Ouyang Zhongcan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The rise of my country's display industry is inseparable from the integration of industry, academia and research

Recently, Ouyang Zhongcan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an exclusive interview that currently, my country has invested in and built dozens of wafer foundries and established dozens of integrated circuit colleges. However, it is not easy to narrow the gap with foreign countries. The chip industry should learn from the LCD industry, adhere to the integration of industry, academia and research, and insist on cultivating industry talents.

Don’t be superstitious about CNS and promote the development of the display industry through the integration of industry, academia and research

my country’s electronic information industry mainly includes integrated circuits, new display industries, etc. Among them, the integrated circuit industry is still controlled by others, while the new display industry has achieved world-renowned results, making my country a major display country. This is closely related to the integration of industry, academia and research in the field of liquid crystal display.

Tsinghua University is one of the earliest units in China engaged in research on liquid crystal materials and display technology. As early as 1969, Professor Wang Liangyu, Professor Liao Songsheng and others from the chemistry teaching and research group of our school began research on liquid crystal display materials and devices. In 1974, they cooperated with the Beijing Geological Instrument Factory to successfully trial-produce my country's first twisted nematic liquid crystal display (TN-LCD). From 1977 to 1978, a new process was used to successfully synthesize phenylcyclohexane series liquid crystal materials.

In 1978, when the central leadership instructed Tsinghua University to carry out liquid crystal display research, Tsinghua University organized the Chemistry Department of Tsinghua Physics Teaching and Research Group and the Electric Vacuum Teaching and Research Group of the Department of Radio to conduct joint technical research and successfully developed the pin-target movie LC projection.The movie "Tea Gull", which praises the Chinese women's volleyball team, was screened in the auditorium.

Against this background, Tsinghua University established the liquid crystal physics major. Ouyang Zhongcan said: "My undergraduate degree was from the Department of Automatic Control of Tsinghua University. My graduate degree was transferred to the liquid crystal physics major of Tsinghua University, and I became the first doctorate in liquid crystal physics in China. This is how the domestic liquid crystal display technology and research team were cultivated, laying the foundation for the research and production of liquid crystal materials."

By 1987, the Department of Chemistry of Tsinghua University had mastered the synthesis technology, production technology, and processes of liquid crystal materials, and jointly established the Shijiazhuang Tsinghua Liquid Crystal Materials Factory with Xisanzhuang Yongsheng Industrial Corporation, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province. It successfully launched trial production in April 1988, breaking the long-term foreign monopoly in the field of liquid crystal materials. In 2010, Shijiazhuang Tsinghua Liquid Crystal Materials Factory was renamed "Shijiazhuang Chengzhi Yonghua Display Materials Co., Ltd.", with Zhang Baizhe, Wang Kui and others trained by the Chemistry Department of Tsinghua University as senior executives. Dong Youmei, BOE’s first CTO, was also a talent trained by Tsinghua University.

Ouyang Zhongcan said that, like Tsinghua University, Hebei University of Technology insists on cultivating professionals in liquid crystal and liquid crystal device physics, and also supplies a large number of talents to the LCD industry. Peng Xuhui, chairman of Shenzhen Tianma, is one of them, which shows the importance of the integration of industry, academia and research in talent cultivation.

There is also an important academic conference in China’s display industry—China Display Academic Conference. This academic conference has a history of 30 years. It continues to grow with the development of China's display industry, continues to promote industry-university-research cooperation in the display field, and continuously promotes independent innovation of new display technologies in China. Today, China's LCD industry ranks first in the world, and the OLED industry develops with high quality. It is understood that the 2022 China Display Academic Conference will be held in Chengdu from September 22 to 24. It will be jointly sponsored by the Liquid Crystal Branch of the China Optics and Optoelectronics Industry Association and the Liquid Crystal Branch of the Chinese Physical Society, and hosted by Aiji Micro Consulting (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu New Display Industry Association, and Chengdu Chenxian Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. (Visionox). "I believe that the China Display Academic Conference will get better and better, promote the continuous innovation of various new display technologies, and make my country further lead the OLED and Mini/Micro LED industries," Ouyang Zhongcan said.

However, at present, some colleges and universities do not do their job properly and only advocate writing articles. They pay too much attention to the SCI impact factor and are superstitious about CNS. In order to promote the improvement of domestic scientific research evaluation rules, Ouyang Zhongcan recently published an article in the "China Science Journal" titled "Articles will remain in the world "innocent" through the ages." In the article, he cited many cases of Nobel Prize winners opposing CNS (Cell, Nature, and Science). Tasuku Honjo, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, once pointed out in an interview, “Research done to make it easier for papers to be accepted by well-known journals will never be good work and will not be accepted by Cell.Rejected by Nature and Science, your research may be truly top-notch work. "

Ouyang Zhongcan emphasized, "In the past few years, colleges and universities used the number of CNS articles to judge heroes. In fact, real scientific creation does not rely on the number of articles, nor does it rely on CNS articles. Many CNS articles are flattering. ”

Peter Ratcliffe, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, posted a rejection letter from Nature in 1992. The letter stated that "the discovery of the basic reaction mechanism of cellular hypoxia is not enough to be published in Nature." The reason why Peter Ratcliffe won the award that year was "responses of cells under hypoxic conditions." "Really innovative scientific research papers may not be published in CNS. Overemphasis on CNS will not only not promote scientific research progress, but may also hinder real innovation." "Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out.

