Competing technologies - Page 51

A joint venture established by Canon and Toshiba to develop and commercialize a new flat-panel display technology called SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) will begin trial production of displays this week.

SED technology has been under development for more than 20 years and is being positioned by Canon and Toshiba as a better option for large-screen TVs than PDP (plasma display panel) technology. SED panels can produce pictures that are as bright as CRTs (cathode ray tubes), use up to one-third less power than equivalent size PDPs and don't have the slight time delay sometimes seen with some other flat-panel displays, according to the companies.Canon and Toshiba are hoping to see the first SED televisions available in Japan sometime in the first half of next year.
But before those TVs can come to market the companies must be able to mass produce the SED panels.

As part of their work towards this goal they established SED Inc. in October last year and committed ¥200 billion (US$1.8 billion) towards SED research, development, production and marketing.

The new product, first to be shown on July 14 at the Tokyo International Forum, is a film substrate-based bendable color e-paper. Similar to Flash memory, the display integrates a non-volatile data memory function that is able to continuously display the same image without being connected to a power supply. Electricity is only needed when users want to change the displayed content. According to Fujitsu, the material used enables high-resolution and "vivid color" images that are unaffected even when the screen is bent.

Fujitsu did not provide any details about the screen, but said the new technology consumes only 1/100 to 1/10,000 the energy of conventional display technologies. Possible applications for the paper could be advertising and information displays, restaurant menus, operating manuals or even digital photo frames that typically require a continuous power supply today.
Fujitsu said the displays will become available commercially in the April 2006 to March 2007 timeframe.

NTERA demonstrates the affordability, speed, and ease of mass-producing NanoChromics displays by enabling an LCD technology pioneer in Taipei, Taiwan to become production-ready for NanoChromics displays for under a million dollars in less than six months.

NTERA today announced that it has successfully transformed an existing LCD facility in Taipei, Taiwan, into a production-ready NanoChromics display factory. NanoChromics technology combines superb optical performance and ink-on-paper readability with low power consumption, and overcomes the production environment and cost challenges posed by existing LCD, OLED and other display technologies.

Motorola Labs, the applied research arm of Motorola, Inc., today unveiled a working 5-inch color video display prototype based on proprietary Carbon Nanotube (CNT) technology - a breakthrough technique that could create large, flat panel displays with superior quality, longer lifetimes and lower costs than current offerings.
Motorola's industry-first working prototype demonstrates:

• Operational full color 5" video section of a 1280 x 720, 16:9, 42-inch HDTV
• High quality brightness
• Bright, vivid colors using standard Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV phosphors
• Display panel thickness of 3.3 millimeters (about 1/8th of an inch)
• Low cost display drive electronics (similar to LCD, much lower than Plasma)
• Display characteristics meet or exceed CRTs, such as fast response time, wide viewing angle, wide operation temperature.

NTERA is unveiling a new display technology called NanoChromics. They say that this "intelligent" technology features ink-on-paper readability and low power consumption - at a competitive cost. NanoChromics is an e-paper technology, but NTERA claims it can compete with OLED technology on a cost basis.

Cambridge-based Plastic Logic will collaborate with E-Ink to produce flexible e-paper panels. Plastic Logic also signed a deal with Siemens to develop flexible screens for mobiles. Plastic Logic is understood to be working on A5-sized (14.8x21 cm) standalone screens that could act as auxiliary displays for mobiles, and would at the very least be more robust than conventional screens using glass substrates.

Plastic Logic says it will be able to offer 100dpi resolution E-Ink screens in 2005 and up to 150dpi the following year, when A4 (21x29.7cm) screens will also be available.