments of the co-polymers. IJnfortunately, the display lifetimes of these colors have not been comparable to that of PPV and blue is not yet available.

At present, small molecule-based displays are being made with TFTs or directly on silicon wafers to provide full-color (16.777 million colors) active


matrix displays for small screen applications. Kodak and Sanyo Electric, for example, have partnered to manufacture active matrix OLEDs for cameras and cell phones; a 15-inch prototype of a computer display monitor was also demonstrated. Microdisplays for headsets and helmet-mounted displays are being developed by eMagin Corporation, Hopewell Junction, New York, which has demonstrated a 0.6-inch (diagonal) color microdisplay with 800 X 600 pixels built on a silicon microchip active matrix. And, in 2002, Toshiba and Matsushita joined forces to form Display Devices Company, which develops low-temperature polycrystalline silicon LCDs as well as OLEDs. The company demonstrated a 17-inch diagonal color prototype OLED display in 2002.

The manufacturing of OLEDs is still in an early stage, but many firms in Japan and Korea have developed products and are planning production facilities. Capacity is limited to a small fraction of LCD capacity, although it will increase steadily in the future. According to Dr. Kimberly Allen of iSuppli/Stanford Res~urces,~* monochrome passive matrix shipments for some applications have already entered the market and active matrix OLED cell phone displays are expected in 2004. Mobile phones represent the immediate market15 as well as a large total available market and so many manufacturers are pushing forward in that area. Prices for OLEDs will drop aggressively during the period of 2004 to 2009, making OLEDs a strong competitor to LCDs for this application.

The potential for OLEDs to compete with LCDs for computer and television displays is long term, but promises to be formidable. These devices are comparable in image quality to LCDs, h i t may be cheaper to manufacture because of the flexible nature of the material, which makes it amenable to continuous roll-to-roll processing. Also, because they are self- illuminating, OLEDs require less power and can be thinner than LCDs, which generally require hack-lighting. And, like the dream of wall- mounted televison of the 3 950s a n d l!Xi()s, the concept of “roll-up” displays has become a possibility with the advent of OLEDs. In the coming years, one could envision large-screen televisions and computer monitors that roll up for storage, as suggested by Howard.13 It will be interesting to see if these products indeed become reality.

ELECTROLUMINESCENT DISPLAYS

The development of thin-film electroluminescence (TFEL) has a long his- t0ry.l However, it was not until the early 1970s that serious efforts were

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made to commercially develop the technology for information display. Kesearchers at Sharp Corporation, Nara, Japan, first reported then demonstrated high-information content (240 X 180 pixels) AC driven TFEI, displays in 1978.16 These displays were comprised of layers of metal- insulator electroluminescent layer-insulator-conductor all deposited by thin-film techniques on a glass plate. Application of a high voltage above a threshold caused visible light (orange-yellow) to emit from the central layer. Multiplexing was required to drive a dot matrix panel.

During the 1980s, Sharp and Planar Systems were the major manufacturers o f displays based on this technology. With the growth of the LCD industry, this technology began to lose hivor at Sharp in the early 1990s and it focused on LCDs instead. I’lanar Systems, 13eaverton, Oregon, which was founded in 1983 by James Hurd, Dr. Christopher King and John Laney, continued t o develop high-information content, large-screen displays and in the 1990s, the company unveiled a family of EL terminals and monitors that became popular for medical instruments. Ilowever, the difficulty of manufacturing full-color displays with this technology kept it from being competitive with L C l k for high-volume applications. Although Planar Systems still makes TFEL panels, its focus is on offering all types of display technologies to its customer base.

In addition to thin-film EL, another EL technology is the powder technique, the older o f the two.’6 This technology uses a thick film o f zinc sulfide as the active element. Cherry Display Products Corporation of El Paso, Texas, produced DC powder panels in the late 1980s and demonstrated a 640 X 200 pixel display panel in 1987. However, the company closed down a few years later and George Kupsky, the company’s General Manager, joined Westaim Corporation, in Fort Saskatchewan, Canada, where he established a research project in 1991 to build these types of displays using AC drive. Through the efforts o f Dr. Xingwei Wu and Ilonald Carkner, a color display was fabricated. By the late 1990s, the research team had built larger, brighter displays, prompting Westaim to establish a separate company called iFire Technology with headquarters in Toronto, Canada, where the company now employs over 140 scientists and engineers.

iFire claims1’ t o hold over 100 patents and applications related to its proprietary thick-film dielectric electroluminescent (TDEL) technology. In February of 2000, iFire entered into a $25 million strategic partnership agreement with TDK Corporation of Japan to focus on technology collaboration and production of displays 12 inches and smaller. As part of the company’s


large-screen display strategy, $ire entered into a technology collaboration agreement with Japan’s Sanyo Electric Company in July 2002 and Dai Nippon Printing Company in March 2003. Both joint development agreements focus on the advancement of iFire’s TnEI, technology for large-screen flat panel televisions. Recently, the company reported that it scaled its color display from 17 inches t o 34 inches in three months, making the 1,280X768 pixel display the largest fiat panel ever produced using this electroluminescent technology. According to Anthony €3. Johnston, l 7 President of iFire Technology, the 34-inch display was fabricated using low cost processes that will be directly transferred to commercial production. The company claims it will have an estimated 50% advantage in both capital and module costs versus mid-30-inch LCD televisions, once manufacturing has been established. iFire expects to publicly unveil the full-color 34-inch prototype in May at the 2004 Society for Information Display exhibition in Seattle, Washington.

I have watched this technology grow from its beginnings in the early 1990s when I visited Westaim’s laboratory in Fort Saskatchewan t o its transfer t o iFire in Toronto. I have always been impressed by the steady year-to- year progress that the developers have made in increasing performance and size of the display prototypes. Whether this technology will indeed be competitive with LCDs will depend heavily on the success of this company and its partners in taking the product to the high-volume manufacturing StdgC?.

FIELD EMISSION DISPLAYS

The cold-cathode Field Emission Display (FED) is display technology that has attracted much attention around the world for nearly 25 years. The potential applications for FEDs cover the entire spectrum of flat panel and CRT applications. The original work on microtip FEDs was done at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, by Charles A. Spindt and continued in earnest hy K. Meyer and T. Leroux at LET1 in Grenoble, France.16 LET1 (the research laboratory of the Commisariat 2 1’Cnergie atomique in France) was a pioneer in this technology with the first working demonstrations in both monochrome and color displays.

Cold cathode field emission relies on solid-state, monolithic construction rather than mechanically-formed metal elements. It uses tiny cathodes to generate electrons that are passed through a control grid and directed to a phosphor screen. This structure is enabled because the heated fila- ment cathode is eliminated. The microscopic scale o f the active elements

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allows the devices to be made with photolithographic tooling. All o f the addressing and writing hardware can be contained in or on the substrate. The substrate need only be about 0.04-inch thick and with the spacers, larger areas will not require apprecialily thicker glass.

In the original embodiment, the emitter was a microscopic cone of a refractory metal called a Spindt cathode situated in a well comprised of an insulating material. A conductive grid layer was built near the tips o f the cones, which were connected electrically as cathodes. An anode was situated from 0.1 to l m m away from the cathode. The cell was then evacu- ated. When a field o f around 60 t o several hundred volts was applied between anode and cathode, electrons were extracted from the tips of the cones striking a phosphor screen, which emitted visible light. A grid voltage of 20 to 60 volts was used to control the flow of electrons, turning a particular set of cones ON or OFF.

In the 19XOs, several companies including Pixtech and Candescent Technology were formed t o industrialize the technology, but these firms never became profitable and ceased operations. However, Futaba, Mobdrd, Japan, licensed technology from Pixtech to develop displays for automotive applications that are expected t o appear soon. And, Sony worked closely with Candescent to develop large-screen displays. Sony built full- color 15-inch and larger prototype displays, although no manufacturing plans have been announced.

Research and development continued to he conducted in the 1990s by Motorola and other American companies as well as those in Europe, Japan and Korea. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the technology with a shift from Spindt microtip cathodes to other emitters like diamond, graphite and carbon nanotubes.

One unique approach t o eliminate the need for microtips was developed hy I-’rintable Field Emitters Limited, Oxfordshire, England, a company that was formed in 1995. With this company’s technology, the electrons are emitted from graphite embedded in an insulating material from a round hole that is only ten microns across, but is ten times the width of the typical Spindt microtips and thus easier to manufacture. The company claims t o be working with “major display manufacturers” to transfer the technology t o manufacturing. l8

Canon has been developing its own unique technology called the surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SEI)) for about ten years and several years ago joined with Toshiba in a joint project to explore the


possibility o f inanufacturing displays based on the concept. As this book was being completed, Canon announced19 its plan to begin manufacturing large-screen displays in 2006. Canon claims its technology will lie price competitive with PDPs and LCDs in the large-screen television market.

The development of carbon nanotube (CNT) technology in the 1990s sparked significant interest in the use of these devices for FEDs by companies around the world. Motoroka, for example, has been developing carbon nanotubes for various applications for about ten yearsz0 and is now working with display manufacturers to apply their technology to FEDs. The emitting devices consist of tubes of carbon atoms that are typically no large than 1 00 nanometers in diameter. Motorola’s technology involves growing the CNTs by chemical vapor deposition at temperatures under 500°C. The company claims it can precisely place a single nanotube on a glass surface and control its diameter, length, number of walls and the spacing between tubes. Motorola has over 50 patents on CNT technology.

Over the past 15 years, there have been many claims that televisions or computer monitors based on FEDs will be cheaper to manufacture than LCDs or PDPs, but this has yet to be proven. The CNTs do seem to improve the prospects for this technology. Unlike the metal tips that were always changing and being destroyed by oxygen and sputtering, the CNTs are very stable. Noritake Electronics, Mie, Japan, for example, has been using them in high brightness FED pixel-sized units for outdoor signs for several years.

There are several issues to consider in the process of predicting the succcss of the FED. On the positive side is the promise of CRT-like performance. And, while not quite as attractive as a completely solid-state display (like OLEIIs or TDELs), the FED certainly draws upon fewer resources than is needed to make full-color, active matrix LCDs. However, on the negative side is thc difficulty of moving a vacuum electron device into large-scale production. Cooperation and joint development is almost certainly required for the FED technology to become commercially successful.

The amount of effort and resources applied to the FED to date is still small when compared to that expended on LCDs and yet visually attractive working prototypes have been demonstrated. The equipment and techniques needed for fabrication have advanced considerably since field emitter array development began over 20 years ago. As other flat panel types increase in size, FED technology will continue to benefit from equipment advances, particularly deposition equipment.

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REFERENCES

1. Lawrence E. Tannas (ed.), Fht Panel Displays and (XTs (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1985).

2. Roger I,. Johnson, personal communication, May 2002. 3. ‘1’. Shinoda, Y . Miyashita, Y. Sugimoto, and K. Yoshikawa, “Characteristics o f

surface-clischarge color AC-plasma display panels,” SZD International Symposium Digest of Technical Pupers (1981) 164.

4. Electronic Displu-y World 12(5), Stanford Resourccs, Inc., San Jose, CA, 16 (1992). This issue summarized the work reported at the SID International Symposium held in I3osion, MA in May 1992.

5. 1:lectronic DLsphy World 14(9), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 9 (1994). 6 . Ikctronic Dip1u.y World 18(11), Stanford Iiesources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 8 (1998). 7. 1;lectronic Displuy World 19(6), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 2 (1999).

This issue summarized work reported at the SID International Symposium held in San Jose, CA in June 1999.

8. Plusmu Display I%uael.s: Murkets and Technolo~y Trend.7, 2nd cdn., Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 2001.

9. ‘‘TG Electronics unveils world’s largest PDP television,” Koreu Heruld, October 10, 2003.

10. Electronic Displuy World 19(4), Stanford Resources, Inc., San Jose, CA, 10 (1999). 11. Bloomberg News, March 9, 2004. 12. Kiddhi Patel, Telcwision Systems Murket Trucker - 200.3, iSuppli/Stanford

Resources, Santa Clara, C h . Also, personal communication, February 2004. 13. Webstcr E. Howard, “Better Displays with Organic Films,” Scienlzfic American,

February 2004. Prcprint provided courtesy o f Webster Howard, January 2004. 14. Kimberly Allen, personal communication, March 2004. 15. Vinita Jakhanwal, Mobile Disp1uy.s Pucker- 2004, iSuppli/Stanford Resources,

16. Joseph A. Castcllano, Handbook of Displuy Technology (Academic Press,

17. iFire Technology, http://www.ifire.com 18. I’rintable Field Emitters, Ltd., http://www.pfe-ltd.cotn 19. “Canon to mass-produce advanced large-screen display in 2006,” Kyodo News

International, Tokyo, March 9, 2004. 20. “Motorola’s carbon nanotube breakthrough and nano emissive displays

(NEDs),” Motorold, Inc., Analyst Briefing, June 2003.

Santa Clara, CA.

New York, 1992).

Chapter 17

Into the Future

“The only l imit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, circa 1932

CREATION AND GROWTH OF A NEW INDUSTRY

The development of LCDs and the creation of the huge industry that it spawned provide an excellent example of how technology progresses from a laboratory experiment conducted by a few visionaries to hundreds of products that enhance the quality of life for humankind. The time from the first experiments on LCns in the mid-1960s to the creation of a new industry in the early 1970s was remarkably short. The record of LCD manufacturing’ goes back to 1973 when slightly more than one million units were sold worldwide. As shown in Fig. 17.1, there were 2.67 billion units sold in 2003 and 2.86 billion units are expected to be made in 2004. The value of those shipments grew from just $7 million in 1973 to $35.66 billion in 2003; this will reach $47 billion in 2004 (Fig. 17.2).