Scientific research and innovation should not only stay in the laboratory, but should also be integrated with industry to empower thousands of industries. Compared with Tsinghua University and Peking University, Ouyang Zhongcan admires Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Northwestern Polytechnical University more because they are closely integrated with the national defense industry, have never stopped independent innovation, and have cultivated a large number of industrial talents for the country.

Strengthen research and development to promote breakthroughs in OLED materials and Micro LED technology

The display industry is a capital-intensive, talent-intensive, and technology-intensive industry.Through the collaborative cooperation of "government, industry, academia, research and application", the leap-forward development of my country's display industry has been achieved. Ouyang Zhongcan said that China has now entered the first camp of the global display industry, leading the development of the global LCD panel industry, and has reached a point where other countries cannot catch up in terms of market share and technological innovation.

However, there is still a gap between China's OLED industry and South Korea. "We must always pay attention to South Korea's industrial trends. They have focused the display industry on OLED," Ouyang Zhongcan said: "Samsung Display recently acquired the German display materials company Cynora for about US$300 million to obtain all its OLED material technology patents, which shows that OLED materials are very important."

At present, OLED materials are not yet mature, especially the lifespan of OLED blue light materials, which restricts the development process of the OLED industry. Ouyang Zhongcan believes that compared with the liquid crystal display industry, the OLED industry is not yet a mature industry, so research on OLED materials must be strengthened. The maturity of the LCD industry largely benefits from the stability of liquid crystal materials. During his graduate studies, liquid crystal materials were similar to today's OLED materials and were afraid of water and oxygen. However, after Professor George W. Gray of the University of Hull in the UK synthesized biphenyl materials, the liquid crystal materials were not afraid of water and oxygen, which accelerated the industrialization of liquid crystal display technology. Based on biphenyl, the scientific research team of the Department of Chemical Engineering of Tsinghua University also successfully synthesized phenylcyclohexane-type liquid crystals in 1975, which promoted the development of liquid crystals.Materials are localized. It can be seen that stable materials are important in promoting the maturity of the display industry.

Currently, the OLED industry has not found materials similar to biphenyl. Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out that OLED materials have not yet been finalized and are still changing. Therefore, domestic academia and industry must pay attention to OLED materials, increase research investment, and find non-delicate OLED materials that can be industrialized.

In addition to OLED materials, Micro LED is also worthy of attention. Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out that Micro LED has all the advantages of OLED display and has a longer lifespan. It is considered to be the last display technology.

Currently, the industry believes that mass transfer is the key to promoting the industrialization of Micro LED. However, Ouyang Zhongcan believes: "The large-volume transfer solutions such as seal type, laser type, and fluid mechanics are very crude and stupid. In the future, the Micro LED industry must follow the path of chips and combine red, blue, and green LEDs as needed."

Make up for shortcomings and further improve domestic display materials and equipment

The new display industry is a strategic, basic, and leading industry that affects the national economy and social development. my country's LCD industry has ranked first in the world in scale, but key materials and equipment still rely on foreign manufacturers.

In order to promote the technological upgrading of display manufacturing equipment and enhance my country’s new display industryTo improve the industry’s independent innovation capabilities, Guangdong Province launched the “Brilliant Action”. Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out that the focus of "Operation Brilliant" is to solve some equipment problems that may be stuck in my country's display industry in the future.

Equipment is an all-round test of core basic parts and components, advanced basic processes, key basic materials, and industrial technology foundations. It cannot be achieved overnight. For example, ASML, a Dutch lithography equipment manufacturer, does not work alone. Its lithography machine parts come from all over the world and are the result of global division of labor and collaboration. Ouyang Zhongcan believes that it is not necessarily possible to make good display equipment by relying on one's own strength, so it is necessary to participate in the global division of labor and cooperation as much as possible, and use global innovation power to promote the development of domestic display equipment.

Unlike equipment, display materials need to rely more on independent technological innovation. Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out: "If one display material manufacturer is dominant and raises prices all the time, panel manufacturers may not be able to bear it, so we need to do research and development, and the country should support the development of original OLED material technology."

Currently, a number of OLED material manufacturers have emerged in China, such as OLED, Aglaea, 800 Million Spacetime, etc. Among them, new luminescent materials represented by platinum and gold are expected to become OLED luminescent materials with independent intellectual property rights in my country. Ouyang Zhongcan is very concerned about the latest progress in the industrialization cooperation between Professor Zhi Zhiming of the University of Hong Kong and Aglaiya Optoelectronic Materials Co., Ltd., and hopes that China will develop its own products as soon as possible.Master intellectual property for stable OLED materials.