Question:
Research is being actively done on organic EL displays all over the world. What is the state of that research outside of Japan?

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First of all, there is low molecular weight OEL and high molecular weight OEL, and research is well underway with the former. Research in organic EL started in 1962, and in 1987 Eastman Kodak developed an organic EL element with laminated structure, high efficiency, and high luminosity. Japanese manufacturers and university researchers who were aware of that breakthrough began serious research into display applications. With ongoing development in low molecular OEL, in 1992 a group of researchers at Cambridge succeeded in emitting light with fluorescent macromolecules, and that prompted more high molecular weight oriented research.
So I guess you could say that low molecular work was primarily being done in Japan while the high molecular polymer research was really taking off in European Universities. In Japan, companies and universities were grappling with getting high efficiencies and long lifespans out of low molecular weight designs, and were focused on practical research. On the other hand, in Europe, while there were a large number of universities engaged in research mainly with polymers, very few actual companies were involved so the development of practical applications lagged overwhelmingly behind Japan.

Question:
Yamagata University participated in an industrial/academic joint research project called "Flexible Organic EL Displays." Tell us about the role of universities in advanced technological research.

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In today's companies, central laboratories that do basic research are disappearing. All of the departments in all of the companies are trying to do R&D that deals directly with their specific area of operations. Therefore I would say that the role of universities from now on will be performing basic research, and using innovative practical research to generate new ideas that companies can use to make future breakthroughs. So I think that industry and academia should continue to cooperate. Presently at the Kido Laboratory we always have 4-5 researchers from companies working on joint collaborations. And if you include others who come in at random to perform experiments, we've got quite a number of people coming in and out of here at any given time. Among the people who stay here for 2-3 years, some of them even earn Ph.D.s from the university. Whenever a string of researchers from a company visits us it's a really good learning opportunity for the students, especially since they get motivated when they see how intense the company researchers are about their work.