Syndiant has been developing color sequential LCoS panels for several years and on September 1st they announced the first commercial order for their panels. The order for the SYL2010, said to be for tens of thousands of units, comes from Shanghai Sanxin Technology Development Co., Ltd (SSTDC also known as Laseno) for use in the world’s first laser picoprojector to ship in high volume. The announcement said the projector, designated the SMP-101, will be available in China this month and have an output of over 20 lumens.

Matt Brennesholtz
Insight Media Analyst

People think of lasers as a major stumbling block for the design of laser projectors. This is true if you want a raster-scanned laser projector such as the one Microvision is planning on introducing real soon. In a raster-scanned system it is necessary to modulate all three lasers at high speed-up to 50MHz, depending on the projector design and resolution. Direct emission red and blue lasers are relatively easy to come by and can be modulated at these speeds with no problem. The red laser is similar to the red laser in a DVD player, with the design shifted to give a 640nm or so output. The blue laser is similar to the laser in a Blu-ray player, with the design shifted to give a 440nm or so output.

Green lasers, on the other hand, are a major issue for Microvision because direct emission green lasers are still in the research labs. Corning, Osram and others are developing frequency-doubled green lasers specifically for this application and both companies have signed supply agreements with Microvision. The Osram supply agreement also covers blue lasers. Microvision told Insight Media earlier this summer that they planned to introduce their design as a consumer product this summer. Labor Day has come and gone but technically Summer doesn’t end till September 22 at 21:18 Zulu time (UTC) so they still have almost two weeks. They said their production rate would be limited by the production of green lasers and they expected to ship at most about 2000 units in 2009.

So how can Syndiant and Laseno ship tens of thousands of laser projectors starting this month? Simple. Their design does not require the same high laser performance required in the Microvision design so they can use much simpler and more readily available green lasers. Diode pumped solid state (DPSS) frequency-doubled green lasers are used in green laser pointers and are presumably the type of laser that will go in the Laseno SMP-101 projector. Unfortunately, from Microvision’s point of view, this design of laser can only be modulated at 20KHz or so, not the 50MHz they need. 20KHz is fine for a color sequential projector, however, such as any projector based on a Syndiant microdisplay.

Other color sequential panels that could be used with this type of green laser are available from Micron, Aurora, Himax and Texas Instruments. Microdisplay-based laser projector designs have an added advantage over Microvision in that they have very much reduced safety concerns. Currently it is believed that a picoprojector with a scanning laser design will be limited to about 10 - 12 lumens while a microdisplay based laser projector will have a much higher lumen output limit. Certainly the 20 lumens of the Laseno projector should not represent any safety hazard.

For additional technical details on the Laseno laser projector plus information on new Syndiant products see the upcoming issue of Mobile Display Report. For an in-depth look at picoprojectors of all designs and their markets, see the 2009 Insight Media Picoprojector Report, due out later this month.