Innovators Under 35
INNOVATIVE Entrepreneurs
E4. Bill Liu, 34
Royole
His flexible components could change
the way people use electronics.
Bill
Liu thinks he can do something Samsung, LG, and Lenovo can’t: manufacture
affordable, flexible electronics that can be bent, folded, or rolled up into a
tube.
Other
researchers and companies have had similar ideas, but Liu moved fast to
commercialize his vision. In 2012, he founded a startup called Royole, and in
2014 the company—under his leadership as CEO—unveiled the world’s thinnest
flexible display. Compared with rival technologies that can be curved into a
fixed shape but aren’t completely pliable, Royole’s
displays are as thin as an onion skin and can be rolled tightly
around a pen. They can also be fabricated using simpler manufacturing
processes, at lower temperatures, which allows Royole to make them at lower
cost than competing versions. The company operates its own factory in Shenzhen,
China, and is finishing construction on a 1.1-million-square-foot campus
nearby. Once complete, the facility will produce 50 million flexible panels a
year, says Royole.
Liu
dreams of creating an all-in-one computing device that would combine the
benefits of a watch, smartphone, tablet, and TV. “I think our flexible displays
and sensors will eventually make that possible,” he says. For now, users will
have to settle for a $799 headset that they can
don like goggles to watch movies and video games in 3-D.
—Elizabeth Woyke
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
No comments:
Post a Comment