 So we're here at the SID display week here in the iZone and who are you? I'm Alex Hansen. I currently work for South China University and we're developing reflective displays, electronic paper displays to be precise. So what are you showing right here? What we're showing is a prototype of our full-color electronic paper display, which is built up of three layers, cyan, magenta and yellow. And it will be able to show 40% reflectance in a 50% NTSC color gamut. This is the only grail that everybody always wanted for electronic paper. So that means great colors and good visibility? Great colors, good visibility. Lembertion reflectance means that the light goes everywhere, not just in this narrow angle. And it's lightening fast, it switches in three milliseconds from one color to another. What is this? The small one next to it is actually the same display as the large one, but this time it's only an active matrix backplane. It shows the actual resolution that's possible with these types of displays. So even the color display is capable of displaying this resolution. Our limitation here is the fact that we don't have the funds or possibilities to design the transparent TFT display that's necessary for that three-layer system. So that means you can do active matrix, you can do segmented. So these squares are segmented? These squares are segmented. They're actually clusters of 625 small pixels that are linked together by the same electron. Is it battery powered? It's battery powered. Can you take it out? Sure. So is there any chance you can do active matrix like this? Yes, absolutely. That's our next step. As colorful as this? As colorful as this. Right now I'm using my headlight, but if I don't it's still the viewing angles. So how is it different from the other, from e-ink for example? Well from e-ink we're using a totally different system. So our system is based on electro-wetting. That means we're depending on a very thin film of ink that is covering our pixel. But if we switch on the electric power, then that film of ink withdraws into the corner. And if it withdraws into the corner it leaves 90% of the pixel open, which is transparent. So we can do exactly the same as ink on paper. Switch a cyan, magenta, yellow color system. And have the same colorfulness and the same reflectance as a real piece of paper with printed images of it. So is it similar to liquid vista? It is similar to liquid vista, yeah. But we did a different way of mathematics. Liquid vista used RGB color filters to make their color panel. That means that immediately they suffer from a lack of reflectance. Their white state was too dark, so they had to start optimizing the light output again, more or less similar to what a core reflective LCD would do. We didn't cut the corners, we decided to go for the three-layer system immediately and do the maths that is necessary to make it really bright. And once you get the really bright white state, you get the colorfulness for film. So that's what we did. And is this showing what's inside? The three layers here are showing what's inside. These three displays are the three single layers of the display. You can see that by mixing the three separate colors you can actually get all the colors you need. So red, green, blue. How many colors you can get? In principle an infinite number of colors because the system responds in an analog way to a voltage. So we do have a display driver that will display 64 levels of gray for each of the layers. And so in principle we can do a million cores. Millions? Yep. And these are different demos right here? These are different demos. So we've made a few demos in various cores. So a red one, a blue one. There are all single-layer demos to show that each of the cores works perfectly well with an active matrix at high resolution. We've got a few larger size demos in black and white. How's the visibility in black and white compared to like eating? How's the contrast? At least the same I would say. At least the same? At least the same. So these are just prototypes and demos. Our contrast ratio can reach 100 to 1. So that's the best possible? What's 100 to 1? Is it like taper? Well, 100 to 1 is way better than paper. Paper at the maximum is about 20 to 1. And that is high quality glossy paper. A newspaper does 5 to 1. So anything between 5 to 1 and 20 to 1 would be considered good print. And so what's the frame rate? What is this demo right here? This demo is just an example of what you can do by tiling these 8x8 panel displays if some idea of an application. Switching speed is about 3 ms so we can do something like 200 Hz refresh in this style. More than video speed. Oh yeah, well more than video speed. Actually the refresh time of these panels make them ideal for gaming because you can actually display very fast changes. Much faster than, as they say, most LCDs. So how long have you been working on this? The Electro-Wetting principle has been worked on by various people for the last 15 years. We have been developing, it came out of Holland, Phillips originally. I am also from Holland. Also from Phillips. I started in a different area from Phillips so we did electronic paper display, we did a collaboration with E-Ink at some point and over the last 3 years I've been getting more and more involved in the Electro-Wetting system because it promises exactly this which is something that I've devoted the last 15 years to which is creating a real reflective core display. Were you involved with IREX? Absolutely, I was one of the founders of IREX. You were the founders of IREX. It was my dream device, it was amazing. It was just some soft marketing, I guess marketing. Isn't