by Alaide P. Mammana and Victor P. Mammana

LatinDisplay, the premier Latin American event for displays and related technologies, serves the dual purpose of promoting display technology and developing the display industry in South America and in Brazil in particular. The most recent LatinDisplay ran in tandem with the Brazilian Congress on Applications of Vacuum Science and Industry (CBRAVIC), an organization that addresses vacuum and plasma science and technology. All these technologies will be represented in a future industrial park in Brazil that will incorporate the entire display supply chain. LatinDisplay took place at the Federal University of Itajubá in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in August of 2011, and included a scientific and technical symposium, a business opportunities event, an exhibition, and the popular DisplayEscola (school for displays).

Scientific and Technical Symposium Highlights

A total of 19 invited lectures and 195 contributed papers were presented at the Symposium. Munisamy Anandan, SID President and CEO of Organic Lighting, offered a description of a new technology for backlighting systems that employ UV LEDs that dispense with color filters. The latest advances in active matrix for LCDs and OLED displays were described by Tolis Voutsas, SID Vice President of the Americas and Director of the Materials and Devices Applications Laboratory of Sharp Labs of America. He compared different amorphous semiconductor technologies and noted that indium/gallium/zinc (IGZO) was a promising material for the next generation of thin-film transistors (TFTs) for active-matrix displays. Shigeo Mikoshiba, Past-President of SID and Professor at the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, focused on plasma-display panels (PDPs) and their principles of operation, manufacturing processes, and advantages and disadvantages when compared to other display technologies, especially LCDs.

Reflective displays and flexible displays were both highlighted topics at LatinDisplay 2011. Michael McCreary, Vice President of Research and Advanced Development and Global Deputy Chief Technical Officer of E Ink, described recent developments in micro-encapsulated electrophoretic display technology for consumer products and signage applications. Si-Ty Lam, a scientist at HP Labs in Palo Alto, CA, presented recent results obtained with color reflective displays on an array of TFTs (AMTFT backplane).

Other presentations included a lecture on 3-D displays by Adi Abileah, Chief Scientist at Planar Systems, who introduced the principles of stereoscopy and different methods of producing images with depth, and also discussed the strengths and weaknesses of different 3-D systems. Daniel den Engelsen, a visiting scientist at ABINFO and CTI and a visiting professor at the University of Nanjing, China, and Brunel University, England, discussed perspectives and trends in what he called "a revolution in the lighting industry," thanks to the advent of solid-state lamps based on LEDs and also OLED lamps or lamp sheets. His market analysis included exceptional opportunities for Brazilian participation. Gregory J. Exarhos, Associate Director of the Chemical and Materials Sciences Division of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, EUA, and Past-President of the American Vacuum Society (AVS), described conjugate property films and how to enhance their performance through design, including transparent and conductive oxide films.

The Brazilian Association of Information Technology (ABINFO) awarded Luis Aguirre from the University of Cordoba, Argentina, with a cash prize and a certificate for "Best Poster of LatinDisplay 2011/CBRAVIC 2011" for his work on "Pattern formation induced by electrical instabilities in nematic liquid crystals with positive dielectric anisotropy."

Meetings, Field Visits, DisplayEscola, and Exhibition

Two round-table discussions on the Brazilian Industrial Policy for Displays were among LatinDisplay's featured events. The discussions focused on an initiative designed to support different companies that are part of the display production chain and to attract foreign groups to manufacture displays in partnership with Brazilian companies. Both government and display experts participated, and together they sought to identify the most urgent plans of action.

As part of the event, there was a program of visits to companies and laboratories in the region of Itajubá, as well as to the business incubator at the University of Itajubá. At the manufacturer Nitere, visitors could view the processes developed by that company to make rugged touch screens, and in the Microelectronics Laboratory of the University of Itajubá, they learned about integrated-circuit design for medical applications.

DisplayEscola, now in its 14th edition, presented courses on plasma displays, backlight units for LCDs, display measurements, and lighting. The school remains the only initiative in the Southern Hemisphere for training in displays and related technologies.

At the exhibition (Fig. 1), companies and institutions exhibited state-of-the-art touch screens; the latest generation of vacuum pumps, detectors, and sensors; instruments and equipment for laboratories; and other display-related technologies.

Fig. 1: A well-attended exhibition was just one component of last August's LatinDisplay.

LatinDisplay 2011 / XXXII CBRAVIC was organized by the Latin American Chapter of the Society for Information Display (SID), Associação Brasileira de Informática (ABINFO), and the University of Itajubá, MG Brazil. As an event of the Brazilian Network on Displays (BrDisplay), LatinDisplay 2011 is central to supporting the implementation of the Brazilian Industrial Policy proposed by the Federal Government for displays and related technologies. The event was sponsored by the Brazilian Government, with funding from ABDI (Brazilian Agency for the Industrial Development), CNPq (National Research Council), CAPES/Ministry of Education, and FAPEMIG (Foundation for Research of Minas Gerais State).

More information can be found at http://www.abinfo.com.br/ld2011.