3 1/2" Deep "Controlled Emission Dispersion"?? CRTs?

[Khorn]

Anyone aware of a new 3 1/2" in depth CRT development called Controlled Emission Dispersion or something like that?

From what I just found out they are keeping very quiet about this development and plan an end of year, beginning of next year "Vegas" show announcement. The target market initially will be 27" to 42" and possibly 46" tubes. Larger will follow later. I hate this type of "waiting game" and hope things happen sooner although it will probably be expensive at first until mass production is up and running. This is a very big development as a "flat" CRT has massive implications.

Anyone hear anything?

[mudbone]

Haven't heard a thing but I'll have to buy a new computer desk for sure.

46"???? YIKES!!!!

mud-

[Khorn]

I got the answer in another forum as follows:

Was it SED - Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display?

This is a Toshiba/Canon co-development that's been in the works for a number of years now. They've been very hush-hush about it and I don't believe there has ever been a 'public' display of the technology.

It's really fascinating stuff. Basically, every pixel has it's own electron emitter. It works pretty much like traditional CRT technology where phosphor is excited by electrons. If it performs like it's supposed to, it should put plasma displays to shame.

Toshiba says 2004 for commercial availability, so it should be formally introduced at CES in January.

I'd heard about it before but in a way that was described as many small CRT's combined to form the display. It purports to literally "wipe out" any of the competing technologies as it offers all the advantages of "regular" CRTs plus the thinness and large screen size factors. As pointed out this has been in the works for a few years now and I suspect it'll turn out to be "the real item" so to speak. Can't wait to see it.

[mcow1]

Originally posted by Khorn
Anyone aware of a new 3 1/2" in depth CRT development called Controlled Emission Dispersion or something like that?

From what I just found out they are keeping very quiet about this development and plan an end of year, beginning of next year "Vegas" show announcement. The target market initially will be 27" to 42" and possibly 46" tubes. Larger will follow later. I hate this type of "waiting game" and hope things happen sooner although it will probably be expensive at first until mass production is up and running. This is a very big development as a "flat" CRT has massive implications.

Anyone hear anything?
My bad. Never mind.

[Khorn]

Originally posted by mcow1

My bad. Never mind.

WHAT THE...???

:D :D Holy Garcias man! Careful with that sword, you'll hurt yourself! :D :D

[mcow1]

Originally posted by Khorn


WHAT THE...???

:D :D Holy Garcias man! Careful with that sword, you'll hurt yourself! :D :D
I posted something, realized it was a thread crap and deleted the text. I have a point guard on the sword. I have to take it off when I make the mark of the Z though.:laugh:

[Claviusb]

The following is only part of a web page I found. They have been working on this for quite some time, but reliability has always been an issue.

FLAT-PANEL DISPLAYS: Cold-cathode FED promises video viewing (From Laser Focus World March 2000)

Printable Field Emitters has demonstrated a video-rate-operation, cold-cathode field-emission display (FED) with the performance features needed for flat-panel TV applications. The unit demonstrated was a 32 x 32-pixel device.

Each pixel in the display contains an array of hundreds of triode emitter cells. In turn, each cell is approximately 10 µm in diameter, with a gate insulator 4 µm thick. The emission current can be controlled by applying a ±20-v swing on the gate and cathode tracks, respectively. Such low voltage control allows low-cost complementary-metal-oxide-silicon-based drive electronics to be used in systems.

The cathode array is used in conjunction with a high-voltage (3-5 kv) anode, which is coated with standard cathode-ray-tube (CRT) phosphors, giving CRT viewing characteristics. Other benefits of this technology in flat-screen TV applications are the size of screen that can be produced (up to 40 in. diagonal) and the fact that the cathode structure can be manufactured without any vacuum deposition steps.

Large-area color nanotube FED debuts (From Laser Focus World March 2000)

The Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) at the Samsung corporate R&D center (Suwon, Korea) has unveiled a large-area color carbon nanotube field-emission display (CNT-FED). At the International Display Workshop '99 (December 1999; Sendai, Japan), the research institute showcased a 9-in.-diagonal, full-color prototype device with a 200 x 120-µm pixel size and 576 x 240 line resolution (smaller pixels are possible).

The CNT-FED offers three colors at every pixel, and color separation occurs without crosstalk. Other features include a fast response rate, low power consumption, wide viewing angles, a wide operating-temperature range, and display brightness of 200 cd/m2 at 3 v/µm.

The SAIT had demonstrated a 4.5-in. CNT-FED at two earlier conferences in 1999 (see figure). According to Jong Min Kim, director of the SAIT display laboratory, and colleagues, scalability of the technology is no problem, and an even larger CNT-FED should be demonstrated soon.

Interest in carbon nanotubes is growing because of their unique electrical properties. The benefits range from large aspect ratios to high chemical stability, thermal conductivity, and high mechanical strength.1 Until recently, though, the fabrication method, particularly large-area synthesis, has held back low-cost development of FEDs with vertically aligned CNTs. Samsung seems to have resolved this issue with the displays recently demonstrated.

