Jian Chiun Liou

Design and fabrication of optical system for time-multiplex autostereoscopic display

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel time-multiplexed autostereoscopic multi-view full resolution 3D display based on the lenticular lens array in association with the control of the active dynamic LED backlight. The lenticular lenses of the lens array optical system receive the light and deflect the light into each viewing zone in a time sequence.

Design and Fabrication of Monolithic Multidimensional Data Registration CMOS/MEMS Ink-Jet Printhead

A monolithic ink-jet printhead is designed and fabricated with back-shooting type of thermal bubble nucleation for high-speed and long-life printing in this paper. It combines micromechanics, including heating actuators, temperature sensor, channels, and nozzles, with an integrated multidimensional data registration CMOS demultiplexer driving circuit, which includes D flip-flop signal processing along with bidirectional data transfer and 12-V power amplifiers in a printhead chip. Microelectromechanical systems fabrication processes are applied to define the ink-firing chamber, feed channel, and the orifice plate within this new micro injector structure. In this paper, the printing resolution of this monolithic ink-jet head is 1200 dpi, and the diameter of nozzle orifice is about 14 μm with a thickness of 30 μm. Both the silicon dry and wet etching processes are applied to the fabrication of orifice plate with the control of thickness within ±4 μm. The major advantage of the ink-jet chip assembly processes is that throughput is improved. The operating frequency of the monolithic ink-jet printhead developed in this paper is 24 kHz. The required voltage to start the bubble nucleation of printer head is 7.4 V, and the ink nozzle lifetime is 1.5 × 108. The optimization design of this monolithic ink-jet printhead could provide better printing quality than the commercial ones.

An Intelligent multiplexing control thermal actuated optical packet switch

The thermal actuated optical packet switch system has been demonstrated a decent performance with FSR equal to 1.5 nm and center wavelength shift of the ring up to 0.3 nm for thermal actuated ring type optical switch.

Dynamic LED Backlight 2D/3D Switchable Autostereoscopic Multi-View Display

This paper addresses the specific technological challenges of autostereoscopic 3-D displays and presents a novel system that integrates an active slanted LED backlight slit system with slanted lenticular lens array. Including light scattering strips configured to scatter the illumination light, and disposed on the light guide plate. Furthermore, with a sheet of polymer-dispersed liquid crystal film (PDLC film) placed above the backlight, a 2-D/3-D switchable backlight was implemented. We developed and demonstrated the backlight toward higher light-efficiency than barrier-type, even close to lenticular type autostereoscopic displays.

Integrated CMOS system and thermally actuated optical switch for wavelength modulation/lock in communication network

The advancement of communication technology and growth of internet traffic have continuously driven the fast evolution of networks. Compared to the traditional optoelectronic switch, all-optical switch provides high throughput, rich routing functionalities, and excellent flexibility for rapid signal exchange in fiber optical network. Among various all-optical switches, thermal actuated ring switch provides the advantages of high accuracy, easy actuation, and reasonable switching speed. However, when scale up, thermal ring switch may encounter issues related to fabrication error, non-accurate wavelength response, and large terminal numbers in the control circuit. In this research, we propose the employment of an integrated CMOS control circuit to compensate the fabrication error and tune as well as lock the wavelength in a thermal-actuated ring-type optical switch through a frequency modulation scheme. Additional functionalities can also be added in this circuit by tailoring externally the roundtrip loss or coupling constants of the ring. The design concept can be easily scaled up for large array optical switch system without much change in the terminal numbers thanks to the three-dimensional hierarchy of control circuit design, which effectively reduces the terminal numbers into the cubic root of the total control unit numbers. The integrated circuit has been designed, simulated, as well as fabricated, and demonstrated a decent performance with free spectral range (FSR) equal to 1.5 nm at 1534 nm and very accurate wavelength modulation to 0.3 nm within 0.01 nm fluctuation for thermal actuated ring type optical switch.

An Intelligent High-Speed 3D Data Registration Integrated Circuit Applied to Large Array Format Inkjet Printhead

A novel architecture of high-selection-speed 3D data registration for inkjet application is proposed in this paper. As the increasing demand on the requirement of printing speed and simplicity of data management, inkjet printheads have been extended in the nozzle numbers from tens to hundreds in the recent years and further to thousands in the future, while intending to maintain data accessing points in the order of 20-40. 3 dimensional data registration scheme to reduce the number of data accessing points as well as the scanning lines for large array inkjet printhead with nozzle number more than 1000. This IC architecture involves three dimension multiplexing with the provision of a gating transistor for each ink firing resistor, whereby current to an ink firing resistor flows only when its associated gating transistor is selected. Three signals, including selection (S), address (A), and power supply (P), will be employed together to activate a nozzle for droplet ejection. The total numbers of data accessing points will be X = 3 times 3radicY + 1 all of the jets of the printhead are controlled by 5 input lines with multiplexer data latches and shift registers. The scanning time is reduced up to 30% (the scanning speed is also increased by 3 folds) thanks to the great reduction of the lines for scanning. This device has been designed, fabricated by CMOS 0.35 mum process, and characterized. Experiment results demonstrated the functionality of the fabricated IC in operation, signal transmission and control more than 1000 nozzles with a 5 pl. ink drop volume

