We have developed flexible reflective liquid crystal (LC) devicesÅ Å using stainless steel foil and polycarbonate substrates. We established an optical design method to make reflective LC devices by compensating for the phase retardation of the vertically aligned (VA) -mode LC and aluminum electrode with a polycarbonate substrate and polyimide film. Our method achieved a good contrast ratio, over 30:1, across a wide range of viewing angles. These results show that it is possible to realize high quality reflective displays with low power consumption and high flexibility.

Handwriting is preferred when people take notes or annotate during listening to lectures or reading documents. This paper proves the effects of handwriting experimentally. Two experiments using a dual task method revealed that the cognitive load of handwriting was smaller than that of typing and typing interfered with memorization more than handwriting. Moreover, this tendency was also observed for people who can type fast with touch typing. This indicates that handwriting has a strong advantage in keeping information without interfering with other cognitive activities regardless of people's typing skill.

We have developed the achromatic polarizer using novel dichroic pigments. We established a method to control the light absorption, dichroic ratio, and alignment direction of dichroic pigments and successfully achieved high transmittance uniformity in visible wavelength range in both parallel and crossed states. This polarizer results in development of the low power monochrome-type reflective liquid crystal display with high reflectivity, paper white and motion picture capability.

We found that a dielectric shield wall structure with slits can achieve individual pixel driving with 1-μm-pitch liquid crystal (LC) pixels for electronic holographic displays with wide field of view. The dielectric shield wall structure, which has dielectric walls between pixels, achieves individual pixel driving in 1-μm-pitch pixels. However, for fabrication, the walls need slits to allow the penetration of liquid material such as LCs and solutions containing alignment material. We evaluated this type of structure with simulations based on the elastic continuum theory of LCs, and clarified that the dielectric shield wall structure with slits at the intersections of the walls can achieve individual pixel driving under the condition of strong anchoring on the walls.

In this paper, we propose the in-plane switching liquid crystal device with a microgroove and wall structure, fabricated by a transfer method for printable manufacturing of large-area flexible liquid crystal displays. We confirmed that the liquid crystal devices have a higher transmittance than conventional devices, and that a reduction of the thickness of the residual polymer film is necessary to decrease the driving voltage. Similar to the technique used on glass substrates, fabrication of flexible liquid crystal devices using a plastic substrate is possible using silicone elastomer.

We describe a novel user interface that utilizes an integrated transparent NFC (Near Field Communication) antenna on a touch display. Our transparent NFC antenna enables user identification on touchscreens and seamless multi-device experiences, in addition to the conventional touch function. This proposed technology allows the user to interact directly and intuitively with digital information through the display. Moreover, the transparent NFC antenna is compact, featuring advanced design.

Conventional approaches to the assessment of growth among children involve manual evaluation and treat different aspects of growth status separately. In contrast, this study presents an automated method for assessing growth status that considers various aspects of growth simultaneously. We first applied the dual-task paradigm (where two tasks are performed simultaneously) to collect data on anthropometric, kinematic, and cognitive aspects of growth at the same time. With the collected data on a large number of typically developing individuals, we constructed a statistical model of growth features and ages and also estimated participants' ages using regression analysis. By comparing the value for a participant to the average level of performance, we were able to provide an initial judgment of a child's growth status. The experiment results demonstrated that, among children, the growth features developed with age and that the estimation of growth status using this model was feasible.