The industry’s growth over the past 30 years coincided with a Steddy increase in the physical size and pixel content of the panels that could be made. Ihring this time, manufacturing also evolved steadily from largely hand operations with some semi-automatic equipment to highly automated and integrated manufacturing Facilities such as those now being used at LG.Philips LCD in Korea (Fig. 17.3).

As a rule of thumb, many would say it might take ten years for a laboratory development to reach the marketplace, but sometimes one technology feeds on the advances of another, so this could shorten the time. On the other hand, other technologies still under development might be needed to make certain applications possible, thereby extending the time. The development of the LCD provides examples of both circumstances.

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256 Liquid Gold

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500 1000 500

0

Worldwide Shipments of LCDs (Millions of Units)

I J’I

-/.,--~~” PI-i I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

Source: isuppiifStanford Resources, 2004

Fig. 17.1. Historical unit shipments of all typcs of LCDs on the worldwide market (1973-2003). This data was provided courtesy of Sweta Dash and George R. Aboud of iSuppli/Stanfbrd Resources.

Value of Worldwide LCD Shipments

$50,000 $45,000 $40,000 $35,000 $30,000 $25,000 $20,000 $15,000 $1 0,000

$5,000 $0

(Millions of Dollars)

u u u u w w u w u u w u w u f q f q

Source: iSupplifStanford Resources, 2004

Fig. 17.2. The historical value of shipments of all types of LCDs on the worldwide market (1973-2003). This data was provided courtesy of Sweta Dash and George R. Aboud of iSuppli/Stanford Resources.

Into the Future 257

Fig. 17.3. LG.Philips LCD'a automated TFT-LCD manufacturing facility in Gumi, Korea. I'hotos courtesy of Emily Cho and Bruce Rerkoff, LG.Philips LCD.

The development of digital watches and calcukators, the first products to use LCDs, would not have been possible without the coincident development of CMOS integrated circuits. Thus, the LCD digital watch took a short period o f time to go from the first prototypes in 196970 to volume production in 1972-73 because CMOS devices became available at about the same time.

By contrast, the most significant advance in LCD development for television and computer display applications was the development of the thin- film transistor, which began in 1960 at KCA with Paul Weimer. But it was not until 1970 that T. Peter Brody applied TFTs to LCDs and yet another

258 Liquid Gold

13 years before Shinji Morozumi showed the first color television with a two-inch screen. Then it took another five years before the first 14-inch color television prototype was built by Sharp and 12 more years before the first large screen sets (>20 inches) made with TFT-LCDs entered the market in 2000. In this case, it was the manufacturing of TFTs on glass over large areas that required a long development time before the large screen 1,CD television could become a marketable consulner product.

As evident in the data shown in Fig. 17.2, the LCD market has grown sharply since 1998 and is on a steep increase today. This is due t o the fact that high-volume manufacturing has increased output tremendously while reducing production costs and selling prices, thereby making LCD-based products affordable to the masses.

THE IMPACT OF HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION

Another factor that has driven the high growth of the LCD industry was the introduction of HDTV sets, many in the widescreen format with a width-to- height aspect ratio of 16:9. Prior to their market entry in 1998, the television market was essentially flat. The new medium provided viewers with an opportunity to see much higher resolution images from the digital video disks (DVIls) that were becoming popular in the late 1990s. Consequently, viewers began buying more expensive video and audio equipment to enjoy the experience of watching movies recorded on IlVDs. Thus, the growing popularity of HDTV was not so much driven by a desire to receive HDTV programming, which is still limited, but primarily to view high resolution images from digital cable, IlVIls, or satellite systems. This then established the market for the “higher end” television and provided an advantage for flat panel televisions based on PIlPs and LCDs because buyers had suddenly become accustomed t o paying a premium price for enhanced quality and the unique flat, thin feature of the LCD television. In addition, LClls were already available at reasonable prices for 15-inch computer display monitors with pixel formats that provided high resolution images; so many consumers already had experience with a flat panel display.

Today, LCT) television sets with the ability to display high-definition images (not all with built-in decoders for off-the-air hroadcasts) are available through mass merchandisers. As prices o f flat panel televisions decline, inany lxiyers will decide t o purchase these sleek-looking sets for new installations or as replacements for their bulky CRT-based models.

Into the Future 259

THE GROWTH OF LCD TELEVISION MANUFACTURING

According to data compiled by iSuppli/Stanford Resources,2 the worldwide direct view LCD television market will grow from 3.4 million units in 2003 to 27.7 million units in 2007, an average compound annual growth rate of (79%. The value of these shipments will increase from $4.4 billion in 2003 to $21.3 billion in 2007. These are enormous growth rates by historical standards, but certainly likely as flat panels continue to displace the hundreds o f millions of ClZT-based sets installed throughout the world.

In order to meet this enormous anticipated demand, the major manufx- turers are planning to make huge investments in new plants and equipment to manufacture color TET-LCD panels in all sizes. One example is the new joint venture between Samsung of Korea and Sony of Japan, which recently announced a plan to spend $1.8 billion on new Facilities aimed at taking the lead in the LCI) television and computer display monitor markets. Samsung Electronics will hold a majority stake in the venture, called S-LCD. The plant, which will have the capacity to process 60,000 panels per month, will go online in the second quarter of 2005. This venture joins the world’s second largest LCD maker (Samsung) with the world’s second largest consumer electronics maker (Sony). Samsung and Sony will each pay about $900 million for the equipment needed for the venture, according to the report. However, Samsung Electronics will spend an additional $850 million for the building, land and clcan-rooms. The venture, which involves the construction of a seventh-generation plant, will be designed to produce eight 40-inch screens from one mother glass, or double the number from a sixth-generation line.

A second example was the announcement4 that ground was broken in I’aju, an agricultural city north of Seoul, to build what is claimed to be the “world’s largest 1,CD industrial park” by LG.Philips LCD, currently the world’s number one manufacturer. The company will invest $21 billion over the next ten years to produce next-generation TFT-LCDs and to build related research and development f x es. The Paju complex will be built on 3.3 million square meters of land, with LG.Philips LCD building its TFT-LCD production lines on a site scaled at 1.68 million square meters. The new seventh-generation TFT-LCD plant, which is expected to make mother glass sheets of sizes larger than 2 meters X 2 meters, can be used to make display panels larger than 42 inches diagonal and is expected to be operational in the first half of 2006.

The Kyonggi provincial government is providing the remaining 1.32 million square meters for LGPhilips L O ’ S business partners, parts

related research and development facilities. The Paju complex will be built

260 Liquid Gold

suppliers, universities and research institutes. LG.I-’hilips LCD is already operating six LCD plants in its Gumi complex in North Kyongsang Province.

These examples indicate the willingness of LCD manufacturers to invest heavily in new plants that promise to cut production costs by increasing the size of the mother glass substrates. This will serve to boost output while reducing panel prices, further fueling market growth.

PROBING THE FUTURE

Now that liquid crystal displays have become widely used in a whole variety of commercial products, what can we expect to see in the future? With the billions of dollars per year being spent on LCD manufacturing throughout the world, it is clear that the products of the next 30 years will be even more impressive than those of the past 30. Of course, color television will be one of the most important applications. As LCD production volume increases, prices will come down and television shipments will increase, thereby expanding the market. It may take 15 years or more, hut flat panels eventually will completely displace CRTs as the displays o f choice for televisions. Manufacturers will develop new ways to package the large screen panels for use in the average home, offering creative tabletop and pedestal mountings in addition to wall mountings. All will have built-in Internet accessibility and sets operated with wireless communications will abound. As the panels become more widely used, new homes will be designed with electrical and transmission cable outlets built into walls in various locations within the home. Certainly by 2030, most homes will have multiple flat panel televisions; large screens in the living or family room and smaller screens in the kitchen and bedrooms. Many larger homes will have a separate “home theater” room. And, it is likely that multiple display technologies will be in use, with size dictating the type. In the near term, expect to see PDPs used in the largest panels and LCDs in the smaller sizes. Longer term, one or more of the other flat panel technologies (e.g., OLED, TDEL, FED) may emerge as replacements for PDPs and LCDs. Later in the century, maybe after 2030, it is conceivable that remote channel changers will be replaced by voice-actuated systems, ushering in the era of oral channel surfing.

The use of small devices for wireless communication, information storage and data exchange has increased rapidly during the past few years. This growth will accelerate even further when higher quality, low power displays become widely available at lower prices. Full-color active matrix LCDs, OLEDs and perhaps FEDs are poised to fill this need. The electronic

Into the Future 261

book will evolve into a “personal entertainment center.” About the size of a thin notebook, this 8 X 10-inch folded device would open to reveal a 12- inch diagonal color display in portrait mode on one side and a control panel on the other. Users would be able to slip a CD with a full book title into a slot in the control panel side and read a book complete with color photos and video clips. An electronic book could also be used for playing video games and audio CDs, accessing the Internet, retrieving e-mail, and watching movies, as well as for storing telephone numbers and other personal information. It could also have voice communication capability. This electronic book will become widely used by students, clerical workers, executives, salesman, housewives, and others. In ten years, it may be as ubiquitous as the handheld calculator is today.

Replacement of the CRT in desktop computer disphy monitors is well underway and should be complete in about ten years. The replacement of CRTs by flat panels is occurring more rapidly in the business computing community than in the consumer products industry. In full color, these computer screens are extremely compact; freeing desk space for many of the other new, compact office automation products that are already becoming available. Businesses generally have the financial resources to make the change in the interest of increasing productivity through better ergonomics as well as saving space. I expect the personal computer to look quite different in 20 years. The big, bulky boxes that house the CPU, disk drives and other accessories will shrink as these components become an integral part of the display. The need for large amounts of memory will also diminish as Internet-accessible software comes into its own. The keyboard will likely remain for quite a while, at least until accurate voice and tactile inputs become widely used. By the end of the 21st century or perhaps earlier, software will become available to convert words into pictures, adding yet another dimension to the use of flat panel displays.

Another major application for LCDs or other emerging technologies could be the electronic window shade; a concept that has been around for more than 30 years, and has already appeared in some installations. Once they are incorporated into large panes of glass, these electronically- controlled windows could become commonplace on the buildings and skyscrapers of the mid-2lst century.

The use of flat panels for public information displays is also growing rapidly. Every sports stadium and indoor arena has at least one if not multiple flat panel displays, with LEDs currently being the most popular choice. Many airports already have numerous 42-inch color PDPs that are

262 Liquid Gold

used for flight information, while others present television programming. This trend will surely be extended t o airport facilities currently being built or those planned for the next decade. Further on during the century, certainly by 2040, electronic billboards will be ubiquitous. Live-action video with advertisements, news and other information will replace static, printed material. Retail establishments have begun using displays of all sorts. Currently, flat panel television screens and scrolling monochrome LED signs are in use in many large malls and in some department stores. Larger flat panels will also become more widely used in restaurants, specialty stores and fast food outlets. The public’s thirst for information in an ever- expanding information age will not be easily quenched.

The use of electronic displays in transportation has increased significantly over the past 20 years. Many train stations and bus terminals now have flat panel displays to show arrival and departure information; some trains and buses have television displays for entertainment. Installations in airplanes, trains and buses are expected to increase steadily during this century. The introduction of electronic displays in automobiles has taken much longer than anyone expected, but changes are occurring. Many sport utility vehicles now come with built-in LCD televisions for passengers, and LCII navigation panels are being added to vehicles of all types, particularly in Japan and Europe. However, the dream of a fully integrated electronic dashboard in every car has yet to be realized, although many prototypes have been shown. In fact, several production models appeared on the market in the mid-1980s but were discontinued. High costs combined with the need t o change hardcore driver habits (drivers still like to see needle gauges moving- the more gauges, the better) will continue to make this an area of slow, but steady progress. It is conceivable that by 2025 all cars will have fully integrated electronic dashboards with curved surfaces, perhaps using LCI> or OLED technology. These cars will likely have built-in navigation systems with voice output and voice-actuated computer controls for the audio system and other functions.

Looking at the past is easy; predicting the future is clifficult. It is clear, however, that the progress made in developing flat panel display technology over the past 30 years has been surpassed by that in creating new and varied applications for these devices. While we should expect to see new, emerging technological developments in the coming years, I believe more and more applications for existing display technologies will evolve over the next 20 years.

Into the Future 263

REFERENCES

1. Sweta Dash and George R. Aboud, iSuppli/Stanford Resources, Santa Clara, CA, personal communication, January 2004.

2. Riddhi Patel, Television Systems Murket Trucker - 2003, iSuppli/Stan€ord Resources, Santa Clara, CA. Also, personal communication, Febniary 2004.

3. Young-Sam Cho, “Samsung, Sony to spend $1.8 billion on LCI) joint venture,” Forbes, March 15, 2004.

4. Kim Sung-jin, “LG.Philips LCL) to build world’s largest display device park in Paju,” 7%e Koreu Tzmes, March 18, 2004. Reports also came from Reuters News Service and appeared in the Financial Times on the same day.

Epilogue

The privacy o f retirement from a 43-year career in research, development and business has given me the opportunity t o look back at the development of the liquid crystal display industry from its beginning. In writing this story, I liad the rare privilege o f reliving some of the most important events in my career. At the same time, it gave me time to reflect on how the world and technology have changed over this period of time. When I started doing research in liquid crystals in 1965, the world was defined by a political struggle that pitted China, the Soviet IJnion, and their allies against the Western democracies. It was a struggle that also affected the economic and technological aspects of society. In those days, the exchange of technology across national borders was limited. As a result, countries in Southeast Asia were primarily defined in the West as economically “poor and non- industrialized.” ’The island nation o f Japan was the exception, although it was working hard to improve its reputation as a source of high-quality electronic products.