A bubble-jet MEMS printhead integrated with CMOS de-multiplexer

This paper describes the work aimed to develop a thermal inkjet (TIJ) printhead by using bulk micromachining technology (MEMS). This experiment develops new structure designs of chip for inkjet printheads. A thermal inkjet device is designed, several of the dimensions may be adjusted just a few microns to change or optimize the drop generation performance. This energy conversion devices and systems based on integrated driver head with the performance of high-frequency and picoliter drop Inkjet and structures. A smart CMOS circuit including D Flip-Flops signal-processing along with bi-directional data transfer and 12 V power amplifiers in a printhead chip. All of the jets of the printhead are controlled by very few input lines: a pulse shape (ENABLE), a data line (DATA), a bit shift clock (BIT SHIFT), a clearing pulse, 5-volt supply for the logic devices, a higher voltage for energizing the heater resisters, and a ground line. The fabricated back side etching thermal inkjet (TIJ) printhead is measured by open pool and close pool system. The measured begin voltage is 6.5 V, life time is 9/spl times/107.

A novel time-multiplexed autostereoscopic multiview full resolution 3D display

Many people believe that in the future, autostereoscopic 3D displays will become a mainstream display type. Achievement of higher quality 3D images requires both higher panel resolution and more viewing zones. Consequently, the transmission bandwidth of the 3D display systems involves enormous amounts of data transfer. We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel time-multiplexed autostereoscopic multi-view full resolution 3D display based on the lenticular lens array in association with the control of the active dynamic LED backlight. The lenticular lenses of the lens array optical system receive the light and deflect the light into each viewing zone in a time sequence. The crosstalk under different observation scanning angles is showed, including the cases of 4-views field scanning. The crosstalk of any view zones is about 5% respectively; the results are better than other 3D type.

Enhance light efficiency for slim light-strip array backlight on autostereoscopic display

A backlight with light-coupling-strip array was proposed for 2D/3D switchable display. To enhance the light efficiency of the light coupling structure, several cases of different structure shape were simulated. According to the simulation result, we choosed and made a backlight with inverted-trapezoid light coupling strips. The light efficiency is 6 times larger than that of diffuser strips made by laser scribing.

Intelligent and Green Energy LED Backlighting Techniques of Stereo Liquid Crystal Displays

As modem society has been reshaped rapidly into the multimedia information society, large size of display devices is required. Thin-film-transistor liquidcrystal-displays (TFT-LCDs) are one of the most popular display devices from small to large size. TFT-LCDs need backlight source, because they are not a self luminance device. Backlight for LCDs is becoming more important with growth of the LCD size. Up to now, multiple fluorescent lamps such as cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL), external electrode fluorescent lamp (EEFL) and flat fluorescent lamp (FFL) are generally used as LCD backlight source. Since, the conventional backlight of LCDs illuminates at the full luminance regardless of the images to be displayed, it wasted power and contrast ratio is row due to the light leakage in dark state. Recently, as the luminance efficiency of light emitting diode (LED) has been improved and the cost of LED is going down, the LED is the substitutive solution for the backlight source. Moreover, since LED has many advantages such as long lifetime, wide color gamut, fast response, and so on, LEDs are expected to replace the conventional fluorescent lamps for backlight source of LCD in near future. Although, LED backlight driving systems have been developed and introduced to the market, further reduction of power consumption and cost reduction are still demanded to be widely used as backlight source. In segmented dimming and local dimming methods which have usually adapted to CCFL and LED backlight source, the whole backlight is divided into several segmented and block, backlight scaling is adapted to each segmented and block, respectively. The more division of backlight, the more power saving can be achieved. Therefore, local dimming method can save power consumption more effectively than segmented dimming one. Especially, segmented dimming method has limitation of power saving when the image is bright vertically. Therefore, local dimming is the best way to have local dimming effects. However, local dimming method results in huge increase in the number of drivers needed for large number of division. To compromise between segmented dimming and local dimming methods, a new LED backlight system for LCD TVs which involves the time division X-Y segmented driving method that utilizes row and column switches to control the individual division screen is proposed. Even though the refresh time of an LCD panel is as fast as a CRT display, there are still some problems to be solved before this LCD panel can be implemented to be a time-multiplexed