Innovations on Display

This year's 60th annual Display Week felt vibrant andenergetic, reflecting the excitement of an industry and community returning to normalcy and growth following the pandemic. The premier event brought colleagues from around the world to experience the future of display and imaging technologies. If you've been to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, you know it is filled with the newest and most exciting TVs, PCs, smartphones, smartwatches, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) devices, and other consumer gear. Displays are among the most essential ingredients that make these products possible. At Display Week, attendees can see in advance technologies that likely will be demonstrated at CES over the following years. This includes everything from tiny displays that will be at the heart of AR glasses, to huge high-resolution displays that will deliver amazing home entertainment experiences, to foldable and rollable displays that will create entirely new categories of products. The innovations our industry provides to the world are truly groundbreaking, and SID members form the bedrock of this innovation. One year into my term as the president of SID, I presented a progress report as we kicked off the conference. Now in its 61st year, SID is stronger than ever, reaching 6,000 members in 2023, up nearly 10 percent over 2022. At Display Week 2023, we also saw a 42 percent increase in exhibitors over the previous year, including companies in segments such as imaging technologies and AR/VR devices, reflecting SID's expansion into adjacent areas. The first Imaging and Vision Special Event was held at the show, featuring 12 speakers with keynotes from Microsoft and Sony, a tutorial from Meta, and captivating talks highlighting advances in artificial intelligence by experts and innovators. Overall, we received and accepted 20 percent more papers compared to the previous year, showing the rapid pace of innovation across a broad range of areas. We saw some of these advances in the exhibits, with exciting large displays, including a 65-inch foldable OLED TV from TCL made via an inkjet printing process, and a 160-inch wall display with 16K resolution. We also saw rollable, foldable, flexible, semi-transparent, and stretchable OLEDs from Samsung, LG, Tianma, and others. Exhibitors demonstrated microLED displays designed for future products such as AR glasses. This included a 0.13-inch active-matrix microLED microdisplay from Jade Bird (awarded a 2023 Display Industry Award) and an active-matrix 0.26-inch microLED display from Porotech, which won the People's Choice Award for Best New Display Component. It was clear from these and many other exhibits and presentations that microLEDs are gaining traction across the spectrum of form factors, from eyeglasses to large-screen TVs and beyond. The technology provides an appealing solution for many products, delivering more brightness than OLEDs—with better power efficiency and longer lifetime. While manufacturability issues are still a hurdle, and it will take some time for costs to come down to consumer levels, the industry is making major progress with microLEDs. During the show, a presentation from Yole Group highlighted examples of manufacturing's ramp-up across the globe, with multiple fabrication plants dedicated to microLEDs coming online in the next few years. Fittingly, this issue of Information Display is dedicated to microLEDs, with articles on topics including: With such innovations in microLEDs, as well as continuing innovation in OLEDs, LCDs, electronic papers, and many other areas, to say I am excited about the future of SID and the display imaging industry would be an understatement. The advances we are seeing in design, materials, and manufacturing are unprecedented. With this rapid pace of development, I can't wait to see the amazing technologies that will be unveiled at Display Week 2024. As an industry, we should all be proud of the contributions we are making to the world. Please reach out with any ideas and comments: [email protected]. Achin Bhowmik is the president of the Society for Information Display. He can be reached at [email protected].