With the opening of China and the later break-up of the Soviet Union, the rules changed, enabling an increased flow of ideas and technology transfer throughout thc world. As a result, much of the LCI) technology that was developed in Europe and the United States began to shift toward the countries and regions of Southeast Aspa and Eastern Europe, where inexpensive kabor was plentiful. However, by the 3 990s, the technological prowess o f scientists and engineers in these regions led to the development of highly automated manufacturing techniques and facilities.

The LCD industry then Ixcame one of efficiency rather than cheap labor, and success was defined by which companies were willing to invest the most in manufacturing technology.

In my view, this transformation has been a great benefit t o the world in general. American and European consumers are now able to buy affordable products made efficiently in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. This has enabled the scientists and engineers in the United States and

264

Epilogue 265

Western Europe t o focus on the development of new devices, improved hardware, and advanced software for products and services of the future. Meanwhile, the standard of living of populations in the manufacturing regions has risen dramatically, leading to a higher level of economic and political stability. As I complete this writing, such changes are now occurring in the People’s Republic of China and India. It is my hope that this example of technology exchange and free trade will spread to other developing nations to improve world economic and political stability later in the 21st century.

Acknowledgments

The LCD industry was created and flourishes today because of the brilliant ideas and dedicated efforts of thousands of scientists, engineers and factory workers around the world who worked through the years to develop LCU- based products that have greatly benefited mankind. Over the years, I was privileged to meet many of these men and women. While I cannot name every person, I want to thank them as a group for teaching me about the many aspects of LCD technology as well as the manufacturing processes, product designs, applications and market plans. Their help was extremely valuable to this history.

There were numerous individuals who assisted me directly in locating vintage images, devices and information that made the writing of this history possible. First and foremost, I must thank Louis Zanoni for providing many photographs of the first LCDs ever made as well as his documents and notes on the early history of the technology. Most importantly was the encouragement Lou provided in urging me to write this story. His comments and suggestions on several of the chapters were also very valuable. I am truly indebted to him for all his help.

I could not have written this book without the help of my colleague and old friend David Mentley, who collaborated with me on display industry research at Stanford Resources for more than 20 years. I will be eternally grateful for all the help he gave me in gathering and compiling information on LCD development through the years.

Another important contributor to this history was George Ileilmeier, who was particularly helpful in relating the early history of LCD development at RCA Laboratories in the days before and after I was involved. &orge was also kind enough to review several of the chapters in their early stages and I am very grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions he provided. I also thank him for the help and guidance he gave me over the years.

I am also grateful to Richard Williams for telling me the story of his early work in liquid crystal research at RCA and for his comments on the early chapters.

266

Acknowledgments 267

John van Wake and Bernard Lechner, two of my many colleagues at RCA in the 1960s, both provided valuable information on the early history of LCD research at RCA. John recounted the story of how he became involved in the development of video projection systems based on liquid crystal light valves. Bernie described the early work at RCA that led to the concept of building LCDs driven by active matrix addressing. I thank them both for their help.

I probably would never have become involved in the LCD industry if not for Joel Goldmacher, who first introduced me to the topic in 1965. I will always be grateful to him for teaching me about this fascinating science. Along with Lucian Barton, we worked together closely to develop the first room temperature nematic liquid crystal mixtures. I must also thank Lucian for providing information on his early involvement in display development.

I am especially indebted to James Fergason for relating his story of the development of the twisted-nematic LCD as well as the early days of LCII development at Kent State LJniversity and the International Liquid Crystal Company. Jim’s help in agreeing to the numerous conversations we had over a period of several months is greatly appreciated.

Another important contributor to the development of LCDs was Martin Schadt, who provided important historical information on the development of the twisted-nematic LCD at Hoffmann-kd Roche as well as his other many achievements in the display field. I thank Martin for his valuable contribution to this history.

Gerald Garies was a very important contributor to the development of high-volume manufacturing techniques for LCDs at the earliest stages. In my opinion, he never received adequate recognition for his pioneering work in the creation of the LCD industry. I am extremely grateful to Jerry for providing detailed accounts of the history of development at some of the first LCI) manufacturers including AMI, Microma, Fairchild and Conic as well as other helpful information. Unfortunately, Jerry passed away shortly after I completed the first draft of the manuscript for this book, so he never had the opportunity to read this book in its final form. My condolences go out to his wife Betty and the other members of his family.

I am deeply indebted to Chan Soo Oh for providing detailed accounts of his involvement in LCD development at RCA, Timex, Beckman Instruments and Samsung. Chan helped fill numerous gaps in the early history of the technology.

I also want to thank Sun Lu for the many helpful conversations we had and for his accounts of the history of LCD development at Texas Instruments, Rikker-Maxson, Hewlett-l’ackard, Exxon Enterprises and

268 Liquid Gold

Landmark Technology. Sun’s contribution of photos and vintage devices is also greatly appreciated.

George Taylor has been a friend for more than 35 years and I thank him for providing information on the early days of LCD development at Princeton Materials Science. I am also grateful to Allan Kmetz, another valuable contributor, who recounted the history of LCD development at Texas Instruments, Rrown Boveri and Bell Telephone Laboratories.

The early history of LCD development in the United Kingdom could not have been fully written without the help of two old friends. One is David Dunmur who provided me with numerous references and information on some of the key innovators. I look forward to reading his upcom- ing book that reviews the classic papers on key developments in the field of liquid crystals. The other is Alan Mosley who recounted the achievements that took place at RSRE and GEC in the lJnited Kingdom during the early years of LCT) development.

Anthony Genovese and Larry Tannas were early LCD innovators who did pioneering work in the development of the first compact desktop LCD calculator and I thank them for their accounts of that history. I am especially indebted to Tony Genovese for providing me with notes, photos and other early LCD devices.

I am also especially thankful to Nunzio Luce for his help in providing information on the development of the first LCD digital watches. Tony’s help in reviewing the chapter on Optel’s history is also greatly appreciated.

Terry Scheffer’s account of the discovery of the SuperTwisted-Nematic LCD was extremely valuable and I sincerely thank Terry for his contribution. I must also thank Arlie Conner for providing the Fascinating story of how In Focus produced the first color LCD projector plates. Thanks also go to Steven Hix, founder of In Focus, for helpful discussions during the early days of the three-hyer LCD projector plate development.

1 would also like to offer my special thanks to T. Peter Rrody for providing a detailed account of his experience in developing the first TFT-LCDs. I have always admired his perseverance in pursuing this technology when others said it could not be done. Also, Webster Howard’s story o f the early days of TFT-LCD development at IBM was especially helpful and I am very grateful for his account. I also thank Web for helpful information on OLED development.

I am also indebted to C.C. Chang, founder and CEO of Varitronix, who recounted the history of the company and the beginning of high-volume LCD manufacturing in Asia.

Acknowledgments 269

Dietrich Demus was working on the development of room temperature nematic liquid crystals at about the same time as our group at RCA and I thank him for providing his account o f those developments at the University of Halle.

I would also like to thank Guenther Baur, a pioneer in the research and development of LCns as well as the inventor of modern in-plane switching technology, for providing papers and references to his work at the Fraunhofer-Institut fur Angewandte Festkiirperphysik in Freiburg, Germany.

Frank Allan has been a friend since our days together at RCA. I thank him for providing information on the early days of LCD development at Olivetti, Timex, and other companies as well as contacts with people who provided additional information. Special thanks also go to Werner Becker of E. Merck in Darmstadt, who was helpful in providing information on the early developments of liquid crystals in Germany.

Daniel Ivanicky provided valuable recollections of the early LCD work at Texas Instruments and Micro Display Systems, and I am grateful for his help.

I am especially thankful to Prederic Kahn for providing papers, references and detailed accounts of the early development of LCDs at Hitachi, Ikll Laboratories and Ilewlett-I’ackard as well as the commercialization o f the very high resolution projector at Greyhawk Systems.

William Bleha provided the history of liquid crystal light valve development at Hughes and I greatly appreciate his effort to compile that story.

I also want to hank William Tonar for helping me with details of the early work at the LCD companies in the mid-western part of the United States. I am also grateful for the other contacts Bill provided so that I could locate others who had information on those early years.

Ernst Leuder provided information on the extensive activities of his group at the 1Jniversity of Stuttgart on TFT-LCDs and other display technologies. I thank him for that as well as the entire list of the 279 papers his group published over the years.

A number of friends in Japan provided very valuable information on their activities in the development of LCDs and other flat panel display tech- nologics. I would like t o particularly thank Hiko Nishijima, Isao Ohta, S. Furuuchi and Tadashi Nakamura, inventor of the vacuum fluorescent display.

Thanks also t o Hirohisa Kawamoto for helpful discussions and for providing his excellent paper on the history o f LCDs that I made reference to a number of times. I am also grateful to Mitsuhiro Kurashige for his help with information on developments in Japan as well as for providing contacts within the display industry.

PDP

270 Liquid Gold

Shunsuke Kobayashi has been a friend for more than 30 years and I thank him for providing his papers and recollections of LCD developments in Japan. I will also be eternally grateful to Kobayashi-san for his help in teaching me about Japanese culture and introducing me to many of Japan’s top LCD researchers.

The story of LCD developments at Samsung in Korea could not have been written without the help of Jun Souk and I thank him very much for providing me with those details. I would also like to thank my old friend Joe Virginia for providing excellent photos of the latest Samsung LCD televisions.

I am also indebted to Duke Koo, Davis Lee and Bruce Berkoff, who provided a detailed history of LCD development at LG Electronics and LG.Philips LCD. A special thanks also goes to Emily Cho for sending me those outstanding photos of the LG.Philips LCD manufacturing facilities and the latest television displays.

I am very grateful to Zvi Yaniv for providing a detailed account of the history of active matrix LCI) development at ECD and 01s. I would also like to thank Roger Johnson and Larry Weber for their help with the history of PI)P developments.

Thanks also go to other friends and colleagues who provided helpful information and directed me to valuable references. Included in this group are Kevin Hathaway, Mary Tilton, Sam Uyeda, Thomas Credelle, Thomas Holzel, Andras Lakatos and Werner Haas. I also thank Donald Small for his recollections of the first liquid crystal conference.

Other people who I would like to thank for providing helpful information are Alex Magoun, Executive Director of the David Sarnoff Library, Margaret Dennis and Carlene Stephens of the Smithsonian Institution and Jenny Needham of the Society for Information Display.

I also indebted to my many other friends at iSupplVStanford Resources who helped me as I was writing this book over the past two years. I am particularly thankful to Paul Semenza and Brian Fedrow for help in locating various files and documents. I am also very grateful to Junzo “Jim” MdSUdd for his help in providing information on display activities in Japan as well in helping me contact various individuals. I would also like to thank Laura Castellano, George Aboud, Sweta Dash, Rhoda Alexander, Kimberly Allen, Iiiddhi Patel, Vinita Jakhanwal and Charles Mdtsumoto for their help in providing contact names, industry information and market data.

I owe a special thanks to Stanley Wu-Wei Liu, acquisition editor for World Scientific Publishing, who agreed to publish this work and who provided numerous helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, I would also like to thank my editor Yun Cheng Mok for invaluable help in completing this project.

Appendix I

Program of the First International Liquid Crystal Conference - August 1965

Sunday, August 15,1965 2-00-11 00 p m Registration. Korb Hall lobby 6:00-8.00 p m Buffet

Monday Morning August 16,1965 Presiding, Glenn H. Brown, Kent State University Opening Ceremonies-'"Welcome'' Robert I White. President. Kent State University

10 00

Lectures 10 30 Conlerence Lecture I "Influence of

Molecular Structure on Liquid Crystalline Properties" G. W Gray, Chemistry Department, University of Hull. England

Conference Lecture II "The Cholesteric Phase" James I. Fergason. Research Laboratories. Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

11 20 1 "Influence of Molecular Structure on Liquid Crystalline Properties and Phase Transitions in These Structures" J S Dave and P R Patel. Chemistry Department, M.S. University of Baroda, India

10 55

11 45 Discussion 11.50 2 "The Mesomorphic Behavior of

Stigmasteryl Carbonates" J L W Pohlmann. U S Army Research and Development Laboratories

12 15 Discussion 12.30 Lunch

Monday Afternoon August 16,1965 Presiding. Joel Goldmacher. RCA Laboratories

Crystals" J I Fergason. N N Goldberg and R J Nadalin, Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania

1.30 3 "Chemical Significance of Cholesteric

27 1

272 Appendix I

1 :55 4 "The Mesomorphic Behavior of Cholesteryl Carbonates" W. Elser, U S. Army Research and Develooment Laboratories

2.25 2'30 5

2:55 3:oo 320 6

3:45 3:50 7

4:15 420 8

4:45 6:OO

Discussion "Influence of Molecular Structure on Liquid Crystalline Properties and Phase Transitions in Mixed Liquid Crystals" J. S. Dave and K. L. Vasanth, Chemistry Department, M.S. University of Baroda, India Discussion Coffee and Tea 'Transient Behavior of Domains in Liquid Crystals'' George H. Heilmeier, RCA Laboratories, Princeton, New Jersey Discussion "Electric Field Effects in Cholesteric Crystals" W. J. Harper and J. L. Fergason, Westinghouse Research Laboratories, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Discussion "Field Effects in Choiesteric Liquid Crystals" J. H. Muller, US. Army Research and Development Laboratories Discussion Dinner