it marketing? It's all about cash and marketing. It's all about cash, marketing and finance. Sell millions, why didn't you sell millions of the IREX? One of the things it was fairly expensive to start with. And the other thing is that when we really needed the money, the economic crisis hit. So that was the end of it. Our bank toppled. So we couldn't simply finance our company anymore. But Holland stood? Holland stood. And just two brushes was left? Yeah, something like that. Two brushes and medical systems I think. But they're great, I love my first toothbrush. Yeah, absolutely. So why is your dream the electoral rating? No, my dream is not specifically the electoral rating. What I want to do is make true core video paper. It wasn't there. That's the ultimate dream of the whole world, of the SID. Of the SID, but also of the rest of the world. We want to have battery powered stuff that lasts for years. And we want to make it sunlight readable. And actually, if you write down the specifications, this color thing is getting very, very close to what it should be. Finally. Is it because you kept improving? Not just like what was the electoral rating of 15 years ago? It's improving? It's improving. We start understanding better how to handle the electoral rating system. We start understanding better why some of the solutions work and why others don't. And we are getting the opportunity to test processing and test various optical solutions. So that's helping us ahead at this moment. But there has to be some issue, right? Is there any issue about the electoral rating? Oh, of course there are issues. There are issues in the sense that it's difficult to maintain the quality. We know how to break these things. It's very easy. So addressing is a very critical item. Addressing? So we need to make sure that the voltage isn't getting too high or that we don't apply too much DC voltage on the panel. Just like any other display technology, we're using a DC drive to energize the pixel. That means that if we apply a voltage on the pixel and we switch off the whole panel, the pixel will stay on. So by stable? Well, it is not in the real sense by stable. It requires so little power that the pixel capacitor of a TFT panel will keep it on for several minutes. And so we can remove the power and the display itself will stay as it is, including all the gray levels. So if the dream device comes out and there's like a device with the active matrix color and everything and the kids are reading something, how long does the battery go to last? Oh, to my expectation, a year. A year? Yeah. If you don't do anything other with it, such as wireless communication, et cetera, the display itself can display more or less still information for several years from a single battery. So the limiting factor is electronics. Whatever you do with it to make it more power hungry is going to drain the battery, but it's not going to be the display. Is this the Guangzhou? Or no, Guangzhou. And is this a real place? This is a real place. In Guangzhou? Yes. So what's going on there? What we have here is a number of images from our 2.5 generation assembly line, where we can, in gloss, print our various structures that we need for the panel. But is for any kind of other project? No, this is dedicated for this. For this project? Yes. Just for electrowetting. But what do you call it? What is the name of your display? Well, we call it an electrowetting display, but we haven't. You call it the great display. Our company is great up to electronics in Hong Kong. We haven't found a name for this, but maybe it's a good idea. Just great. Okay, so what's next? You hear the SID display week, you're looking for partners to make it even bigger? What's the... Our next step is to find a way to productize this. To productize? You've already mentioned that we should go to a higher-resolution full-color display to demonstrate what it can do. Now, for most of the people inside the display community, this will demonstrate what it can do sufficiently. But building a real high-resolution prototype will probably be necessary for the next couple of months. You can just do it in a couple of months, right? You fast? If we have the money, we can do it in a couple of months. Because the development will require making a dedicated TFT matrix panel. And that means that somebody will have to pay for the mask set that will be necessary to do so. How much does it cost? We're looking for that. Well, typically between $300,000 and $500,000. But I would think that 90% of the money for display technology comes from China, right? Yep. And talking about Taiwan and Korea, they need to come with new ideas, but maybe China can come with new ideas. China is coming with new ideas, you can see that. Right here. But it just needs to do the last step. We need to take the last step. Crossing the finish line, right? Interestingly, this prototype is only a month old. So actually this device itself was manufactured last week in our prototype line. So you rushed for the SID? We rushed for the SID. So we would have had the smaller displays look brighter according to the same principle. We didn't manage to get them here in time. So they're still a little darker than they should be. All right. So it's so new at this moment that we haven't had a chance to mobilize China yet. So do you have a children? Yep. Grand? Not yet. Yeah, yeah. Because you need to make the displays ready for when they have to go to school, right? Yeah, well, in principle, yes. So how long do you have to get it working? Well, let's say I spent the last 20 years trying to make it work. I can manage another couple of years.