Chair Professor KWOK Hoi-Sing, Electronic and Computer Engineering, and his research team have developed an award-winning liquid crystal display (LCD) that improves energy e ciency by three to ve times and image resolution by three times, all for a lower cost. The advanced technology is suitable for portable electronic devices, such as smartphones and laptops, enabling their batteries to last longer. It could also be applied to virtual reality headsets and other high-end displays given the improved resolution and color performance, Prof. Kwok noted. The technology, known as active matrix ferroelectric liquid crystal display (FLCD), can replace traditional color lters, which limit energy e ciency as they block and use up % of backlight and energy as well as consume % of display manufacturing costs. To do so, the researchers developed eld sequential color technology, using fast ferroelectric liquid crystal, to display color images sequentially. FLCD leverages human vision capabilities to fuse the fast-switching images into a full-color picture. Color saturation was enhanced by employing RGB LED in the backlight rather than LED and image resolution increased as sub-pixels for di erent colors were eliminated. The overall result was a cheaper yet higher-quality display. Prof. Kwok is Director of the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, which is based at the University, and Dr. William M. W. Mong Professor of Nanotechnology. He and his researchers worked on the development in collaboration with Taiwanese electronics manufacturer AU Optronics. In , the team’s technology received the Best Prototype award within the Innovation Zone of Display Week , a leading international annual event organized by The Society for Information Display. A modular drum centrifuge facility is being developed at HKUST, with support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Collaborative Research Fund. The new multi-million-dollar facility, together with the existing beam centrifuge, will form a world-leading centrifuge cluster for advanced studies in hazard prevention, o shore resource engineering, and environmental protection. These will include research into mountain and estuary hazard mitigation and simulation of long-distance landslides, debris flows and wave-induced phenomena, among others. While HKUST’s original g-ton beam centrifuge is capable of simulating centralized problems, such as piles, the g-ton, g, . m diameter drum centrifuge can simulate distributed problems occurring over distances of up to , meters. The facility, jointly developed by researchers from HKUST and other Hong Kong universities, in collaboration with Cambridge University and South China University of Technology, will help to keep Hong Kong at the forefront of physical modeling of geotechnical processes. It will also be available for use by industry researchers. Centrifuge modeling upgrade to boost hazard prevention Coming up with a colorful solution: research team leaders Prof. Kwok Hoi-Sing (left) and Prof. Abhishek Srivastava. 08 IN FOCUS In the News Fresh light on displays The new drum centrifuge for research into mountain and estuary hazard mitigation and environmental protection.
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