Monday Evening August 16,1965 Presiding, Amos Horney, Director of Chemical Sciences, Air Force Office of Scientific Research

9. "Dielectric Relaxation in Nematic Liquid Crystals" Gerhard Meier, lnstitut fur Elektrowerkstoffe der Faunhofer, Gesellschaft. and A. Saupe. The University, Freiburg, West Germany

8:OO

825 Discussion 8:30 10. "Possible Ferroelectric Behavior in the

Nematic Phase of p-Azoxyanisole" Richard Williams and G. Heilmeier. RCA Laboratories, Princeton, New Jersey

11. "Possible Elastic Contributions From 8:55 Discussion 9:M)

Restricted Macro-Brownian Rotation in Anisotropic Fluids" Bernard Rosen, The Research Division, The Western Company, Dallas, Texas

925 Discussion

Tuesday Morning August 17,1965 Presiding, R. 0. Ennulat, U.S. Army Research and Development Laboratories Plenary lecture - "Paracrystals in Nature I" R. Hosemann, Fritz-Haber lnstitut der Max- Planck, Berlin, Germany

W. Wilke, R. Hosemann. K Lemm, Fritz-Haber lnstitut der Max-Planck, Berlin, Germany

9:00

1O:OO 12 "Paracrystals in Nature 11"

10% Discussion 10:30 Coffee and Tea 10:50 13. "The Problem of Polymorphism in Liquid

Crystals"

11:15 1120 14

11:45 11:50 15

1215 12:30

H. Sackmann, Institute fur Physikalische Chemie, der Universitat Halle, East Germany Discussion "Some New Mesomorphic Substances'' J. Billard, Labomtoire de Physique Theorique, College de France, Paris and R. Cerne, Soclete Nyeo, Paris Discussion "The Triangle Well Approximation in a Quantum Cell Model" R. D. Reed, Ling-Tempo-Vought, Dallas, Texas Discussion Lunch Social Hour and Banquet - Twin Lakes Country Club Presiding, D. C. Jones, Kent State University. The Address, The Honorable Charles A. Mosher, U.S. Congressman, 13th Ohio District

Wednesday Morning August 18,1965 Presiding, A. Mabis, The Procterand Gamble Company

S. Chandrasekhar, Department of Physics, University of Mysore, India

9:00 16. "Surface Tension on Liquid Crystals"

9:25 Discussion 9:30 17. "Conditions Governing the Formation of

Lyotropic Liquid Crystals by Molecular Association" D. G. Derivichian, Service de Biophysique, lnstitut Pasteur, Paris. France - Read by D. M. Small

18. "The Structure of the Mesomorphic Gels Occurring at High Temperatures with Alkali

A. Skoulios and G. Gallot. Centre de Recherches, Sur les Macromolecules, Strasbourg, France

1O:OO

soaps"

1025 Discussion 10:30 Coffee and Tea 10:50 19. "The Structure of Lyotmpic Mesophases"

R. R. Balmbra, J. S. Clunie, J. M. Corkill and J. F. Goodman, Procter and Gamble Ltd., Newcastle on Tyne, England

11:15 Discussion 1120 20. "Study of the Lamellar Structure Presented

by Polystyrene-Polyethylene-oxide Block Copolymer" A. Skoulios, E. Franta, P. Rempp and H. Benoit, Centre de Recherches. Sur les Macromolecules, Strasbourg, France

11 :45 Discussion 1230 Lunch

Wednesday Afternoon August 18,1965 Presidlng, Daniel Berg, Westinghouse Electric Corporation

21. "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Studies of Surfactant Mesophases" K. D. Lawson and T. J. Flautt Procter and Gamble Company, Cincinnati, Ohio

1:30

1:55 Discussion

First International Liquid Crystal Conference 273

2:OO 22. "NMR Studies on Binary Liquid Crystalline Phases" M. P. McDonald. Department of Science and Metallurgy, Sheffield College of Technology, England

225 Discussion 2 3 0 23. "The Average Orientation of Solute Molecules

in Nematic Liquid Crystals by High Resolution Proton Magnetic Resonance and Orientation Dependent Intermolecular Forces" A. Saupe, Physical Institute of the University, Freiburg, West Germany

2 55 Discussion 3:OO Coffee and Tea 3:20 24. "information From Analysis of NMR Spectra

of Monofluorobenzene in a Nematic Solvent" L. C. Snyder, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey

3'45 Discussion 3:50 25. "Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectra of

Molecules Dissolved in Nematic Phases" G. Engiert and A. Saupe, Hoffman LaRoche & Co. Ltd., Easel, Switzerland and Physical institute of the University, Freiburg, West Germany

4:15 Discussion 4 2 0 26. "Some NMR and Kinetic Studies of Molecules

in Nematic Phases" M. Panar, W. 0. Philips and J. C. Rowell, Central Research Department, E. I. duPont de Nemours and Co.. Wilmington, Delaware

4:45 Discussion 6:OO Dinner

Wednesday Evening August 18,1965 Presiding, J. F. Fergason, Westinghouse Electric Corporation

8:OO Films and Demonstrations

Thursday Morning August 19,1965 Presiding, J. J. Woiken, Carnegie institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Plenary Lecture II -The Choiesteric Phase in Polypeptides and Biological Systems Conmar Robinson, London, England

27. "Liquid Crystals in Biological Systems" G. T. Stewart, Professor Epidemiology and Pathology, University of North Carolina

9.00

1O:OO

1025 Discussion 10:30 Coffee and Tea 10:50 28. "Solid State Mechanisms of Ion Transport in

Biological Systems" F. W. Cope, Aviation Medical Accelerator Laboratory, U.S. Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, Pennsylvania

11:15 Discussion 11 :20 29. "Lyotropic Paracrystaliine Phases Obtained

with Ternary and Quaternary Systems of Biological Importance" 0. M. Small and Martine Bourges, lnstitut Pasteur, Paris, France

11 :45 Discussion

11:50 30. "The Use of Liquid Crystals for Thermotroprographic Measurement of Neoplastic and of infiammatory Lesions in Man" Helena Selawry, James Holland and Oleg Selawry, Department of Medicine, Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, New York

1215 Discussion 1230 Lunch

Thursday Afternoon August 19,1965 Presiding, G. W. Gray, Hull University, Enoland

Ordered Structures in Living Cells" E. J. Ambrose, Institute for Cancer-Research, Royal Cancer Hospital, London, England

1:30 31 "Macromoiecuiar Systems Producing

1:55 Discussion 2.00

Solutions" William Leonard, Shell Development Company, Emeryvilie, California

Discussion of the terminology used in the fieid of Liquid Crystals

32. "Thermodynamics of Anisotropic Polypeptide

225 Discussion 2:30

3:15 Picnic

Friday Morning August 20,1965 Presiding, W. G. Shaw, Standard Oil Company

9:00 33. "Liquid Crystal Patterns'' John F. Dreyer, Polacoat Incorporated. Blue Ash. Ohio

925 Discussion 9:30 34. '"Anti-Airy Waves Propagation in Twisted

Nematic Films" J. Biliard, Laboratoire de Physique Theorique, College de France, Paris

9:55 Discussion 1O:OO 35. "Ultrasonic Absorption and Dispersion at

Phase Transitions in Liquid Crystals and Binary Liquid Mixtures" P. 0. Edmonds, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania

10.25 Discussion 10:30 Coffee and Tea 10.50 36. "Behavior of Crystalline Liquids as Stationary

Phases in Gas Partition Chromatography" H. Kelker, Farwerken Hoechst, Frankfurt. Germany

11:15 Discussion 11 :20 37. "Specific Heat and Heat of Transition of

Aromatic Liquid Crystals" Heinrich Arnold, lnstitut fur Chemie der Technischen Hochshule, Ilmenau, East Germany - Read by H. Sackmann

38. "Infrared Dichroism Studies of Liquid 11:45 Discussion 11:50

Crystals" V. 0. Neff, Leslie Guirich and G H. Brown, Department of Chemistry, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

12:15 Discussion 1230 Lunch

Appendix I I

A Chronology of LCD Developments

Thc discovery of liquid crystals goes back to the late 19th century. Although sporadic studies o f the effects of electric fields were conducted through the first half of the 20th century, the use of these materials for display applications did not occur until the 1960s. However, the pace of invention greatly accelerated in the 1970s, especially following RCAs 1968 public announcement of its research and development in the field. As a result, the task of creating a chronology of the events leading to the key developments in 1,CD technology is perhaps the most difficult part of this history.

In a number of cases, several individuals or groups working independently in various parts of the world conceived the inventions almost simultaneously. Consequently, to prepare this chronology I used literature references, patent application dates and statements from the key individuals themselves to establish the timeline. If certain individuals feel they have been excluded, it is because I had insufficient information about their involvement and I sincerely apologize. However, since most of the key participants in the development of LCDs provided me with their papers, patents, photos and personal recollections, I believe this chronology is about as accurate as one could provide within the time frame of this book's preparation. The specific events outlined in this chronology are described in the body of the text and literature references are presented at the end of each chapter.

1888

Friedrich Reinitzer at the German University of Prague first reports that a unique state of matter exists between a crystalline solid and a pure liquid.

214

A Chronology of LCD Developments 275

1890

Otto Lehmann at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in Germany con- firms Reinitzer’s olxervations and coins the term “Fliissige Krystalle,” which translates to liquid crystal in English.

1911 0 Charles Mauguin in France fabricates the twisted-nematic structure

upon which a display technology is created 60 years later.

1922

Georges Friedel in France establishes the nomenclature to describe the various liquid crystalline phases.

1929

Zocher and I3irstein in Germany perform the first studies of the effects of rnagnetic and electric fields on liquid crystal materials.

1931

Russian physicist Vsevolod Konstantanovich Frederiks (also known as Freedericksz) discovers periodic hydrodynamic domains in liquid crystals subjected t o electric fields.

1936

I3arnett Levin and Nyman Levin, working at the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in England, obtain the first patent on a liquid crystal device - television was cited in the patent as a possible application for the light valve.

1942

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) opens RCA Laboratories, its central research center in Princeton, New Jersey, to further develop

276 Appendix I!

radio and television technology. In 1951, the kaboratory is renamed the David Sarnoff Research Center.

1962

George Gray, Professor of Chemistry at the IJniversity of Hull in England, publishes the first book on the structure and properties of liquid crystals. This book opened the field to many chemists and physicists who went on to develop devices based on these unique materials. Paul Weimer develops the first thin-film transistor at RCA Laboratories. Iiichard Williams at KCA Laboratories discovers the formation o f domains in a nematic liquid crystal under electrical excitation and applies for a patent on an electro-optical device using liquid crystals. His work is not published until 1963.

1964

George HeiImeier at RCA Laboratories conceives the use of dichroic dyes in liquid crystals to create what he calls the “Guest-Host Effect.” He and Louis Zanoni build the first device using this effect, but the work is not published until 1968.

1965

Glenn Brown, Dean of Research at Kent State University, establishes the Liquid Crystal Institute and organizes the First International Liquid Crystal Conference at Kent. The world’s leading researchers in the field meet for the first time.

1966

George Heilmeier, Louis Zanoni and Lucian Barton at RCA Laboratories build the first liquid crystal display based on what Heilmeier calls the “Dynamic Scattering Effect.” The project is classified as secret by RCA management and no reports are published until 1968. Joel Goldmacher, Joseph Castellano and Lucian Barton at RCA Laboratories develop the first room temperature nematic liquid crystal mixtures to be used in LCDs. The mixtures, which are composed of


Schiff base compounds with similar structures, have low melting points, but high nematic thermal stability. Publication of these results does not occur until after 1968. Working at KCA Laboratories, John van Raalte fabricates a liquid crystal device coupled with an electron beam to demonstrate the first off-the- air moving television picture on a liquid crystal display and builds a prototype projection system to magnify the images.

1967

Dietrich Demus at the University o f Halle publishes the first report on the concept of mixing nematic compounds to obtain low melting mixtures with high thermal stability.

1968

A team of engineers at KCA Laboratories that includes Bernard Lechner, Frank Marlowe, Edward Nester and Juri Tults, build the first LCD to operate at television rates using discrete MOS transistors wired to the device. KCA Corporation announces that scientists and engineers at its central research center have developed a new display technology based on liquid crystals that may lead to a flat panel television in the future. The researchers demonstrate the first LCDs using the dynamic scattering effect. The announcement sparks a worldwide effort to further

George Heilmeier and Joel Goldmacher at RCA Laboratories demonstrate the first optical storage or “bistable” LCD using a mixture of cholesteric and nematic liquid crystals.

develop LCI>S.

1969

Louis Zanoni builds the first LCD digital test meter and replaces the vacuum fluorescent display in Sharp’s first compact desktop calculator to show the first applications of LCDs to digital readouts. The first three-layer color LCD using the Guest-Host effect is built by a team of researchers at KCA Laboratories under a project for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

278 Appendix I!

Louis Zanoni at RCA Laboratories conceives of and patents the first advertising (point-of-purchase) display to use liquid crystals. One year later, Richard Klein, Sandor Caplan and Kalph Hansen at RCA’s Solid State Division in Somerville, New Jersey, build the first production units. Wolfgang Helfrich, working at RCA Laboratories, performs experiments on Mauguin’s twisted-nematic structure that demonstrate the possibility of fabricating a new type of low-power, field effect LCD. James Fergason, Sardari Arora and Alfred Saupc at Kent State University publish a paper on experiments using Maugum’s twisted-nematic structure and work begins t o build displays based on the concept Yoshio Yamasaki at Suwa Seikosha in Japan begins a research program to develop LCDs for digital watches. James Fergason leaves Kent State Ilniversity to form the International Liquid Crystal Company where he fabricates a cell that demonstrates the electrical activation of a twisted-nematic structure. 11. Kclker and 13. Scheurle at Farbwerke Hoechst AG in Germany syn- thesizc the first single compound to exhibit nematic liquid crystallinity at room temperature.

