Almost 40 Adventurers and NEOSA members joined Dan Hanson and Bob Coppedge in their latest Excellent Adventure to the nation's first and largest academic center devoted to basic and applied research on liquid crystals (LC's). Information Display magazine declared that KSU's LCI as the only world-class center in the US. John West, director of the world-renown LCI, hosted and gave a primer on liquid crystal technology as well as a tour of the labs.

The building houses a state-of-the-art cleanrooms facility for prototyping new types of liquid crystal devices and for customized training of liquid crystal display manufacturing employees. The LC Research Facility allows them to do initial prototyping of devices and technology and then approach a venture capitalist with specific numbers.

The world market for LC products in 2003 was projected at about $24 billion and that was primarily displays. However, West declared "We are an LCI working in displays, not a display institute working with liquid crystals." Huge companies such as Kodak, Intel and Corning rent the skills and facilities of the LCI as well as tiny startups. West gave some examples including one of a company called HANA that moved from Silicon Valley to Twinsburg so they could be closer to the LCI and hired KSU grads who really knew the field.

Another company, Alpha Micron Inc., developed switchable eyeglass lenses to compensate for light changes. The adventurers loved a demo of the technology in the "switchable" windows that surround the clean rooms. Governor Taft received a pair of switchable sunglasses that afternoon, when he presented the LCI with a $1.6 million award to create a Flexible Optical and Electronic Device Manufacturing facility that would create wall-sized LC Ds? by "printing" onto flexible material just like an inkjet printers, enabling vast markets such as paper-like viewing displays for electronic newspapers and soft faxes.

But LC's have other uses (and possible tech transfer spinoffs). They are being used for beam steering in missile defense to "blind" heat-seeking missiles. Deep space communications will be enhanced with the L Cs?. And there is an important biotech component. L Cs? can be used for accelerated microbial detection and medical diagnosis. For example, a typical Anthrax culture takes 24 hours to produce results while the antibody dot blot test takes 6 hours. A liquid crystal test could produce results in 5 minutes. Almost like Star Trek's Dr. Mc Coy? passing his LC device over the patient to diagnose. Cool Tech!From Cool Cleveland reader Dan Hansondan@magnuminc.com (:divend:)