CEATEC JAPAN 2015

Not only is there freedom to create a display in any shape, the bezel edges can also be much thinner giving an uninterrupted view

These IGZO panels use a new technology developed by Professor Hideo Hosono from the Tokyo Institute of Technology called Transparent Amorphous Oxide Semiconductors (TAOS) – and each year this technology is talked about as a potential Nobel-Prize winning breakthrough. Sharp adds its own proprietary technology to these IGZO panels in order to make it possible to mass produce these devices and make them available to our society. The current leak from the elements is minimal, so it is possible to produce a LCD display with low power consumption. This technology is also suitable for smartphones, contributing to longer battery life for the user.

With FFD, IGZO technology means that the semi-conductor elements are highly efficient, and the elements themselves are transparent, which is one of the defining characteristics of IGZO panels.

An LCD display requires something called gate drivers, which are circuits that “drive” or control pixels. Usually these gate drivers manage a defined area of pixels, and are conventionally located along the edge of a display panel.

However, with IGZO technology, these elements have been significantly reduced in size and are now transparent, which means that they are no longer forced to be located on the periphery, the can be placed right behind the set of pixels they are assigned to control. So the new approach has freed us from the restriction of placing the gate driver on the edge of a straight panel, so these IGZO panels can take any shape we want.

A UI module combining a dial and a circular FFD. The name of the demo device is “Freeform Dream” which neatly reflects the designers’ excitement over the possibilities this new technology can bring

There has been a lot of interest shown in the future of displays from auto makers. The instrument panel and the rear-facing mirror could become one and the same thing in the future if it was a display, and the curved display demo model on show at CEATEC JAPAN 2015 has generated a lot of interest. With advances in the sealing technology for liquid crystal, we are now at a point where bezels are so small one could say these LCD displays are bezel-less.
“The fact that we can now put holes in the middle of our display – that means we can do things like run analog right through our digital display, creating an LCD – analog hybrid.” (Ryuzo Yushiro, Manager, Development Team No. 3, Display Mode Development Center, Display Device Development Head Office, Sharp Corp.)

Understandably consumers are looking forward to the possibilities these displays bring, and the engineers and designers at Sharp are also excited.
“It seems that any shape of display is now possible and when I first heard this I admit I was stumped for a short while, being so used to conventional screens. But now we are free of the rectangular screen format – and this may be the first time since we invented typesetting and printing technologies that were designed to work on rectangular paper. This gives us new possibilities, such combining a jog-dial with push-button technology to create a new UI – I am so excited as to what this could bring but it makes my head hurt to think about it!” (Shingo Yamashita, Designer, UX Design Studio, Design Development Center, Branding Design Head Office, Sharp Corp.)

The Japan Institute of Design Promotion selected FFD as one of the recipients of the 2015 Good Design Awards. FFD also secured a CEATEC AWARD 2015 in the Technology & Innovation Category at CEATEC JAPAN 2015.