Plasma and LCD displays never really tickled me as the former eats power and the latter suffers from poor colour fidelity and pixel response time in comparison to trusty old CRTs.
The two technologies I’m keen on getting my grubby mitts on are OLED/LEP displays and FED displays. SEDs are a form of FED, but rather than using the typical Carbon nanotubes, it’s a much simpler idea where there are two electrodes separated by a gap of just a few nanometers. Electrons tunnel through this gap via Quantum effects and some of those electrons are accelerated via an electric field to strike phosphor dots at one end, causing light to be emitted.
Canon and Toshiba will be showing a prototype in the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this January 2004.
Canon and Toshiba will start selling the large-sized flat TVs in 2005, according to a report in a local Japanese newspaper.
The SED display, which is based on field emission, is Canon’s proprietary technology that Canon has been working on since the mid 80s. The company showed a 10-inch prototype panel at SID in 1998. At that time, Canon had been working with Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) to implement the SED technology into a TV set. JVC eventually pulled out of the venture.
Canon and Toshiba officially announced the partnership in SED development and business opportunities in June 1999 when it showing a 10-inch prototype. From the beginning both companies aimed the technology at TV applications and had planned to establish a joint venture production company. The two companies said then that they were going to develop panels of 30-inch to probably 50-inch diagonal size.
The SED is said to have advantages in productivity, performance and sizes vis-a-vis existing flat panels such as LCDs and plasma. SEDs can be fabricated mostly using ordinary printing methods. Because SEDs drive electrons at about 10kV — close to that of CRTs — they can use phosphors widely used in CRTs. This makes them CRT equivalent self-emitting displays and very thin: a 40-inch sized panel can be no thicker than 10 mm, weigh less than 20kg and consume around 60W.
… and the cool bit:
Electron emission by SEDs is achieved through the simple construction of a slit between the electrodes. Canon has paid particular attention to this point, and, thanks to a screen printing method that uses wiring linking the many electron emitters, we were able to make the construction more efficient and to enlarge screens at little cost.
Canon has also succeeded in applying ink jet printing technology to create ultrafine-particle film, and has developed a high-performance electron emitter. SEDs also consume low amounts of energy. They convert electrical energy to light with an emission efficiency of 5 lm/W or higher, resulting in energy consumption that is roughly one-half that of a large-screen CRT and about one-third that of a plasma display panel. Accordingly, it is possible to enjoy 42 inch screen images while consuming less power than that required to run a 36 inch CRT TV.
Yummy. :D
