Roger Stewart, President of Sourland Moutain Associates is an expert in technical knowledge of RFID, a designer in liquid crystal displays, semiconductors and a patent expert. He has executive level experience at three successful start-up companies and discusses his work with liquid crystal displays and various emerging technologies, at the SID Display Week 2018 event.

Levering his knowledge as a historian, Stewart goes on to discuss the evolution and history behind liquid crystal displays. Stewart developed the electronics that goes around the display. He was elected in 2010 as a Fellow of the Society of Information Display Week and the author of 93 papers published.

Professor Vladimir G. Chigrinov is a renowned specialist in liquid crystal optics and photonics. Professor Vladimir G. Chigrinov is an author and coauthor of 4 books, more than 20 reviews and book chapters, 180 journal papers, 420 conference presentations and 60 patents or patent applications in the field of liquid crystals. He is a Member of the International Liquid Crystal Society and the Society for International Display (SID), as well as a member of Editorial Board of “Liquid Crystals Today”, “Photonics Letters of Poland” and an Associate Editor of “Journal of the SID”.

He is the only SID Fellow in Russia and Eastern Europe. He won the Research Excellence Award of SENG, HKUST, that recognizes the efforts of an outstanding faculty member in May 2012. Prof Chigrinov served as Associate Editor of J. SID, Member of Editorial Board of three other International journals, Chair of three International Conferences in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and has attended more than 50 plenary, invited and tutorial talks in about 100 prestige International Conferences since 1974.

Martin Schadt and Wolfgang Helfrich invented the twisted nematic field effect (TN-effect) in the Central Research Laboratories of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, in Basel, Switzerland. The resulting patent CH532261 was licensed worldwide to electronics and watch industries and thus initiated a paradigm change towards flat panel field effect LCD.

In the early 1970s, Martin Schadt started to investigate correlations between liquid crystal molecular structures, material properties, electro-optical effects and display performance to obtain criteria for novel, effect-specific liquid crystal materials for TN- and subsequent field-effect applications. His interdisciplinary approach involving physics and chemistry became the basis for modern industrial Liquid Crystal LC-materials research and led to the discovery and production of numerous new functional molecules and new electro-optical effects. In 1970, shortly after the invention of the TN-effect, he developed the first commercial room temperature nematic liquid crystal mixture with positive dielectric anisotropy, used in the displays of the first Japanese digital TN-LCD watches. The pharmaceutical company Roche established itself as a major supplier of liquid crystal materials for the emerging LCD-industry.

Apart from his pioneering work on the TN-effect (i.e.e twisted nematic field effect), novel liquid crystal materials, organic semiconductors and biophysics, he invented or co-invented the following effects and technologies:

– first organic light-emitting diode (OLED) (1969 as post-doc at Canada’s NRC; US patent 3,621,321),
– Kerr effect in LCs (1972),
– field-induced guest-host color switching (1979),
– dual frequency addressing and materials (1982),
– optical mode interference (OMI)-effect (1987,)
– deformed helix ferroelectric (DHF)- and short pitch bi-stable ferroelectric (SBF)-effect (1989, 1990),
– linearly photo-polymerisation (LPP)-technology (1991).

As principal inventor and head of Roche LC research he promoted the development of LPP-Photo-alignment into manufacturing (1992–2002). As a key technology it enables contact free alignment and photo-patterning of monomeric and polymeric liquid crystals by optical means instead of mechanically. This has opened up novel display configurations as well as a wide range of new optical thin-film elements on single substrates, such as LC-interference color filters, optical retarders, cholesteric optical filters, wide-view films to enhance the field of view of LCDs, novel optical security elements for document and brand protection, stereo-polarizers as well as nano-and micro-corrugated optical polymer thin-film elements enabling polymeric antireflective and directional light scattering coatings.

The molecular design approach of Martin Schadt and his team has led to the discovery, patenting and production of the following commercially important liquid crystal classes: alkyl cyano Schiff’bases and esters (1971), phenyl-pyrimidines (1977), alkenyl liquid crystals which have become key for all state-of-the-art high-information content LCDs (1985–1995), numerous halogenated liquid crystals (1989–1995) as well as the first strongly non-linear optical (NLO)-ferroelectric liquid crystals (1992).

Until 1994 Martin Schadt was the head of the Liquid Crystal Research division of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. As a spin-off from Hoffmann-La Roche in 1994 he founded the interdisciplinary research and development company ROLIC Ltd. From 1994 until his retirement from the operating business in October 2002 Martin Schadt was CEO of ROLIC Ltd. and delegate of the board of directors. He retired from ROLIC in 2005 and is now active as a scientific advisor to various research groups and governmental agencies.

Martin Schadt has published 167 scientific papers, co-authored four books and holds 116 patents, and previously received the Roche Research and Development Prize and Karl Ferdinand Braun Prize of the American Society for Information Display (SID); highest recognition Award of SID.