Won-Seok Choi

Simple liquid crystal display backlight unit comprising only a single-sheet micropatterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) light-guide plate

A simple liquid crystal display (LCD) backlight unit (BLU) comprising only a single-sheet polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) light-guide plate (LGP) has been developed. The PDMS LGP, having micropatterns with an inverse-trapezoidal cross section, was fabricated by backside 3-D diffuser lithography followed by PDMS-to-PDMS replication. The fabricated BLU showed an average luminance of 2878 cd/m(2) with 73.3% uniformity when mounted in a 5.08 cm backlight module with four side view 0.85cd LEDs. The developed BLU can greatly reduce the cost and thickness of LCDs, and it can be applied to flexible displays as a flexible light source due to the flexible characteristic of the PDMS itself.

A simple and effective fabrication method for various 3D microstructures: backside 3D diffuser lithography

This paper describes a simple and effective method to fabricate oblique or curved 3D microstructures with high uniformity and manifold shapes, utilizing backside 3D diffuser lithography. A negative photoresist spin-coated on the metal-patterned glass substrate is exposed from the backside where an optical diffuser is located and used to randomize the incident ultraviolet (UV) light, which creates the self-aligned curved 3D microstructures. The various 3D microstructures can be obtained simply by adjusting the key process parameters of this method such as the type of diffuser, the UV exposure dose, the opening width of the patterned metal on the glass substrate, etc. Through these parameter studies, a microball lens with a sag of 10 ?m to 115 ?m, a cylindrical microlens, a 3D planar microlens with circular and biconvex structures and an inverse-trapezoidal microstructure having different sidewall angles of 45?, 51?, 56? and 72? were successfully fabricated. The proposed method can be extensively applied for fabrication of micro-optical components due to its simplicity and versatility.

Design and fabrication of a micropatterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) light‐guide plate for sheet‐less LCD backlight unit

Abstract— A polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) light-guide plate (LGP) having micropatterns with an inverse-trapezoidal cross section was developed for a sheet-less LCD backlight unit (BLU). The micropatterned PDMS LGP was fabricated by backside 3-D diffuser lithography followed by two consecutive PDMS replication processes: photoresist-to-PDMS and PDMS-to-PDMS replications. The fabricated LGP showed an average luminance of 2878 nits and a uniformity of 73.3% in a 2-in. backlight module with four side-view 0.85-cd LEDs. It also could feasibly be applied to a light source for flexible displays owing to the flexible characteristic of the PDMS itself.

Highly luminescent blue-emitting CdZnS/ZnS nanorods having electric-field-induced fluorescence switching properties

We demonstrate for the first time highly luminescent blue-emitting CdZnS/ZnS wurtzite core/shell nanorods (NRs) that show electric-field-induced fluorescence switching properties. Uniform CdZnS NRs were rapidly synthesized by injecting sulfur powder dissolved in 1-octadecene into a flask containing phosphonic acid ligands, and subsequently ZnS shells were coated using reagents consisting of sulfur powder, zinc sulfate heptahydrate, and oleylamine. The growth of high-quality ZnS shells resulted in a dramatically increased photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (QY) of ∼40% with a minimal red-shift of the blue PL peak, which indicates that the combination of reagents successfully controlled a large number of defects appearing on the surface of the NR cores. By pre-annealing CdZnS cores before growing ZnS shells, we could achieve an additional increase in the maximum PL QY to 50%, decreases in both the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the red-shift of the PL peak, and improved electric-field-induced fluorescence switching performance. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the effective relaxation of strain accumulating on the NR core during shell growth is the key to our successful synthesis of blue-emitting NRs, and that the additional improvement in performance obtained through the pre-annealing process results from the elimination of sulfur vacancies appearing at the surface of the NR core.

Depth Estimation Using Single Camera with Dual Apertures

Depth sensing is an active area of research in imaging technology. Here, we use a dual-aperture system to infer depth from a single image based on the principle of depth from defocus (DFD). Dual-aperture camera includes a small all-pass aperture (which allows all light through the aperture) and a larger RGB-pass aperture (which allows visible light only). IR image captured through the smaller aperture is sharper than the RGB image captured through the large aperture. Since the difference of blurriness between two images is dependent on the actual distance, using a dual-aperture camera provides an opportunity to estimate depth of a scene. Measuring the absolute blur size is difficult, since it is affected by illuminant’s spectral distribution, noise, specular highlight, vignetting, etc. By using a dual-aperture camera, however, the relative blurriness can be measured in a robust way. In this article,, a detailed description of extracting depth using a dual-aperture camera is provided which includes procedures for fixing each of artifacts that degrade the depth quality based on DFD. Experimental results confirm the improved depth extraction by employing the aforementioned schemes.