Short Courses
Sonny Vo
3D Displays and their Implication on Fabrication Technologies
The transition from paper letter carried on a buggy carriage to emails is a paradigm shift in the communication landscape of our civilization. At the present moment, many visionaries are professing that a similar impact transition will occur to practically every activity in our daily life: from gaming to how we work to how we interact with the physical world. Augmented reality, mixed reality, virtual reality, 3D light-field technologies…the gateways to the metaverse…will create this next paradigm shift. Despite these displays’ respective engineering complexities, they all have one thing in common: light must pass through a pair of human eyes. Therefore, it is altogether natural that this precision engineering is best implemented by the art of nanotechnology and microtechnology. The next generation students and practitioners of device fabrication equipped with these techniques will play a crucial and fundamental role in defining the visual quality of the metaverse. I will share some key state-of-the-art fabrication technologies as well as unsolved challenges in materials and fabrication with the hope that our EIPBN community can be key players in contributing to this future.
About Sonny Vo
Sonny Vo received his undergraduate degree at UCLA specializing in low temperature experimental physics and a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University in semiconductor lasers, micro & nano fabrication, and photonics under Professor James S. Harris. Subsequently, he became a Post-Doctoral research fellow at HP Laboratory in Palo Alto, California where he was involved in numerous projects essential to the future of optical communication, quantum computing and the next generation LCD displays. One of the fundamental elements that enables this future is a directional backlight for efficient in-coupling of light. Led by his mentor, Dr. David Fattal, this work was featured on the cover of Nature in March 2013 for its groundbreaking glasses-free 3D display technology: laying the groundworks for the Silicon Valley startup company, Leia, Inc. Presently, Sonny is the Vice President and Director of the advance R&D, Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory of Leia, Inc.