1970

James Fergason, Ted Taylor and Thomas Harsch at International Liquid Crystal Company publish a paper that describes the twisted-nematic effect as it might be used in a Guest-Host type display. Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas, starts a program to develop a handheld calculator using LCDs. Wolfgang Helfrich joins Hoffmann-La Roche in Switzerland, and together with Martin Schadt, they build what they believe is the first twisted-nematic LCD. They immediately apply for a patent on the device. Because this patent appears before Fergason’s patent, a bitter legal lxtt le ensues until 1976 when the issue is settled by compromise and all parties get a percentage of the licensing fees. Tadashi Sasaki and Tomio Wada at Sharp Corporation’s central research center in Nara, Japan, build a prototype compact desktop calculator with a dynamic scattering LCD and start a program to build the first truly portable handheld calculator. Nunzio LLKX o f Optel Corporation, Princeton, New Jersey, designs the first integrated circuit chip for an LCD watch, and with his team of


engineers, builds the world’s first LCD digital watch, which uses the dynamic scattering effect. William Bleha, Alexander Jacobsen, David Margerum, T.D. Beard, M. 13raunstein and S.Y. Wong working at Hughes Aircraft Company in Malihu, California, develop the first projection system based on a photoactivated liquid crystal light valve. Joseph Castekano and Ronald Friel at RCA Laboratories build the first LCI) to use interdigitated electrodes t o electrically change the orientation of the molecules in the same plane. This later becomes known as “in-plane switching.”

8

1972

George Gray, John Wash and Kenneth Harrison at the University of I Iull, England, synthesize the first cyanobiphenyl liquid crystal compounds and mixtures. The materials provide higher stability and better operating performance than the Schiff base materials then in use. The development is a major breakthrough that leads to the implementation of low cost LCD manufacturing. Martin Schadt at Hoffmann-La Roche Ixiilds the first fully functional twisted-nematic LCD. E. Peter Kayne5, working at the IJnited Kingdom’s Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, develops improved inaterials and processes that eliminate “reverse twist” and “reverse tilt” in twisted-nematic LCDs, greatly increasing manufacturing efficiency. Anthony Genovese, Lawrence Tannas and their colleagues at Rockwell International, Thousand Oaks, California, build the first commercial desktop calculator with a dynamic scattering LCD. The AC line- operated unit is sold by the Sears Roebuck chain of stores. Sun Lu and Derek Jones working at Riker-Maxson in New York, build what is believed to be the first digital watch using the twisted-nematic field effect.

1973

Tomio Wada, Tadashi %saki and their team at Sharp develop the world’s first handheld calculator using a dynamic scattering LCD. This is the first truly portable, battery-operated unit to enter the market.

280 Appendix I1

Frederic Kahn and his colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories develop the first laser-addressed smectic liquid crystal light valve for projection systems. Allan Kmetz at Texas Instruments gives the first report that LCDs respond to the root mean square value of the applied voltage. Seiko Watch Company introduces its first digital watch with a twisted- nematic LCD and goes on to become one of the world’s leading LCD watch producers. T. Peter Brody, Fan Luo and their colleagues at Westinghouse Research Laboratories build the first active matrix LCD using cadmium selenide thin-film transistors.

1974

Paul Alt and Peter I’leshko of IHM publish their classic paper on rules for optimizing the multiplexing of LCDs.

1975

Robert B. Meyer, working at the University of Paris in Orsay, France, develops the first ferroelectric liquid crystal material.

1977

Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan, demonstrates one of the first television sets made with a twisted-nematic LCD. The set has a monochrome six-inch diagonal multiplexed LCD with 82 X 109 pixels. Thomas Muir of Villa Precision in Phoenix, Arizona, develops one of the first automated glass scribing machines for LCD manufacturing, opening the way for laminate sealing and scribing of large amys of LCDs. Rudolf Eidenshink, Ludwig Pohl, G. Krause and D. Erdman at E. Merck in Darmstdt, Germany, develop cyanophenyl-cyclohexdne liquid crystal compounds, a new class of materials that offer improved performance for LCDs.

1978

Matsushita Electric Industrial Company of Osaka, Japan, builds one of the first monochrome LCD television prototypes using active matrix


addressing. The dynamic scattering display with 240 X 240 pixels is formed on a silicon wafer with MOS driver circuits. Gerald Garies o f Fairchild Semiconductor is one of the first to develop a photolithographic process on 16inch square plates for fabricating large numbers of LCDs on a single substrate.

1979

Peter Le Comber and Walter Spear, at the University of Dundee in Scotland working with Anthony Hughes at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, England, discover that hydrogenated amorphous silicon (or-Si:H) thin-film transistors are suitable to drive LCDs in an active matrix.

1980

Noel Clark and Sven Lagerwall at the Chalmers Technical University in Goteborg, Sweden, build the first display device to use a ferroelectric- smectic material. The first liquid crystal conference is held in Kyoto, Japan, where a record number of papers are presented on material and display development. This is the first opportunity for Japan’s researchers to demonstrate the significant advances they made in LCD development. Ernst Leuder and his colleagues at the University o f Stuttgart in Germany are among the first to fabricate TFTs with photolithography instead of vacuum deposition.

1982

Seiko Watch Company (Hattori Seiko) of Tokyo introduces the first wristwatch television; it uses a Guest-Host LCI). Seiko Epson, Suwa, Japan, develops the HX-20, the first portable computer with a 4-line X 40 charactcrAine passive LCD. It becomes the first portable computer to enter the I J . 5 market.

1983

Shinji Morozumi and his colleagues at Suwa Seikosha, Suwa, Japan, demonstrate the world’s first commercial color LCD television. The

282 Appendix II

two-inch diagonal twisted-nematic LCD is driven by an active matrix of thin-film transistors and has 240 X 240 pixels. Colin Waters and E. Peter Raynes at the Royal Signals and Kadar Establishment in England, discover the SuperTwisted-Nematic Effect using a Guest-Host type material. Terry Scheffer and Jiirgen Nehring at Brown I3overi Company in Switzerland discover the Superl'wisted-Nematic Effect without the use of added dye, giving the display higher contrast than the Waters- Kaynes device and enabling many more lines of pixels to be multiplexed than was possible with conventional twisted-nematic LCDs. This opened the way for high information content LCI>s to be used in portable computers. Mitsuhiro Yamasaki and his colleagues at Sanyo Electric Company in K o b e , Japan, working with S. Sugibuchi and Y. Sasaki o f Sanritsu Electric Company in Tokyo, build the first three-inch diagonal color active matrix color LCII television using a-Si:H TFTs. Kyocera of Tokyo, Japan, builds the first portable computers with %-line X 40-character/line passive LCIIs, which are used in models sold by Tandy, NEC, and Olivetti.

1984

Chan S o o Oh of Ikckman Instruments introduces liquid crystal display technology to the technical staff at Samsung Electron Devices in Suwon, Korea, and the company begins its development program in LCDs. Seiko Instruments o f Tokyo, Japan, introduces the first commercially availat,le multi-color LCD modules using passive matrix panels with 720 X 64 pixels.

1985

Zvi Yaniv, David Wells and Vincent Cannella at Optical Imaging Systems in Troy, Michigan, develop an active matrix LCD that uses ar-Si:H thin- film diodes. The group builds a 640 X 400 pixel display with this technology in 1986. Brown Boveri Company of Rdden, Switzerland, demonstrates the first STN-LCII prototype. The 10.7-inch diagonal panel has 540 X 270 pixels. The company begins licensing the technology to LCD manufacturers.


1987

Hitachi in Tokyo introduces the first five-inch diagonal color active matrix LCD television driven by a-Si:H TFTs. Seiko Epson of Suwa, Japan, develops the first 6.7-inch color LCD television. It shows 640 X 440 pixels and was built with metal-insulator- metal (MIM) diodes instead of 17;Ts. Donald Castleberry, George I’ossin and Thomas Credek from General Electric KcGI> Center in Schenectady, New York, build the first color 8.8-inch diagonal active matrix 1,CD with more than 260,000 pixels and more than one million a-Si:H TFT5 Kyocera o f Tokyo, Japan, develops Chip-on-Glass technology for 1.CD manufacturing.

1988

Hiroshi Take, Kozo Yano and Isamu Washizuka at Sharp Laboratories in Nara, Japan, build the world’s first defect-free 14-inch diagonal color active matrix LCD with 642 X 480 pixels. The display uses more than 1.2 million ’IFTs. Engineers and scientists at IBM’s research center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and Toshiba’s research center in Kawasaki, Japan, jointly develop the largest computer display monitor built up to this time. The 14.3-inch diagonal color active matrix screen has 770 X 550 pixels and more than 1.5 million a-Si:H TFTs.

1989

Engineers at Optical Imaging Systems in Troy, Michigan, build the first eleven-inch diagonal active matrix LCD for military aircraft. The company signs a joint development agreement with Samsung Electron Devices to build active matrix KDs . NEC of Tokyo, Japan, introduces the Ultralite model, the first LCD notebook computer with a full-size screen that is thinner and lighter than other portable computers on the market. JapdneSe-bdSed firms Toshiba, Sharp and Mitsubishi introduce the first portable computers with color S7”-LCD screens.

284 Appendix I1

1992

Guenter Baur, R. Kiefer, F. Weber, F. Windscheid and H. Klausmann at the Angewandte Feskorperphysik in Freiburg, Germany, describe the use of interdigitated electrodes for in-plane switching in twisted- nematic LCns to widen the viewing angle. Canon in Tokyo, Japan, develops the first 15-inch diagonal color ferroelectric LCD. The display has 1,280 X 1,024 pixels and can show 16 colors.

Engineers and scientists at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, California, develop the first monochrome TFT-LCI) with 6.3 million pixels and the first color TFT-LCI) with more than 1.6 million pixels. Both displays have a 13-inch diagonal screen. The IJnited States Display Consortium is formed and locates its headquarters in San Jose, California. Flat Panel Display Company B.V. is formed as a joint venture among Philips o f Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Sagem, of Paris, France and Thomson Consumer Electronics of Paris France. The operation is initially based in the Netherlands. Thomas Buzak working at Tektronix in Reaverton, Oregon, develops the first color plasma-addressed LCD. The 16-inch diagonal panel has 640 X 480 pixels and can show 4,096 colors.

1995

M. Ohta, M. Oh-e and K. Kondo of Hitachi in Mobdra, Japan, build a 13.3-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD, the first to use the in-plane switching inode to widen the viewing angle. Other LCD manufacturers soon license the technology and begin producing displays with in-plane switching. Engineers at Sharp Corporation in Nard, Japan, build the first 28-inch diagonal prototype color TIT-LCD by seamless joining of two 21-inch panels.

0

1996 0 Samsung Display Devices, Suwon, Korea, develops the first 22-inch

diagonal color TFT-LCD panel. This display is built on a single substrate.


Sharp Corporation, Nara, Japan, announces the fiabrication of the first 29-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD built on a single substrate and a 40-inch diagonal TIT-LCD built by the seamless joining of two 29-inch panels.

1997

Samsung Ekctron Devices, Suwon, Korea, builds the first 30-inch diagonal color I’IT-LCD for television.

1998

Scientist at IBM’s research center in Yorktown Heights, New York, build the first color TFT-LCD to have a resolution of 200 pixels per inch. The 16.3-inch diagonal panel has 5.2 million color pixels in a 2,560 X 2,048 pixel format and 15.7 million TFTs.

1999 Philips of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and LG Electronics of Seoul, Korea, form a joint venture called LG.I-’hilips LCD, which goes on to become the world’s largest LCD manufacturer in 2003.

2001

Microdisplays based on the use o f liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices are developed by a number of companies and become incorporated into prototype television projection systems.

2003

LG.Philips LCII, Gumi, Korea, builds the first 52-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD display for television. Samsung Electron Devices, Suwon, Korea, builds the first 54-inch diagonal color TFT-I,CD for television. LG.I-’hilips LCD, Gumi, Korea, builds the first 55-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD display for television. Samsung Electron Devices, Suwon, Korea, builds the first 57-inch diagonal color TFT-LCD for television.

Index

3M Company 124

Aboud, George R. 256, 270 Accr 184 Ackcrmann, Fclix 170 active matrix 85, 175, 178, 182, 186,

American Microsystems 134, 149 AM1 (American Microsystems, Inc.)

