Chuck Milligan

CEO | FlexEnable
Chuck Milligan

Curved in-vehicle displays – trends, challenges and opportunities

  • Increased vehicle automation, connectivity and safety require more and larger displays which conform to the curved surfaces of the car.
  • A new glass-free display technology - OLCD - meets these requirements by using the traditional LCD architecture which is proven for automotive-grade reliability and brightness but on a flexible organic backplane
  • OLCD also meets the demand for ever increasing contrast for automotive displays. As it is extremely thin, OLCD is particularly suited for the dual cell displays – an approach that drastically boosts contrast to 1 million : 1 whilst retaining OLCD’s ability to conform to surfaces.
  • Flexible liquid crystal cells allow other surfaces in the car to be activated, including colour-neutral, rapidly switchable smart window films that can be biaxially conformed to the glazing.
Biography

Chuck Milligan is CEO of FlexEnable, the leader in the development and industrialisation of organic electronics for flexible displays, optics and sensors. He has over 25 years’ commercial and general management experience across the globe in the semiconductor, consumer electronics, telecom, industrial and aerospace markets. Chuck also serves as a board director at OE-A (Organic and Printed Electronics Association), the leading international industry association for the emerging technology of organic and printed electronics.

Prior to FlexEnable, Chuck was CEO of EM Test, the leading conducted EMC test equipment company, successfully completing its sale to AMETEK in 2011.

Chuck was CEO of Heptagon micro-optics, which he grew from a 16-employee, pre-revenue company, to an industry-leading business, with 300 employees and a Singapore-based volume production facility – shipping optics modules to leading mobile handset companies such as Nokia and Apple and raising over $70m from venture capital and strategic investors.

Chuck also served as Vice President of Industrial & Defense Solutions for Bookham Inc., a leading international optical components manufacturer. Chuck was Commercial Director at JDS Uniphase/Nortel Networks GaAs semiconductor fab in Zurich, Switzerland prior to Bookham’s acquisition of the company.