Date Visited: October 4, 1991

Report Author: W. Doane

ATTENDEES

JTEC:

Doane
Larimer
Slusarczuk
Tannas

HOST:

Dr. Shunsuke Kobayashi

We met with Dr. Kobayashi and two students. He showed a video of Tokyo University, then gave an overview of his current research.

NOTES ON CURRENT RESEARCH OVERVIEW

Upon going over items on the handout list "Research Themes of Kobayashi Laboratory" (following), we asked the following questions (Q) and received the following answers (A):

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FUNDING OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

In response to a question, Professor Kobayashi gave the following list of funding sources for Japanese university research:

1. Operating funds evenly distributed among faculty (3 million yen).
2. Ministry of Education, Science & Culture - Like the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), this agency supports basic and applied university research. About 30% of Japanese faculty are supported. There are many programs; e.g., $5 million/50 professors for center-type activity (well-focused research).
3. Donations.
4. Contract research with industry.
5. Cooperative research with industry. Here Prof. Kobayashi has a program with some 5-6 display companies on FLCs, AMLCDs, HD LCDs, LC alignment layers, flexible displays. Gave us some literature on this ("Cooperative Research Center," attached).

Overhead costs are handled differently than in the United States. In Japan, faculty are directly charged for electricity, water, and so forth.

R & D SUPPORTING AGENCIES IN JAPAN

Ministry of Education, Science & Culture (MOE or "Mombusho") - Has many agencies, including the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). JSPS includes foreign exchange of students. Each agency has many committees covering such areas as laser technology and material science; each has representation from both government and industry.

Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) - This has projects such as The High Definition Television Engineering Corporation (HDTEC), a joint government-industry funded venture.

Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) - Also has many projects and committees supported in part by government and in part by industry, e.g., Giant Technology Corporation (GTC) for 40" direct view display development. Another example: Japanese Association for Technology Transfer (JATT) which has 80 committees, one of which (GTC) Professor Kobayashi chairs on displays. This committee has 80 companies, one being Dainippon Ink.

Bench Technology Foundation or Japan Critical Technology Company: ($100 million) received funding from sources such as NTT, and supports GTC. Other private companies also support GTC. GTC and HDTEC are small compared to the U.S. agency DARPA.

MAJOR ISSUES THAT CHARACTERIZE DISPLAYS

Professor Kobayashi gave the following outline of issues important in a display:

1. Information content
2. Viewability
   • Legibility (contrast ratio and luminances)
   • Full-color capability
   • Gray scale
   • View angle

   
   

3. Cost of driving circuits
4. Production costs (yield, throughput)
5. Space (flat panel, weight)
   (Often trade-offs between 1 & 2; 1, 2, & 3, 4)

• No technology can cover all of these well.
• Kobayashi claims that all LC technologies can cover these sufficiently and that all, if pursued strongly enough, could be marketable technologies.
• All AM companies make an active matrix display a different way, but all are very enthusiastic and will succeed because of fierce competition.
• All LCD technologies should be explored.
• Need for direct-view display w/o backlighting.

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Faculty of Technology, Graduate School of Technology

Department of Electronic Engineering
Division of Electronic and Information Engineering

* Electronics
Motto...3E * Exotic Materials
* Ergonomics of LCDs

1991 Research Themes of Kobayashi Laboratory

(Retyped from handout provided by Professor S. Kabayashi)

:Surface anchoring of LCs

• Theory H. Matsuda(M)
• Polar anchoring T. Isogami
• Torsional anchoring K. Muroi
• Conductive orientation films

:Legibility of LCDs

• STN, Ch-N, FLCD

:Active matrix (TFTs)

:Langmuir-Blodgett Films

• LC alignment A. Ishizaki (M)
• MIM-diodes H. Abe

:Ferroelectric LCs

• Bistability M. Ito
• Gray scale

:Optical neurocomputer with FLCD

• Dynamic weight matrix H. Sekine (M)
• "Dywmax Optical Neuro Computer" T. Yamazaki (M)
• a-Si photoconductor Y.G. Jin (M)
  A. Nakagawa

:Electroclinic effect

• SmA-SmC* phase transition T. Bang

:Optical integrated circuit

• Utilization of EC effect
• Nonlinear optics
• Optical logic

Cooperative Research Center

1. Aim of the center

   The Ministry of Education (MOE) established a new system called "Cooperative research with Incorporated Organization" by laying down a law issued on May 11th, 1978. The aim of this system is to promote cooperative researches which will be done by the joint teams considering of the university members and those from the incorporated organizations (mostly private companies).

2. System of cooperative research

   The system of the cooperative research is generally flexible compared to other existing systems in the patent ownership, budgetting, and so forth.

   The system is characterized by the classification of the budgeting category A,B, and C as shown on Table Tok.1.

   To provide the laboratories and facilities for the project teams the MOE constructed 10 buildings of the cooperative research center already in each of 10 national universities as of 1990. The exact name of the center differs from one university to the other according to the locality and social environment.

3. The Cooperative Research Center in TU of A/T

   Regarding the layout and facility of the center, it is a three story building locating in the south-east corner of the Koganei campus having a branch room in the Fuchu campus. The integrated area of the main building is 1300 m² consisting of 26 laboratory units (23 m² each), a clean room facility (10,000, 1,000, 100 grade), that for biotechnology of P-2 grade, a green house, an EM shield room, offices for the administration and director, a seminar room, and others.