106, 107 amorphous silicon (a-Si) 120, 121, 171,

178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 192, 193, 194, 197, 200, 217, 218, 239, 281 198, 201, 216, 219, 238, 280, 281,

282, 283 active matrix OLlil) 249 Adams, James 52 Adlcr, l'redericli 91, 95, 96 Advanced I>isplay Systems 237 Air Development Center, The 60

Alexander, Iihoda 270 Allan, Frank 24, 133, 269 Allen, Kimherly 249, 270 Allen, l'aul 206 Allied Signal Aerospace 183 Alphasil 185, 186 Alt, Paul 102, 280 Altair 206 Alto 206 Ambrose, E.J. 37 Amelio, Gilbert 120

Air Force MdterkdlS Laboratory 60

Angewandtu Feskorperphysik 284 anil (see also benzylidene aniline

compounds) 26, 27 anisylidene-~-aminophenylac~~dte 51 Apple I 207 Apple 11 207, 208 Apple Computer 205, 207, 220 Araki, K. 192

Arora, Sardari 76, 278 Asahi Glass 136, 181, 201 Ashford, A. 129 Ashley-lhtler 64, 100 A'I'l'&T Corporation 69, 70, 182,

Atari 207 AIJ Optronics 184, 236 Au, Alex 136, 138

Arigd, KdZllO 88

218, 228

287

288 Index

AVX Materials 123, 169 azoxy compound 129

Haltracon 114 l?alzers 31, I14 Hdrdff, David 194 Hmm, Alfred 42, 44 Harton, I,LKkdn “ILK” 22, 23, 24, 32, 58,

267, 276 Raur, Guenter 62, 269, 284 HRC 151 I3DH Chemicals 129

Ikck, James 133 lkcker, Werner 269 lkckman Instruments 62, 134, 142,

143, 144, 154, 267, 282 I M l 1,al)oratories 69, 70, 79, 120, 147,

149, 179, 269 Hell Northern Research 194 Hell Telephone Lahoratories 15, 37, 46,

tknnet, Edwarcl 112 lxmzylidene aniline compounds (see

also a d ) 26 Ikrkcley, Edmund C. 205 lkrkoff, I3ruce 234, 257, 270 Ikrman, Hcrnard 107 Ikrreman, Dwight 149 13illard, Jean 35 Billings, Larry 104 Birecki, 11. 132 Birstein, V. 3, 275 biStdbility 52 Bitzer, 1)onald I,. 243 Hkaier, Stefan 157, 158, 159, 160 Blank, Stuart 182 Neha, William 1’. 147, 148, 269, 279 Ulosc, Rodney 98, 100, 112, 135 I 3 O E €lydis Technology 236 Uoggs, b v i d 206 13osomworth, Ilouglas R. 92

Reard, +r.ii. 279

145, 182, 268, 280

Hoston LJniversity 36 HI-’ Solar 179 Hraunstein, M. 279 Hricklin, Daniel 207 Brimmell, V. 129, 150 British Drug House (HIXI) (see also

British Ministry of Defence (see also IWH Chemicdk) 129, 155

Royal Signals and Radar Establishment) 150

13rody, ?’. k t e r 42, 16, 120, 122, 175, 176, 177, 178, 257, 268, 280

IWwn I3overi & Company 73, 77, 103, 149, 214, 268, 282

Brown, Donald 108 Hrown, George H 49 Brown, Glenn H. 6, 7, 34, 165, 166, 276 Ikownewell, Donald 118, 119 13cirns, Joseph K. 16, 46, 156, 168 I3urroughs Corporation 243 hrroughs , Jeremy 248 Biuak, l’homds 238, 284

cadmium selenide 120, 176, 178, 280 cadmium sulfide 43, 46, 176 Candescent Technology 252 Cannella, Vincent 183, 282 Canon 85, 153, 180, 237, 252,

Capban, Sandor 64, 100, 278 carbon nanotube (CNT) 253 Carkner, Donald 250 Carlson, David E. 179 Carr, Edward E 54 Casio 66, 68, 85, 191, 193, 201, 223 Castellano, Joseph 32, 276, 279

Castleberry, Donald E 198, 283 cathodochromic storage tube 92 cathodochromics 16 cathodoluininescent 14 CCI) iinager 120

253, 284

CdStelkdnO, kiUra 270

Index 289

Ceghd, ]'at 107 Center for Macromolecular Research,

Strasbourg, France 37 Centre National d'Etudes des

Telecommunications (CNEV 229

Chalmers 'kchnical LJniversity 152, 281 Chan, C.S. 119, 137 Chandrasekhar, S. 36 Chang, C.C. 139, 140, 268 Chang, Morris 103 Chang, Simon 107 Chatelain, Pierre 4, 54 Cbemical & Engineering News 66 Cheng, K.K. 119, 136 Cherry Ilisplay Products Corporation

Chi Mei Optoelectronics 236 Chip-on-Gkdss (COG) 61, 215, 283 c h i d liquid crystal 41 Chirila, Constantin 157, 158 Chisholm 61 Chisso Chemical Company 131,

155, 201 Chistyakov, Igor G. 54 Cho, Emily 257, 270 cholesteric 115 cholesteric ester 8 cholesteric liquid crystal 7 cholesteric mesophase 2, 3, 35, 37, 41 cholesteryl nonanoate 51 Christian Science Monitor 50 Christiano, Victor 45 Chronar 95 Chung Hsin Electric & Machinery

Chung, S.M. 139 Chungwha Picture Tubes 236 Citizen Watch Company 136, 155, 181,

192, 193, 214 Clark, Michael G. 153, 168 Clark, Noel A. 152, 281

250

Manufacturing Corporation 235

Ckdry, KObert 157, 168 Claude, Georges 242 CMOS 63 Colantonio, George 98 College of France, h r i s 35 color plasma-addressed LCD 284 Commodore 104, 134, 135, 207 Compact I h c (CI)) 92 Compaq Computer Corporation

Compton, Arthur Holly 9 Computerwise 210 Congnits, Ion 158 Conic Investment Co. 136, 139 Conic Semiconductor 137, 138, 139,

Conner, A r k 61, 268 Constant, J. 129 Constellation 139 Control Data International 228 Corrigan, Wilfred 112, 116, 11.8 Costina, Kadu 158 Courtaulds, Ltd. 37 Creagh, Linda 101, 102 Credek , Thomas 198, 270, 283 CliL 181 CKL Opto 154, 168 Crockett, Hnice 134, 135 Crystaloid 104 Crystalvision 124 cyanobiphenyl 128, 130, 131,

cyanophenylcyclohexane 130, 131, 280 cyanophenylcyclohexane ester 130

209,214, 220

140, 164, 236

144, 279

L>deWOO 156 I h i Nippon Printing Company 201, 251 Daini Seikosha (now known Seiko

Dainippon Ink and Chemicals 131 Dalisa, Andrew 172 Darsh, Arnie 105

Instruments) 104, 136, 151, 181

290 Index

Ihsli, Sweta 256, 270 Ihtapoint 120, 121 Ihtascreen Corporation 122, 124, 125 I>atnscreen/Kylcx 123, 135, 172 l>ave, J.S. 35 1)avid Sarnoff Research Center 14, 15,

17, 31, 45, 166, 169, 176, 198, 276

Ilavics, 1)avid 122, 123 dl3asc I1 207 de Gentles, Pierre G. 54, 71 I k Meis, Mikc 42 Ilefense Advanced liesearch Projects

I-km~is, 1)ietrich 29, 30, 230, 269, 277 Ilennehy, William 67 Dennis, Margaret 270 Iknny, Arthur F. 30 dichroic dye 19, 237 1)igital Equipment Corporation 206, 229 digital light processing 201 1)igital Micro Mirror Ilevices 148 Digital Rescarcli 207 IXgital Video IXsc (Dvl)) 92 I>isk Operating System (DOS) 207 l)isk/?'rcnd lieport 167 i>isney, k ) y E. 69 ilisney, Itoy 0. 69 ])isplay llevices Company 249 Ilisplay 'I'ech 140 1)isplay 'l'echnology Incorporated (DTI)

Display 'I'echnology Limited 136 IXttlemen, Steven 173 Doane, J. William 6, 237, 238 domain (see also Williams domain) 17

i h w Chemical Company 248 dpix 186 Iheyer, John 1:. 76 h m i n , David 46 h n m u r , h v i d 268

Agency (I>ARIN) 382, 185

218, 219

1)0~1bk GL1est-Ilost 88

ilurand, Georges 54 I>urbeck, 1lolm-t 85, 217 dynamic random access inemory 239 dynamic scattering 22, 23, 41, 49, 50,

98, 99, 103, 106, 111, 133, 139, 141, 142, 176, 190, 276, 278, 279, 281

52, 57, 58, 62, 65, 84, 86, 93, 94,

E. Merck (see also EMI) Chemicals) 129, 130, 131, 154, 155, 230, 269, 280

Eagle Pitcher 136 Early Effect, The 120 Early, James 120 Eastinan Kodak 247 Ebauches SA 134, 144 ECLI 185, 270 ECD Ovonics 179 EEV 153 Eidenshink, Iludolf 280 E-Ink Corporation 173 electrochromism 75 electrolurninescence 75, 167, 177 electroluminescent 250 Electroluminescent Display 249 electronic ink 174 electronic paper 173 electronic window shade 51 Electronics Research and Service

Organization (ERSO) 235 electrophoretic display 86 electrophoretic image display (EPIII)

Hser, Wolfgang 36, 38, 55 eMagin Corporation 228, 249 EMD Chemicals (see a~so E. Merck) 129 Energy Conversion Devices 179, 182 EPID (an Exxon Enterprises Division)

172, 173 Epson 136, 211 EliC '143

171

Index 291

ilrclman, D. 280 Esprit 229 ester 129 European Il&l> Consortium 229 E-valve project 101 I’vanicky, Daniel 103, 104 Exetron 108 Icxxon 120, ‘I21 l’.xxon lhtcrprises 121, 122, 123, 124,

167, 172, 173, 180, 267 IIxxon Mobil Corporation 179 Exxon Solar Power Corporation 179

F. Hoffman-La Koche 55, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 125, 231, 149, 155, 170, 230, 267, 278, 279

Fairchild 79, 109, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 131, 132, 134, 135, 236, 137, 139, 140, 149, 172

lkirchild LCD Operation 114, 115 Pairchild Semiconductor 31, 100,

I’arbwcrke I Ioechst, Frankfurt 36 Fedrow, Brian ’1’. 169, 270 I’ergason, James L. 6, 7, 8, 35, 41, 51,

I’erguson 193, 194 I’crgirson, Ilonald ‘I 05 ferroelectric 1,CD (FCCD) 152, 153, 154,

237, 284 fcrroelcctric liquid crystals 239 ferroelectric-smectic 152, 237 l k l d Emission Display (FED) 228,

251, 253, 260 I’lasck, Kicharcl 185 Flat h n e l Ilisplay Company H.V. 229,

231, 284 Fleming, Alexander 92

Ford Motor Company 144 Fortune 93 Francis, David 50

‘112, 281

55, 76, 77, 104, 143, 237, 267, 278

FlhSigC K r y S t d k 1, 275

Frankston, Robert 207 I’rdunhofer Institute for Electronic

Fraunhofer-Institut fiir Angewandte I’estk(irperphysik 269

Frederiks, Vsevolod Konstantinovich “Freedericksz” 3, 4, 275

Frcie Ilniversitit, Uerlin 75 I’riedel, Georges 2, 275 I’riedman, Peter 245 Priel, Ronald 69, 59, 60, 62, 279 frit 114 Fritz-ITabcr Institute of the Max-I’lanck

Society 37 Fry, I3nd 112, 134 Fujitsu 85, 136, 245, 246 Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display Limited

I’ujitsu 1,aboratories 180, 193, 197, 244 full color 197 I’ung, K.K. 137 l’uruuchi, s. 269

MateSkdlS Research 36

246

I’uCakTd 252

gallium arsenide 46 Garies, Gerald ‘:Jerry” 106, 107, 117,

118, 119, 136, 137, 138, 139, 238, 267, 281

Gates, William (Bill) 206 Gavilan Computer Corporation 212,

21 3 GEC 153, 154, 181, 268 GBC Marconi 168 GEC’s Hirst liesearch Centre 168 General Electric Company 46, 67, 179,

197, 198, 283 Geneva University 3 Genovese, Anthony G. 62, 140, 341,

German University of Prague 274 glass frit 132, 138 Glaxco 129

142, 143, 144, 145, 268, 279

292 Index

Gnostic Concepts 169 Gold Star 155, 156 Goldmacher, Joel E. 10, 11, 16, 24, 25,

32, 34, 38, 40, 50, 51, 54, 55, 58, 66, 92, 96, 267, 276, 277

Goodman, Lawrence 60, 68, 115 Gorog, Istvan 42 Gould, Stephen Jay 127 Graham, George 93 Gray, George W. 5, 8, 34, 35, 38, 122,

127, 165, 166, 276, 279 Greyhawk Systems 146, 147, 269 Grid Compass 210 Grid Systems Corporation 210 Grcren 98, 93, 106, 1/13 Girardian Industries 185 Guest-IIost Effect 21, 22, 23, 24, 52, 53,

57, 61, 72, 77, 85, 87, 88, 104, 134, 150, 151, 154, 180, 181, 191, 276, 277, 278, 281, 282

Giilick, Paul 61 Guinares, Amilcar 93 Gumtna LJniversity 165 Giryon, TI. 115

Haas, Werner 52, 270 Harnamoto, Masakatsu 75 Hamlin 104, 105 HannStar 236 Hanscn, Ralph 64, 278 Hareng, Michel 181 Harris Semicxmductor 229 Harrison, Kenneth 122, 123, 127, 279 Harrison, Sol 16 Harsch, ‘I’homas 77, 278 Hathaway, Kevin 107, 133, 134,

157, 270 Hattori Seiko 191 Hayakawa Electric Company 83 Hayes 207 Heilmeier, George E l . 4, 7, 18, 19, 20,

21, 22, 23, 24, 32, 34, 35, 38, 41,

45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 58, 59, 63, 66, 67, 71, 83, 84, 101, 190, 266, 276, 277

Helfrich, Wolfgang 54, 60, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 133, 278

Henderson, Eric 157 I-iennessy, (korge 67 Herold, Edward 15 IIewlett-I’ackard 68, 79, 100, 103, 121,

