ILCS

Seung Hee Lee received his B.S. degree in Physics from Chonbuk National University in 1989 and Ph.D. degree from the Physics Department of Kent State University in 1994. In 1995, he joined the LCD division of Hyundai Electronics, where he did research on development of wide-viewing-angle TFT-LCDs with new liquid crystal devices until August of 2001. As one of key inventors, he has named new wide-viewing-angle technology, “fringe-field switching (FFS)” and introduced FFS device to the public in Asia Display’98, SID & IDW’99, SID’01, and IDMC’02 for the first time. He also contributed to development and commercialization of 15” and 18.1” TFT-LCDs using the FFS mode with negative and positive dielectric anisotropy LCs. Nowadays, most of all high-end TFT-LCDs use the FFS mode.
In September of 2001, he became professor of Chonbuk National University, and he is working on development of new electro-optic materials and devices for displays. At present, he has published over 200 papers in international SCI journals and holds more than 100 registered international patents. He was awarded “King of Invention” twice while he was in industry. He also got several major awards such as “SID Fellow” in 2008, “SID Special Recognition Award” in 2012, “Merck Award-Major” from Korean Information Display Society in 2013, and “Jan Rajchman Prize” from SID in 2016.
Our group, Information Display, is working on basic researches for improvement of electro-optic performances of LC devices, flexible LC devices and LCDs, and synthesis of quantum rod and its orientation control.

Polarizing optical microscopic (POM, Nicon eclipse E600 POL) images of maple seed-like morphology with multiple branches have been observed in the peripheral areas of the LC cell when UV light with a maximum intensity at 365 was irradiated to the LC mixture at the center of the cell, in which high birefringent LC is mixed with acrylate-based monomer in a ratio of 55:45. Optically isotropic state was observed at the center of the cell in which UV was exposed, in the beginning, however, when an external pressure is applied to the cell, similar textures were observed, implying that the LC droplets in nano-size is destroyed. The textures may give us information how the polymerization process of the monomer has been occurring though further studies are under progress.

Jury comment: The image was selected because of its interesting texture having maple seed-like morphology.