SI Diamond Technology, Inc. Announces the Successful Operation of the First 4 Inch Diagonal HyFED Prototype (22nd February)

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Feb. 22, 2000--SI Diamond Technology Inc. (OTC BB:SIDT) Tuesday announced that its subsidiary, Field Emission Picture Element Technology Inc. (FEPET), assisted by the International Development Team formed to develop the first HyFED(TM) display, succeeded in developing and operating a demonstration prototype of a 4 inch diagonal monochrome HyFED(TM) (see news release of Jan. 28, 1999 "SI Diamond Technology Announces the Formation of the HyFED(TM) International Development Team").

Technical hurdles stall arrival of color FEDs
By Stuart Jacobsen EE Times (02/07/00, 10:15 a.m. EST)

The display industry has spent more than 10 years and a billion dollars to build viable flat-panel field-emission displays, but to date not one color FED has shipped. Companies involved in FED manufacturing continue to give optimistic forecasts, yet there is tacit recognition that the displays have reliability problems. These problems are associated with degradation of the emitters at the cathode or degradation of the phosphor at the anode, compounded with vacuum maintenance issues.

High expectations and technical challenges, not lack of funding, have delayed the development of color FEDs. In the early 1990s, too much attention was paid to building plants before the technical hurdles were overcome. In 2000, the only FEDs being manufactured are low-voltage, monochrome displays from Pixtech (Grenoble, France), designed for medical equipment and point-of-sale applications. These FEDs are easier to make than color FEDs and they work. But their market represents a fraction of the potential market for color FEDs.

Candescent (San Jose, Calif.) is probably the best-funded startup in history. The company promised to build color FEDs, received several hundred million dollars in funding and built a pilot plant before the technology was proven. Candescent has not yet shipped a sample FED.

In the early 1990s, Pixtech and Candescent were on opposite sides of a debate over the operating voltage at which phosphors are excited. One camp, led by Pixtech, favored using low-voltage excitation on the phosphor anode. A low stand-off voltage means that the anode-cathode gap can remain small and hence the spacers, necessary to prevent the device imploding under atmospheric pressure, can have an almost unity aspect ratio.

This simplified microfabrication, but most phosphors exhibit poor efficiencies at low voltage. The exception is zinc oxide, a green-emitting phosphor with high efficiency even at 100 volts. Using low voltage and zinc oxide, this is the recipe Pixtech uses in its displays.

The other camp, which included companies like Candescent, backed proven high-voltage red, green and blue phosphors. This raised the problem of having to stand-off a high voltage between the anode and the cathode, along with the need to microfabricate spacers as thin as 20 microns with aspect ratios in the range 1:10 to 1:50. Another problem was maintaining an adequate vacuum inside the device.

Low-voltage, monochrome FEDs are a good barometer of the future success of high-voltage, full-color displays. If the monochrome displays are not demonstrated to be reliable, the high-voltage, full-color FEDs are doomed to failure.

The stakes are high, and the market opportunity for flat displays with CRT picture quality is wide. Active-matrix LCDs still lack the high-speed video quality provided by CRTs. If reliable flat displays could be manufactured with the same picture quality as CRTs, they would find a market worth billions.

Stuart Jacobsen is Development Manager in the Semiconductor Division of Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas).

Electrons go ballistic in field-emission display (From Laser Focus World February 2000)

TOKYO—Researchers at Matsushita Electric Works have joined with Nobuyoshi Koshida, a professor in the electrical engineering department at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, to develop a display based on a novel electron emitter. The new ballistic electron surface-emitting display (BSD) is a type of field-emission display (FED) in which each pixel has an emission component that produces light by emitting electrons that strike a fluorescent body. Conventional FEDs use cone-shaped electrodes to emit electrons, but the BSD uses a different mechanism.

To produce the BSD, an electrode layer is first formed on a glass substrate, then a film of polysilicon is deposited. Clusters of microcrystals are formed within the film, and an oxide film tops the layer. A second electrode is then deposited.

When a voltage is applied across the electrodes, the resulting electrons gain tremendous kinetic energy as they accelerate through the microcrystals. Electric resistance is high because of the oxide layer, meaning that the electrons are primarily accelerated within the oxidation film. The electrons move through the microcrystals with little dispersion, unlike ballistic electron transmission through regular solids. As a result, there is little energy loss. Also, all of the electrons are emitted in the same direction, perpendicular to the surface.

[Khorn]

Originally posted by Claviusb
The following is only part of a web page I found. They have been working on this for quite some time, but reliability has always been an issue.

Thanks, that provided interesting reading. Apparently the Tosh/Canon effort is close enough to fruition that word is product announcement is imminent (by the end of this year anyway).

My personal thoughts on the implications is summed up in a post I just made to a local Canadian forum as follows:

I think the whole idea behind this is a large thin direct view display panel that will be bright and not suffer the degradation that RPTV suffers when viewed from extreme off axis positions. If the panel can be manufactured to a large enough size then there will be no rational for projection (at least in these sizes). When I first heard about this some time back one of the main attributes was the brightness of the display (supposedly equaling a "normal CTR display) as compared to projection.

If you stop and think about it, the good old CRT is the standard by which all TV technologies have been judged against and for good reason, it's probably still the best in a cost/prefomance ratio. Now, if someone can come out with an equivalent that has the advantage of a relatively shallow footprint like 3 1/2'', a size of maybe 40"-60" that can be wall mounted and also doesn't suffer degradation from extreme off axis viewing then its gotta be very big news that will have a major effect on the TV market 'cause that's what most people picture as their "dream TV".