122, 144, 146, 206, 228, 267, 269 I-Ieyman, Philip M. 45, 169 High-Definition Television (HDl’V) 258 I-Iilhert, Ilavid 3 Hillier, Jaines 15, 49 IIilsum, Cyril 129, 153, 154 IIirst L O 154 IIirst Icesearch Center 153 FIitachi 85, 121, 136, 151, 155, 170, 171,

181, 193, 201, 211, 214, 235, 245, 246, 269, 280, 283, 284

I-Iitachi Iiescarch 1,aboratories 63 €Ii-Vision PDP Consortium 229, 245 Hix, Steven 61, 268 Hoefler, Don 108 I Ioerni, Jean 95, 96 I-Ioffmann-La Roche (see F. Hoffmann-

La Koche) Holmberg, Scott 185, 186 I-Iolzel, Thomas 270 Iloneywell Corporation 67, 144,

185, 186 I Ioseinann, Rolf 37 IIosiden 181, 214, 230 IIosiden and Philips Dispkdy

Corporation (HAPD) 231 IIoward, Webster E. 216, 217, 218, 247,

249, 268 Ilsieh, Paul 133 Hughes 46, 102, 148, 172, 269 Hughes Aircraft Company 134, 147,

Hughes, Anthony J. 180, 281 154, 279

Index 293

IHughes-JVC Technology Corporation 148

Hull, Joseph 104 Hume, I). 129 Flurd, Jaines 250 Hiitcheson, Jerry 167 hydrodynamic domain 4 Hyltin, Thomas 104 Hynix 236 Hyundai Electronics 156 Hyundai Electronics America 186

II3M 69, 70, 79, 85, 102, 147, 207, 208, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 228, 268, 280, 283, 285

IILV Japan 224 Il3M Research 224 ID 'kch 236 iFire Technology 250, 251 Ikeda, Hironosuke 167 ILIXCO (International Liquid Crystal

Company) 77, 98, 1.04, 143, 267, 278

lniage Light Amplifier 148 Image Quest Technologies 186 In I'ocus Systems 61, 268 indium-tin oxide 133, 114, 123, 131,

in-plane switching 62, 269, 279, 284 Institut Angewandte Feskorperphysik

Institute for Cancer Research, London

Institute of Crystallography, Montpellier,

Integrated Display Systems 104 Intel 106, 107, 113, 133, 149 interdigitated 142 interdigitated electrodes 62 International Display Works, Inc. 142,

Intersil 95, 96, 106, 149

195, 248

62

37

France 54

145

Intreprinderea Mcchanica Find (IMP)

Ise Electronics (see ako Noritake Itron

isotropic liquid 1, 5 iSuppli Corporation 170 iSuppli/Stanford Resources 247, 249,

Ivanicky, Daniel 269 Iwayanagi, Shigeo 165

156, 158, 160

Corporation) 58

256, 259, 270

Jacolxen, Alexander 279 Jakhanwal, Vinita 270 Janning, J. 11 5 Jobs, Steven 207 Johnson, Robert 183 Johnson, Roger I,. 243, 244, 270 Johnston, Anthony 13. 251 Johnstone, Hobert 37 Jones, Derek 301, 102, 103, 279 Jones, Robert 104 Jones, Sir Brynmor 5 JVC 148, 245 JVC 1)igital linage Technolgy Center 148

Kahn International 147 Kahn, Frederic J. 70, 132, 145, 146,

Kan, Raphael 119, 137 Kane,Jean 24 Kaplan, Mike 42 Kapustin, A.P. 4 Kasano, K. 62 Kawai, s. 180 Kawamoto, Hirohisa 72, 84, 128, 151,

200, 269 Kelker, 13. 36, 102, 278 Kent Digital Signs 238 Kent Display Systems 237, 238 Kent State IJniversity 6, 34, 35, 53, 70,

147, 269, 280

91, 104, 166, 237, 238, 267, 276, 278

294 Index

Kiefer, R. 62, 284 Kilby, Jack S. 102 Kim, long 13ae 1.55, 156 King, Christopher 250 Icinney, Ray 112, 117, 118, 319, 120 Kinter, Malcolm '107 Kirton, John 129 Kiss, ZOltdnJ. 16, 66, 91, 93, 95 Klaiismann, TI. 62, 284 Klein, Richard 64, 278 Kleitman, Ilavici 41, 42 Icrnctz, Allan 102, :lO3, 149, 151, 182,

Knight, Card 119 Kolxiyashi, Shunsukc 62, 87, 165,

268, 280

168, 270 Kol,e Steel, Ltd. 83 Icoch, Eugene 157 Kodak 228, 248, 249 Komats~i, T. 245 Kondo, K. 6'2, 284 K o o , I h k e M. 233, 270 Korea Institute of 'I'echnology 156 Kornstein, Edward 92 Korsakoff, Leonard 16, 24 Krause, G. 280 Kuchinsky, Saul 2/13 K~ipsky, George 250 Kurashige, Mitscihiro 229, 230, 269 TWy, Ilavitl 119 Kwan, S.S. 119 Kwok, S.K. 139 Kylex (see also Datascreen/Kylex) 122,

124, 125 Kyocera 61, 62, 211, 212, 214, 215,

Kyoto University 165 282, 283

I,alxs, Mortimer 154 1,adcor 157 T,agcrwall, Sven T. 152, 283 T.akatos, Andras 187, 270

Lampson, 13utler 206 Landmark Technology 65, 268 Laney, John 250 Langley Research Center, NASA 60 laser smcctic 116 Law, I Tarold 15 Le Comber, Peter G. 180, 281 Le Contellec, M. 181 Lechner, €3crnard J. 41, 42, 43, 176,

LED (light emitting diode) 14, 67, 75,

LED watch 109 Lee, D.S. (Davis) 233, 270 Lee, James 139 Lee, liay 142, 143 Lefkowitz, Issai "Lef" 96, 97, 98, 99, 100 Lehmann, Otto 1, 275 Lei Chu Enterprise Company 234 Leroux, T. 251 Leslie, Frank M. 54 LET1 251 Leiicier, llrnst 181, 269, 281 Levin, Harnctt 4, 275 Levin, Nyman 4, 275 Levitt Industries 95 Lewis, IIenry 15 1.G Electronics 155, 226, 231, 233, 245,

LG.l'hilips LCD 226, 231, 233, 234, 255,

LG-Philips Displays 43 T,iao, York 139, 146 Liebowitz, Marshall 133 Light Emitting Polymer (LEI') 2/17 Light Valve IJroducts, lnc. 148 Lipton, Lewis T. 172 I.iquid Crystal Institute 6, 51, 76, 77 liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) 145,

237, 238, 239, 240, 285 liquid crystal polymer 10 Litronix 149

267, 277

108, 167, 227, 239

246, 270, 285

257, 259, 260, 270, 285

Index 295

Iitton Systems 229 Liu , Stanley Wu-Wci 270 I,ohman, Hobert 5 0 1,ongines-Wittnauer 97 Longo, Thomas 120, 121 Ix)we, Ikrtram 97, 98, 99 h i , Sun 65, ‘101, 102, 103, 122, 124,

267, 279 I.uce, Nunzio A. “Tony” 92, 93, 94, 95,

97, 268, 278 Lucent Technologies 218 I u A l IXsplays 153 12uckhurst, Geoffrey R. 54 Luo, Fan 178, 280 LXD 104, 105

Magnavox 104 Magoun, Alexander 15, 270 Mailer, Hugh 105 Manhattan Project 9 Manning, William 238 Marconi Wireless ‘I‘clegraph Company

Margcrum, J. David 102, 154, 279 Mark, IIerman 9 Markwe, Frank J. 41, 277 Marshall, Rue 136, 137, 139, 164 Masuda, Junzo ‘yitn” 270 Matsumoto, Charles 270 Matsushita 85, 86, 171, 181, 210, 211,

214, 245, 24.6, 249 Matsushita Electric Industrial Company

171, 192, 280 Mauguin, Charles H. 1 , 73, 77, 275 Maydan, I h n 70

McCreight, Edward 206 Meckiros, Matthew 231 Megahertz 140 Mcier, Cerhard 36 Muntley, Ihvid E. 169, 172, 230,

4, 275

Mccaffrey, Michael 59, 60, 107

248, 266

Muck KGaA 129 mesomorphism 1 mesophase 2 metal-insulator-metal (MIM) 194,

methyl cellulose 135 Mcyer, Kohert 13. 152, 251, 280 Mcyerhofer, Ileitrich 60 Micro Display Systems 104, 135, 269 Microdata Computers 210 Microelectronics and Computer

’Technology Corporation (MCC) 228

195, 196, 283

Microma 105, 106, 107, 111, 117, 133, 134,149

Microsoft Corporation 206, 208 Migliorato, I’iero 153 Ministry o f Ilefence, IJK 129 Ministry of International Track and

Mirrors, Donnelly 13‘) Misawa, T. 192 Mitsubishi Electric 136, 181, 216, 219,

245, 283 Moggridge, William 210 Mok, Yun Cheng 270 Moriguchi, Yasuo 83 Morin, Francois 181 Morita, Akio 82 Morozumi, Shinji 85, 86, 192, 195, 200,

217, 258, 281 Moslcy, Alan 153, 168, 268 Motorola 112, 118, 134, 149, 252, 2% Muir, Thomas 118, 280 Mder, J.H. 35 multi-gap display 86 MLIIX~LI, Peter 173 Murray, Walter 135

Industry 201

N.V. Philips 104 Ndkagdwa, William 112, 132 NakdmLlYd, Tadashi 58, 269

296 Index

Nanotronix 136 Mash, John 127, 279

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 60

National Center for Telecommunications Studies (CNE'I') 181

National Research Council, Ottawa,

National Science Council 235 National Semiconductor 149 National Telecommunication Research

Center, Prance 229 NCAP (necnatic curvilinear aligned

phase) 237 NIX Corporation 136, 145, 155, 201,

211, 212, 214, 215, 220, 236, 245, 246, 282, 283

247

NdtiOndl 109, 134

Cdnddd 71, 73

NRC Pkisma Ilisplay Corporation

NTiC Ultralite 215, 222, 283 Needham, Jenny 270 negative dielectric anisotropy 52, 54 Nehring, Jiirgen 149, 150, 282 nematic 28 nematic liquid crystal 2, 237 nematic mesophase 2 nematos 2 Ness Time 107 Ness, Gordon 107, 108 Nester, Edward 0. 41, 277 New York Times, The 50, 51, 59 NI-IK 83, 229, 245 Nihon Synthetic Kubber 201 Nishijima, Hiko 269 NIXIE tulx 2/13 N-methyl pyrrolidone 135 Noritake Electronics 253 Noritake Itron Corporation (see abo Ise

North hmericdn Philips 172, 173 Electronics) 58

North h M k d n Rockwell 140 Noyce, Robert 111 NITS Applied Electronics kdbOrdtorieS

200 nuclear magnetic resonance 37

O'nonnell, Cedric 141 Ocean Power Technologies 97 Oguchi, K. 192 Oh, Chan S o 0 59, 60, 133, 141, 143,

144, 154, 155, 256, 184, 267, 282 Oh-e, M. 62, 284 Ohta, Isao 86, 171, 269 Ohta, M. 62, 284 Ohtsulta, 7'. 86 OIS Optical Imaging Systems (01s)

182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 228, 232, 270, 282, 283

Oki Electric Industry Company 199, 214, 245

Okubo, Y. 180 OLBD 260, 268 Olivetti 133, 211, 269, 282 Omron 108 Onogi, Shigeharu 165 Optel Corporation 20, 24, 66, 91, 92,

93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 106, 107, 116, 122, 156, 268, 278

Optical Coating Laboratory 74, 105 optically active 41 Optrex 136, 170, 171 Organic Electroluminescent display

organic light emitting diode (OLED)

organic light emitting diode displays

Orient Electronics 236 Orion Electronics I56 orthicon tube 16 Osborne Computer Corporation 208,

209

(OEI.) 247

222, 247, 249, 253, 260, 268

228, 236

Index 297

Osborne, Adam 208 Oshima, €1. 192 Overbergcr, Charles G. 10 Ovshinsky, Stanford 179, 182

p-azoxyanisok 17 pbutoxybenzoic acid 24 p-ethoxybenzylidene-y‘-

aminobenzonitrile (PERAB) 53, 72, 73, 133

p-ethoxybenzylidene-~’ hutylaniline (EU13A) 102

pmethoxybcnzylidene-p’-butylaniline (MHHA) 102

p-methoxycinnamic acid 24 Page, Derrick 177 I’anasonic Industrial Company 192 Panelvision 178

Park, C. 154 Park, Ho Young 154 Park, Jeong Ok 155 I’asierb, Edward F. 45, 46, 59, 60, 71 passivating 30 passive matrix 85 Patel, W d h i 270 I’CI Displays 145 l’edagogical Institute, Iwanowo,

Pentax 193 I’erkins, D.M. 45, 46 personal entertainment center 261 Peterson, Lillian 132 I’feiffer, James 118, 119 I’halen, James 105 Philips 79, 92, 151, 181, 226, 229, 230,

Philips Research Laboratories 197 photochromic display 133 photochromic material 172 Photonics Imaging 245 Pioneer Corporation 245, 247

paracrystal 37

U.S.S.II. 54

231, 233, 238, 284, 285

Pixtech 252 Planar Systems 105, 250 I-’kanarized Active Matrix 200 plasma 167 plasma addressing 237 plasma display panel (PDP) 210,

222, 229, 230, 238, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246

238 plasma-addressed active matrix 1.CI)

