**Meeting Notice - December Webinar**
Tuesday 16th December 7pm (London)
Speaker: James Gourlay, General Manager, Forvia
Abstract: Polymer-based light-guides are widely used in LCD displays and other backlighting and lighting applications to deliver homogeneous backlighting in a thin system. The transparent light-guide polymer has a higher refractive index (~1.5) than the surrounding air (1), which gives a Total Internal Reflection (TIR) condition. This reflection of the light from the polymer-air interface, traps and guides the light within the transparent polymer material.
Air-based light-guides were developed by 3M for architectural lighting applications. They can be produced with refractive prism films which produce a reflection at the air/prism film interface with a similar function to the TIR in polymer light-guides.
We present a range of backlighting configurations from edge lit to direct-lit LED BLU structures with air-based lightguides, which can reduce cost, increase function and reduce the weight of the system compared to conventional solid polymer approaches.
Bio: Dr James Gourlay is General Manager and Senior Expert in Optics within Forvia, a large, multi-national, tier 1 automotive technology company. He wears several hats, including leading an innovation team in the topics of HMI, displays and lighting for automotive cockpit experiences. He is a Forvia technology scout with a mandate to build a UK technology network. Previously, he founded designLED, an LED technology company, and built it up with a series of investment rounds, before exiting through acquisition to Forvia. Other technology business experience includes joining an OLED display tech start-up. He was a university academic in the field of optoelectronics and optics, and he researched in the fields of optoelectronics, packaging, optical computing, optical interconnects, astronomical optics, adaptive optics, liquid crystal devices and displays, and computer-generated holography. He has a PhD in Physics.
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***Link to SID's Webinar archive - note webinars are only published with speaker's permission.***
Past Meetings:
"Microfluidic visual communication systems" - Michel Delmas, 10th September 2025
"Displayweek Business Conference Highlights" - Bob Raikes, 10th July 2025
"Bringing OTFT technology into mass production for flexible EPD and beyond" - Dr Paul Cain, 29th April 2025
"Direct Atomic Layer Processing (DALP®), a novel approach to micro- and nanoscale device manufacturing" - Dr Benjamin Borrie, 24th April 2024
"The Challenge of Realizing Low Power Logic from Thin Film Semiconductors" - Prof Andrew Flewitt, 12th Nov 2024
"EuroDisplay in Review" - Dr Adrian Travis, 23rd Oct 2024
"AR/VR Displays: Technology Trends and Market Outlook" - Guillaume Chansin, 12th Sept 2024
"Gamut Rings, and why to stop using Chromaticity" - Dr Euan Smith, 23rd July 2024
"Reflections on Displayweek" Sam Phenix and Ed Buckley, 27th June 2024
UK/IRL in-person meeting and AGM, 14th March 2024
"Holographic displays for AR" - Dr Ed Buckley, 13th February 2024
"Achieving Energy Efficiency in Red microLEDs for the next generation of microLED Displays" - Caroline O'Brien, Webinar, 16th January 2024
"Building the future of Semiconductor Lighting with Surface Emitting SLEDs" - Dr Juan Morales, Webinar, 6th December 2023
"Emissive displays using Organic Thin-Film Transistor Technology" - Dr Simon Ogier, Webinar, 7th November 2023
"Development of the first wireless dynamic focus liquid crystal contact lenses" - Dr James Bailey, Webinar, 25th October 2023
"Can we tame the light waves?" - Prof Mohsen Rahmani, Webinar, 19th September 2023
"Waveguides for Augmented Reality Displays" - Dr Andreas Georgiou, Webinar, 12th July 2023
"Flexible LC optics and displays for curved and biaxially formed active surfaces" - Dr Paul Cain, FlexEnable, Webinar, 28th June 2023
"Perovskites for In-Pixel Colour Conversion" - Dr Bernard Wenger, Helio Display Materials, Webinar, 12th April 2023
2022 SID session at ITC 2022, University of Surrey, Guildford, 15th Sept 2022
2020 SID session at InnoLAE 2020, Wellcome Genome Camplus, Cambridge, 21st Jan 2020
"Emerging technologies for displays" - Programme
2019 AGM and 1-Day Technical Meeting, CSA Catapult Innovation Centre, Newport, Wednesday 20th November 2019,
"Compound Semiconductors for Display Applicaitons" - Programme
2018 AGM and Evening Technical Meeting, UCL, 28th Nov 2018.
"Integrated Photonics and Electronics for Displays" - Programme
2018 LCD 50th Anniversary Meeting, Royal Academy of Engineering, 7th June 2018
Programme Report Review Article in "Liquid Crystals Today"
2017 1-day Technical Meeting, Flexenable, 24th October 2017
"Emerging Display Technologies" - Programme
2017 - Free Technical Meeting, BBC R+D, 27th Feb 2017
"HDR and the Future of TV" - Programme