​Anders Up Close – reliability as resilience

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Aug 27, 2019

Instalment 4 in the series where Paul Mullen and Mike Logan chatted with Reliability Matters host Mike Konrad on his podcast for the electronic assembly industry.

Like much of the rest of our world, display technology is constantly changing, often at different rates at different times and in multiple directions. This presents challenges, but it also offers opportunities. For companies like Anders, the biggest challenge is keeping relevant to the end market. To do that involves looking ahead at new technologies and anticipating market shifts. To succeed, one has to remain reliable, relevant and resilient.

One of the things that you will see over time is, technologies will continue to evolve,” Paul Mullen explains. “For example, today at the consumer level, when you're looking at TVs and you're looking at mobile phones, there will be an adoption of products like utilising quantum dot technology - quantum dot, TFT, quantum dot OLEDs. You'll also see micro LEDs coming into the market as well, and these will come into the markets we handle in about five or ten years after they've worked through their way in the mainstream. From a reliability standpoint, you're adding in new technologies that have different requirements to the current technologies, so there are challenges in terms of the deposition of the quantum dot - it's moving now to inkjet deployment, onto the substrates. Micro LEDs will have between 3000 and 5000 dye per pixel inch, so the next generation of manufacturability for these new technologies will create lots of challenges.

“Then you're looking at moving the touch from what is predominantly a touch on top layer today, to integrating the touch within the stack, and again therein lies a lot of the different challenges, and you'll have controller guys that will combine both the touch controller with other functions within one chip. As the technology becomes more integrated, the need for technical expertise will intensify.”

What we're used to seeing,” Paul Mullen adds, “is a touchscreen as a separate item that comes together with the display, and so you've got display, touchscreen, cover glass.

toucscreen controller IC

That's all changing now, the touchscreen and the functionality of the touch sensor itself, it's all going to be built into the same LCD. So, why do we need two or three different chips?Can we not integrate all the functionality on to one IC? That's what we're doing now, so we're getting touch functionality, and then you'll see the driver functionality, all merged together into one package, taking up less room and driving down the cost. This will make customers happy and open up more opportunities for new designs. With those designs will come still more challenges, and I'm pretty sure we'll overcome those, too!”

“The technology is not standing still, it's moving, and it's changing all the time. That’s probably what's kept me interested in it for the last 25 years - there's always something new and interesting coming along.”

If you would like to catch up with the entire series, see the links below:

Part 1: Anders Up Close - the people behind the screen
Part 2: Anders Up Close - ensuring durability in the toughest places
Part 3: Anders up Close - challenges lead to improved customer service
Part 4: Anders Up Close - Reliability as Resilience
Part 5: Anders Up Close - the Anders difference

Anders, the people behind the screen, know how to design for relevance, resilience and reliability. For more information, click here.