Plasmaco 245 I’lasmatron 238 pleochroic dye 19 Pleshko, Peter 102, 280 pocket television 51, 85 Pohl, Ludwig 280 Pohlmann, Juergen 36, 38

polycrystalline silicon 85, 378, 179, 181,

polyimide 132, 135, 144, 151, 155, 199 polymer LED (PLED) 247, 248 polymer-dispersed liquid crystals 237 Polymer-Stabilized Cholesteric Texture

polyphenylene vinylene (PI’V) 248 Polytechnic IJniversity of New York 9 Porter, James 167 positive dielectric anisotropy 53, 54 I’ossin, George E. 198, 283 hinceton Materials Science 96, 97, 99,

PokdcOdt 76

187, 192, 200, 218, 239, 249

238

100, 106, 107, 111, 116, 125, 135, 268

Princeton Resources 100, 125, 168, 181 Printable Field Emitters Limited 252 Printed Circuits International 144 I’roxima 61

Quanta Display 236

wardl liesearch 153 Radio Schack 207, 210, 211, 212

298 Index

Kagavan, Vijay 107 kajchinan, Jan 15 Kappaport, Paul 15, 179 Raynes, E. Peter 99, 128, 129, 150, 151,

K(;R 12, 14, 16, 37, 40, 48, 49, 51, 55, 279, 282

58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, 91, 93, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106, 107, 108, 116, 125, 127, 134, 142, 149, 155, 167, 176, 267, 275, 276, 277

KCR Corporation 198 KCR Lalioratories 11, 14, 17, 20, 24, 25,

32, 34, 35, 36, 43, 54, 57, 58, 62, 66, 71, 72, 79, 83, 84, 86, 91, 92, 96, 101, 133, 176, 179, 198, 266, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279

Rebc Electronics 95, 156 KeFac/C>ptel 157, 158, 159 Keinitzer, Friedrich 1, 274 Iienault 144, 145 reverse tilt 99, 115, 129 reverse twist 99, 128 Keyes, Gregory 112 lieynolds, Richard 103 liiker-Maxson Corporation 65, 103,

267, 279 Ringsdorf, I Ielmut 10 liiordan, Keith 132 Ristagno, Charles 102, 104 Robinson, Conmar 37 Rolxon, Robert 105 Rockwell 133, 141, 142 Rockwell Automation 140 Rockwell International 58, 62, 68, 134,

140, 279 Rockwell Science Center 141 Rockwell Standard 140 Rockwell, Willard 140 l<ocltwell-Collins 67 Iiocntgen 224 liolic 76

liose, Albert 16 Koss, Alex 16 Koswell Park Memorial Institute 37 Koyal Cancer Hospital, London 37 Iioyal Signals and Radar Establishment

(RSRE) 128, 129, 151, 152, 168, 180, 181, 268, 279, 281, 282

Sackmann, Horst 30, 36, 38 Sagem 229, 284 Salisbury, l’aul 119 Sampo 235 Samsung 154, 156, 182, 226, 233, 259,

Samsung, Ltd. 155 Samsiing Display Devices 225, 284 Samsung Electron Devices 144, 155,

184, 232, 282, 283, 285 Samsung Electronics 156, 232 Samsung Group 231 Samsung SDI 246 Sanritsu Electric Company 61, 181, 282 Sanyo 136, 201, 211, 214 Sanyo Electric Company 181, 192,

Sanyo’s Shioya Kesearch IAoratory 167 Sarnoff laboratories 69 Sarnoff, David 14, 58 Sarnoff, Robert 59 Sasaki, Tadashi 83, 84, 165, 167,

Sasaki, Y. 181, 282 Saupe, Alfred 6, 76, 278 Schactt, Martin 55, 73, 74, 76, 78, 133,

Scheffer, Terry J. 61, 149, 150, 151,

Scheurlc, 13. 102, 278 Schiff base 26, 29, 30, 65, 66, 129, 277 Schindler, Henry 64 Schmidt Instruments 229 Schnurr, Iiobert 104

267, 270

249, 251, 282

278, 279

170, 267, 279

268, 282

Index 299

Schroecler, Alfred C. 15 Science Applications International

Sears 141, 142 Seiko 45, 85, 171, 190, 193 Seiko Epson 75, 104, 136, 170, 194, 195,

106, 200, 201, 211, 214, 281, 283 Seiko Instruments 104, 136, 170, 199,

213, 214, 282 Seiko Watch Company 280, 281 Selawry, IIelena 37 self-aligned 193 self-alignment 180 Semenza, Pad 270 Sethofer, Nicholas 105, 106 shadow mask 68 Sharp 68, 85, 136, 141, 142, 151, 155,

Corporation (SAIC) 184

167, 170, 181, 201, 210, 211, 213, 214, 216, 220, 224, 225, 238, 258, 279, 283

103, 194, 200, 250, 278, 284, 285 Sharp Corporation 58, 83, 165, 179,

Sharp Laboratories 283 Shewchun, John 16 Shih, Peter T.C. 235 Shima, 'l'oru 21 9 Shinijo, T. 62 Shinoda, Tsutae 244 Shugart, Alan P. 207 Silicon Valley 96, 105, 106, 121, 122,

Silver, li. 46 Sin King 138, 139 Singer, I3arry 173 Skoirlios, Anthony 37

sloped evaporation 115, 131, 137 Slottow, H. Gene 243 Small, Ihna ld 36, 270 smectic 30, 145 smectic mesophase 2 smectos 2

157, 232

S-13CD 259

Smithsonian Institution 270 Snyder, Lawrence 37 Society for Information Display 45, 76,

86, 341, 151, 173, 181, lY2, 218, 251, 270

Solarex 179 Solid State Scientific 93 Solid State Time 108 Sony Corporalion 82, 92, 191, 238,

252, 259 Soref, k h a t d 62 Sorkin, TIoward 30, 71 Sotong 156 Souk, Jun H. 225, 232, 270 Spear, Walter E. 180, 281 Sperry Corporation 185 Spiedel 134, 143 Spindt cathode 252 Spindt, Charles A. 251 Spong, Fred 42 Sprague Electric Company 98, 99, 100 Sprague, John 98 Sprdgue, Robert C. 98, 99, 100 Springwood Electronics 24, 95 Sproull, Robert 206 SKI International 198, 251 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey

179 Standish Industries 105, 228 Standish 12CD 105 Stanford liesources 125, 156, 168,

169, 170, 172, 173, 181, 217, 230, 233, 266

Stanley Electric Company 88 STC 140 Stephens, Carlene 270 Stern, Herinan 64 Stevens, William K. 50 Stewart, Gordon 36

Stone, Garrett 122, 123 Strebel, Ronald 104

STN-LCD 213, 214, 223, 282

300 Index

Sugata, M. 180 Sugibuchi, S. 181, 282 Suncrux 107, 108, 149, 157 super TFT-LCD 63 supertwisted Guest-Host effect 151 supertwisted-1,irefringence effect

SuperTwisted-Nematic Effect 153, 213,

SuperTwisted-Nematic LCD 61, 268 surface-conduction electron-emitter

149, 151

214, 282

display (SED) 252 Sussman, Alan 54, 59, 71 Suwa Seikosha (now known as Seiko

Epson) 84, 85, 104, 136, 181, 132, 278, 281

Suzuki, Harry 136, 137, 139 Suzuki, K. 180 SVA 236

Ta (tantalum metal) 195 Taiwan Kolin Company 235

Take, Hiroshi 200, 283 Takeda, Masatami 165 Takeuchi, Fumio 87 'laliq 237

'randy Corporation 210, 211, 212,

'I'ang, C.B. 119, 137 'I'ang, Ching W. 247 'I'annas, Jr, Lawrence E. 141, 268, 273 tantalum pentoxide 194, 195 'Patung 235

'I'aylor, George W. 15, 96, 97, 99, 100,

'I'aylor, Ted 77, 278 TDK Corporation 250 Technical University of Karlsruhe 275

Tdkdnd, Y. 245

'I'anakd, 1 IideO 199

213, 282

'PdylOr, Gary 70

121, 122, 125, 156, 158, 168, 268

Teleram Communications Corporation 211

Telex 61 Teller, Edward 10 tellurium 177, 200 Temple IJniversity 154 Texas Instruments 45, 68, 79, 101,

102, 103, 104, 109, 134, 135, 141, 142, 148, 149, 207, 267, 268, 269, 278, 280

Thacker, Charles 206 Thermally-Addressed Dye Display 124 thick-film dielectric electroluminescent

(TI>EL) 250, 251, 253, 260 thin-film diode 282 thin-film electroluminescence (TFEI,)

thin-film electroluinincscent display

thin-film transistor 31, 40, 176, 199,

Thomas Watson Research Center 69 Thomson 193, 198 Thomson Consumer Electronics 43,

Thomson CSF 181 Tietjen, James 15 Tilton, Mary 270 Time 82, 208, 211 Timex 96, 107, 132, 133, 134, 143, 149,

Tohoku IJniversity, Japan 85 Tokyo Science [Jniversity 165 Tokyo IJniversity of Agriculture and

Technology 62, 87, 165 Tonar, William 105, 269 Toppan Printing 201 Toshiha Corporation 62, 85, 87, 171,

249

210

280, 282

229, 284

267, 269

180, 211, 214, 216, 218, 219, 220, 224, 249, 252, 283

'I'oshima, Toru 88 'I'ektronix 44, 45, 238, 284 'l'ramiel, Jack 135

Index 301

Trish, Cinch K 169, 17.3 Truly Semiconductor 236 Tso, T.S. 137 'Tsunda, I. 62 Tuen Mun, Hong Kong 119, 136 Tults, Juri 41, 277 twisted-nematic display 51, 54, 62, 75,

77, 78, 84, 87, 98, 99, 103, 104, 111, 124, 133, 151, 180, 280

17,s. Army R&I> IAmratories 35, 36 1 J.S. Army's Night Vision Laboratory

IJchida, Tatsuo 87 IJenohara, Michiyuki 145 IJLVAC 202 IJnipac 182 IJnipac Optoelectronics Corporation

[Jnited Microelectronics Corporation

IJnited States Display Consortium

University College, London 5 University of Baroda, India 35 IJniversity of Camlxidge 248 IJniversity o f Cincinnati 6 University of Colorado 152 University of Dundee, Scotland 180,

LJniversity o f Halle, Germany 29, 30,

IJniversity of Hdl, England 5, 122, 327,

IJniversity of Illinois 243, 244, 246 IJniversity of Leeds 154 IJniversity o f Maine 54 IJniversity of Mysore, India 36 University of' Newcastle upon 'I'yne,

IJniversity of North Carolina 36

55

184

184

(USUC) 228, 284

217, 281

36, 130, 269, 277

129, 166, 168, 276, 279

England 54

[Jniversity of Pennsylvania 18, 247 University o f Southampton, England

llniversity of Stuttgart, Germany 181,

Uyeda, Sam 106, 270

54

260, 281

vacuum fluorescent display (VFI)) 58,

van I.oan, Paul 107 van Raalte, John A. 42, 44, 45,

Van Slyke, Steven A. 247 Varadyne Electromask Company 142 Varitronix 139, 140, 236 vertically aligned neinatic 14 5 Videlec 151 video disc 92 Villa Precision 118, 140, 280 Virginia, Joe 270 VisiCalc 207 Visionox 236 VIX Research 167 Vulcan 207

67, 269

267, 277

wddd, Tomio 83, 84, 167, 278, 279 Walt Ilisney Company 69 Wan, W.T. 119, 136

Waters, Colin M. 129, 150, 151, 282 Weber, B. 62 Weber, P. 284 Weber, Larry F. 243, 246, 270 Webster, William 21 Weimer, Paul 15, 43, 176, 177,

Wells, Ilavid M. 183, 282 Westaim Corporation 250 Westinghouse 41, 46, 122, 176,

Westinghouse Research Laboratories

wdshizuka, ISdmu 200, 283

257, 276

177, 178

University of Paris, France 54 7 , 280

302 Index

White, Kolxrt 35 Williams domain 17 Williams, I h v i d 2/18 Williams, Donald 140 Williams, Richard 4, 16, 17, 18, 34, 36,

Wilson, Ilolxrt 243 Windscheitl, F. 62, 284 Wing Kii 119, 136, 137, 139 Winterer, Allen 119, 132 Wong, S.Y. 279 Woodward, Henry 125 WordStar 207 Wortman, Leon 167 Wozniak, Steven 205, 207 wristwatch television 85 Wu, Dean 132 Wu, Xingwei 250 Wysocki, Joseph 52

58, 266, 276

Xerox Coipoi‘Ltion 79, 182, 186, 187,

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 186,

Xeiox PARC 224 Xerox lieseLiich Center 52 Xerox Star 206

206, 228

206, 284

Yamasiiki, Mitsuhiro 181, 282 Yamasaki, Yoshio 84, 85, 278 Y m , S.K. 139 Y m g , Ikng-Ke 238 Ymg, Kei-Hsiung 217 Ymiv, Zvi 182, 183, 238, 270, 282 Yano, Kozo 200, 283 Yeebo Displays 139 Yih, Shou-Chen “James” 105 Yocom, Neil 15 Yoshida, Mamoru 199

Young, Robert 107 YOshiydmd, M. 86

Zanoni, Louis A. 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 32, 41, 48, 54, 58, 59, 64, 66, 67, 92, 93, 94, 156, 266, 276, 277, 278

Zantech 20, 156 Zatsky, Nornman 96 Zenith 220 Zenith I h t a Systems 214 Zenith Electronics 229 zinc sulfide 43 Zocher, FI. 3, 275

[Joseph a. Castellano] Liquid Gold the Story of L(BookZa.org)

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