WEBVTT

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 there's more and more an electronics that soldiers use and everything

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requires an information terminal so
the soldier can see what the thing is

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doing or what it's trying to tell
them. And displays. In 2004 meant an LCD

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which is a big piece of glass. It's
heavy if you don't want it to break.

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The U. S. Army was looking for ways to
improve the communication hardware

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soldiers were used to carrying around
when interacting with other units

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out in the field. The army had an
interest in flexible displays, not

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because it wanted displays that you
can bend but because it wanted

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displays that are very light that
don't break and that use very little

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power. The army turned to research
institutions in hopes that one could

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help develop the kind of flexible
displays they were looking for. So

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really when you boil it all down. The
key innovation here at S. U. Has

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been figuring out how to take a piece
of plastic, glue it onto something

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thin flat and hard and stick it into
equipment that's used to processing

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glass and put thin film electronics
onto that plastic. The army planned to

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invest $100 million over 10 years. 100
proposals were put on the table and

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Arizona State University came out on
top issues flexible display center

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was established back in february 2004.
1 of the key assets that S. You had

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was this Motorola facility. This is
this is one of the last flat panel

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display manufacturing facilities built
in north America Nick culinary is a

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center. Director flexible displays.
Use plastic instead of glass to

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produce images. The idea was to do it
in a way that would not completely

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tip the apple card over. We wanted to
still be able to use the

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manufacturing infrastructure that's
out there and we've been able to do

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that and for the last eight years or
so, we've been using it to make

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displays with two different
technologies. So the first kind of display, as

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I said, that we worked on was was
these e ink displays. So this is a

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roughly six inch diagonal one. This is
the same thing that you would see

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in a Kindle, accepting a Kindle. It's
made out of glass and here it's made

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out of plastic. So instead of being
that thick, it can be that thick. Nick

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says prototypes are currently being
tested in field trials. It's just a

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display that lives on a sleeve, It's
just part of the uniform. It's got

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some map information on it. And the
idea is that you don't even know it's

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there most of the time, but now
something bad starts to happen and you

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need to know where am I where the rest
of the good guys. We're the bad

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guys which way's out. It's a lot
thinner, it's a lot thinner and and as I

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said, it bends. But again, the bending
was kind of an added bonus feature

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if you will, what we were really after
was doesn't break Greg drop the

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first flexible display center director
who now heads up macro technology

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works, says the center did something
that a lot of people didn't think a

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university could do. Usually
university would kind of stop at what we call

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proof of concept. Let's show that it
works. Let's do it in the lab and now

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let's write our patents. Let's write
our papers and pass it off to someone

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else. We're about taking it across the
valley, that not all the way to

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commercialization, but through
pipeline manufactured at the point where

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you can show that it can be
manufactured if a manufacturer wants to go

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ahead and take it further now, called
flexible electronics and display

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center, the future is looking brighter
as more applications are in the

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works. And so we've got the army,
other government agencies, the

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University and Industrial partners,
all all looking at some of these

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applications and thinking about, okay,
how do we take advantage of what

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we've achieved so far and moved to the
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