The following are excerpts from an interview with Whang Ki-woong, General Chair of the IMID, Professor at Seoul National Univeristy, and President of the Korean Information Display Society - Ed.
Q: What has been your major focus as General Chairman of KIDS
A: Yes, a couple. First, to make this IMID conference more influential, more foreign scholars, and also manufacturers and other officials will come to this conference. And we are succeeding. The number of participants is increasing and the proportion of foreigners is absolutely increasing. So that's the one thing. The other one is that we are publishing journal papers of our society -- the Journal of Information Display, published by KIDS. And we have registered as one of the so-called SCI journals. SCI journal means usually recognized by many scholars as a journal that covers general scientific papers. Also we have a number of members in our society.
Q: Have you done any comparisons lately between the IMID conference and other display conferences around the world
A: Many people regard the SID conference held by the Society for Information Display of the United States and IDW, Information Display Workshop held in Japan annually as two of the three major conferences related to display technology. And now many people are saying that IMID is becoming one of the three major conferences, which was said by the president of SID last year. And attendance and the number of papers presented at those two conferences, SID conference and IDW, are actually decreasing, but on the other hand ours are increasing. So a simple comparison of the numbers wouldn't be that much meaningful sometimes, but at least we can say that the number of papers increases in our case. So we are also at the same time trying to increase the quality of the papers as a conference. So we are doing our best to become one of those three major display-related conferences.
Q: In your opinion, what are the important issues facing Korean display manufacturers this year
A: Well, they are companies, so they must turn their balance sheets into black. Early this year the major panel makers ran into some trouble to make profits. They are competing now and by the end of this year they may have turned around. But in the early part of this year many people worried that big panel makers were expecting some trouble making profits.
Q: What are some new, interesting advances in display technology
A: Well, we are trying to commercialize the AM-OLED. We will be able to see products this fall made by Samsung SDI and LG Electronics. So OLED used to be regarded as one of the next display devices which would succeed LCD actually. And finally we are beginning to see the next generation OLED products. That's very exciting.
Q: Can you explain some of the advantages of OLED compared to normal LCD
A: It can be very thing, it can be very light, and it can be good color, which means very good things compared to especially LCDs. It's a self-emitting device. The viewing angle is much better than LCDs.
Q: What do you mean by self-emitting
A: Self-emitting means the pixel, LCD doesn't emit light itself. It's like just a switching device. You have a backlight, and the backlight emits light and each pixel acts as a switch. So the pixel in LCD light only comes out from the backlight. OLED devices emits light totally itself and makes light. LCD pixels only emit five percent of the light.
Q: Is AMOLED an exclusively Korean technology
A: Well, the materials may be coming from foreign countries. Many foreign countries or universities have small-size samples, but I'm talking about mass production. Only Korean companies are mass producing the products from early this fall.
Q: Do you think the first products will be very expensive for consumers
A: For the consumers They will be delighted to have a new product. If you come to IMID Exhibition and see the products like the cellular phones with LCD and AMOLED you will see the difference.
Q: Will there only be cellular phones with OLED, or will there also be computer screens
A: It's probably going to be a while before you see the computer screens or even televisions with AM-OLED. Its going to be some time. At the moment the small-size phones, less than 4 inches, will have them.
AM-OLED is driven by a current injection method, while LCD is driven by voltage injection. In order to drive AM-OLED you must inject current. And if the pixel size becomes large, and the screen size becomes larger, the current injection method is beginning to show limitations in making the whole screen uniform. That is the intrinsic trouble, you have many cells requiring power, and the current sometimes falls in a specific area. So it makes keeping things uniform very difficult. We have the technology actually for solving that problem but that makes the cost high. So you can apply those technologies to premium products, but for normal products you have to compete with other types of devices. Eventually the consumers will ask how much is that, how expensive is that And if the products are too expensive then the customers will avoid the product.
Q: What other new innovations can we see at this year's IMID Conference besides AMOLED
A: We will see more flexible display devices. Usually displays are made with glass substrates and they are rigid. If we can make the display device on plastic, it can be flexible. It can have very good merits.
Q: What are you personally looking forward to at this year's IMID conference
A: Well the panel makers are constantly improving their technologies.
They are able to increase their pixel quality but on the other hand they are reducing product price. So you get to see more price-cuts for higher pixel quality products. I have seen that for the last couple of years already. I will be expecting to see more improvements.
Q: There will be both the exhibition and conference. Which side of the exhibition and conference are you more involved in
A: Personally, more with the symposium.
Q: In your opinion, who are the notable speakers coming to the symposium
A: Well we have two keynote speakers, one from Merck of Germany, Walter Zywottek. And Dr. Lee of LG Electronics, both of them are very nice keynote speakers.
Also this year we are organizing a business forum with DisplaySearch of the United States. And also I am expecting a lot of good speakers will come to that forum and will deliver nice speeches.
Q: Are there any emerging 3D display technologies or nontraditional display technologies that will be showcased
A: Many people are working on 3D technologies, yes. I think we will see some good papers on 3D technologies, as well as products.
Q: What do you think is Korea's role in the global display industry
A: I think Korea is a latecomer in display technology. The original technology was developed by the United States and Japan. Korea has become a latecomer in this area. So at the beginning we benefited quite largely from other companies and other institutes and other universities for providing the original technologies. So we owe them quite a lot for the current status of the Korean display industry. It is now our turn to pay back for the help and resources available for our industry's development.
Q: And how will Korea pay back the technologies
A: Our companies and our universities will participate more actively in those display industry conferences and exhibitions and share our papers and our research with them. We can contribute to the development of the display technologies. We are seeing those kinds of activities in SID and IDW in that the number of papers from Korea occupies a larger portion, up to 26% of the total papers presented at the SID conference. Korea is the most contributing country in the display era.
