In LCD manufacturing, cost is king. That’s why many of the most interesting things to be seen and heard at the SID Symposium and Exhibition in Long Beach this week deal with materials, components, and processes that will allow LCDs to be made less expensively - and may even, secondarily, improve performance.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

The most expensive key component in an LCD module is the backlight. In a 32-inch LCD, the backlight unit (BLU) accounts for about 30% of the total module cost. So it comes as no surprise that a lot of work and ingenuity is being devoted to cost-reducing current BLUs and developing new BLU technologies.

The most striking new BLU technology in Long Beach was shown in a hotel suite by Novalux, where the company showed a 32" LCD TV with a backlight based on the company’s Necsel lasers. Novalux has been aggressively developing these lasers for rear-production (RP) television, where they promise to improve the color gamut and illumination source lifetime of the set. LCD TVs were an obvious next target. In a few months they developed an impressive technology demonstrator, and a company representative reports intense interest from LCD TV and backlight makers.

The laser BLU shown in Long Beach used one red, one blue and one green laser - all in the same 2-4W class being developed the RPTVs. The demo LCD TV exhibited more saturated colors than a comparison unit using traditional CCFLs, and at its current state of development, produced an image that was not as bright. This was understandable as the demo did not optimize the backlight design nor did it adjust the color filters or gamut of the TV.

Laser illumination offers many of the advantages of LED backlighting, but the entire panel can probably be evenly illuminated with three devices instead of - in some configurations - hundreds. It’s the potential cost saving that’s creating the excitement. Those nicely saturated colors and extended color gamut are a bonus.

Novalux predicts products in two or three years.

Lasers weren’t the only novel source of backlight illumination in Long Beach. DuPont was discussing a backlight based on carbon nanotube field-emission display (FED) technology. Key problems that have bedeviled FEDs in display applications are naturally solved in DuPont’s backlight structure. Because a diffusion layer is used, the scintillation and Illuminance non-uniformity often seen with CNTs is not visible. And lifetime is not a problem, DuPont reperesentatives told Insight Media.

Based on our discussions with panel makers, FED may be a hard sell, despite DuPont’s convincing presentation of its virtues. Novalux’s lasers, however, are creating excitement even in their relatively early stage of development for LCD backlights.

Don’t feel sorry for DuPont, though. They presented a dazzling array of display and display-related technologies, about which we’ll have much more to say in Insight Media’s Projection Monthly with Flat Panel Coverage and Mobile Display Report.