   In our university, the building of the CRC was completed on March 31st, 1990.

   In the fiscal year of 1990, 23 research projects were conducted using the laboratories and facilities of the CRC. In 1991, 30 projects have been conducted.

   Reflecting the nature of the university, the research projects can be divided into the following four fields; new materials and electronic or optoelectric devices (40%); biotechnology (40%); energy (10%); and mechatronics (10%).

4. The process for accepting and conducting the research projects

   The process adopted by us ranging from calling for projects to the start of them is as follows:

   • The MOE issues the call for projects (CFP) to all the national universities,
   • the president of the university send this CFP to the dean of faculties (the process here after may differ as the difference of the universities),
   • each faculty makes an announcement of the CFP to all the faculty members with application formats (the deadline for the submission is 31st January).
   • the faculty member who is interested in conducting a cooperative research with a incorporated organization (mostly a private company) makes a contact and negotiates with a his/her counterpart to decide title of the project, category of the research (see Table 1), amount of the research budget, and name(s) of the research fellow(s),
   • approval for accepting the applied projects is done officially by the faculty member meeting,
   • approved projects is transferred to the board of trustee, after getting approval by this organization, a decision making by the university is done.
   • all the projects are again sent to the MOE to have a national budgeting process,
   • the projects decided to be conducted in the center are transferred to the steering committee of the center headed by the director. A representative of each project (a faculty member) is free to use the center facility or not according to his/her choice.
   • The steering committee make a decision who will use which lab and facility, then the projects start.
5. Inviting Professors

   The center has three chairs for inviting professors for a fiscal year: six inviting professors will be also invited by diving the period of a fiscal year.

6. Publications and open seminars

   The center publishes several kinds of archives such as a brochure, news letters (3 times in a year), and the annual report.

   Open seminars are held in the campus almost every two months on the topics of the projects and those of relevant to them. Announcements are made by direct mail to the standing members accounting 400.

Table 1 Classification of Research Projects

(Retyped from an original document supplied by Professor S. Kobayashi.)

REFERENCES

1. 1991 Research Themes of Kobayashi Laboratory (Brochure).
2. Cooperative Research Center (Brochure).
3. Book of Abstracts, Exhibition of Science and Technology/Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.
4. Cooperative Research Center News, (Japanese) Number 4, 1991.6.
5. "Electrically and Optically Controlled Gray Scale in SSFLCDs," Proceedings of the SID, 31, 139-143 (1990). M. Kimura, H. Maeda, C.M. Gomes, M. Yoshida, B. Y. Zhang, H. Sekine, and S. Kobayashi.
6. "A Ferroelectric LCD with Gray-Scale Capability Using Conventional CTC- Doped Polyimide and/or Undoped LB Polyimide Alignment Layers," Proceedings of the SID, 30, 329-332 (1989), H. Ikeno, H. Maeda, M. Yoshida, B. Y. Zhang, M. Kimura, and S. Kobayashi.
7. "Electric-Field-Dependent Tilt (Cone) Angle in a Chiral Smectic C Liquid Crystal Showing Electroclinic Effect in the Smectic A Phase," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 30, L612-L615 (1991), Y. P. Yang, A. Mochizuki, N. Nakamura, and S. Kobayashi.
8. "Measurement Method for Transitional Dielectric Constant of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Filled and Aligned in a sandwich Cell," Review of Scientific Instruments, 62, 1609-1613 (1991), M. Kimura, H. Maeda, and M. Yoshida, A. Mochizuki, and S. Kobayashi.
9. "a simple model for pretilted nematic liquid crystal medium and its torsional surface coupling strength," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 29, 2045-2051 (1990), T. Sugiyama, S. Kuniyasuu, D. Seo, H. Fukuro, and S. Kobayashi.
10. "Second-Harmonic Generation for an Interfacial Layer between Orientation Films and Liquid Crystal Layers of Nematic Liquid Crystal Cell," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 30, L504-L506 (1991), A. Mochizuki, W. Sotoyama, S. Tatsuura, T. Ishitsuka, K. Motoyoshi, and S. Kobayashi.
11. "the strength of rubbing worked on polyimide films for aligning nematic and chiral smectic liquid crystals: controlling pretilt angles and some electro-optic performances of lcds," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 27, 827- 829 (1988), S. Kuniyasu, H. Fukuro, S. Meeda, K. Nakaya, M. Nitta, N. Ozaki, and S. Kobayashi.
12. "Effect of Electrical Properties of Orientation Films on Switching Current and EO Performance of FE-LCD," Mol Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 202, 171-181 (1990) M. Kimura, H. Maeda, M. Yoshida, B. Y. Zhang, H. Sekine, A. Mochizuki, and S. Kobayashi.
13. "Electro-Optic Characteristics of Charge-Transfer-Complex Doped Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Device: Realization of Very High contrast Ratio and Perfect Bistability," Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 202, 149-162 (1991), B. Y. Zhang, M. Yoshida, H. Maeda, M. Kimura, H. Sekine, and S. Kobayashi.
14. Japan Display '92. "Call for Papers."