Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Wolf speed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (3215)	7/25/2000 1:01:02 AM
From: wopr1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10714

Future Computer Displays Definately pre-tornado, and maybe even pre-vaporware, but an interesting read. news.excite.com Why LEP will wipe out today's portable displays. Don't adjust your spell checker: The new term someday soon for your laptop display will be LEP, not LCD. Before the less-technical among you flee this week's column and the certain three-letter-acronym hell in store for you, allow me to spell it out. A breakthrough has happened, my friends, and someday very soon the laptop screen you use will seem as dated and clunky as an Etch A Sketch. In fact, we're about to see a whole new range of display devices, including the possible replacement of the morning newspaper. No more paper Developed in England by Cambridge Display Technologies, LEP (or Light Emitting Polymer) technology is a fancy term for an ultra-thin plastic or glass display that works with natural light instead of the power-hungry backlighting found in today's LCD technology. (LCD, in case you forgot,stands for Liquid Crystal Display.) LCDs use crystal molecules that take reflected light and send it through a polarizing layer that either turns a color on or off. To light up these crystals, a strong backlight is needed, which is why looking at an LCD screen from certain angles will result in a dark or completely unviewable image. Not so with the LEP screen. LEPs are based on plastic polymer molecules that glow when they come into contact with electricity. By creating a polymer "sandwich," researchers have been able to charge two plates, fill the insides with polymer molecules, and then paste the sandwich onto either a glass or plastic surface. If that sounds bulky, don't be fooled: A polymer sandwich housed on plastic translates to a wafer-thin display you could roll up and put in your pocket or simply read like a large sheet of shirt cardboard at the breakfast table. And because the technology doesn't require backlighting, the colors remain vibrant from any angle. King of the inkjets Best of all, an LEP display is created by an inkjet printer, if you can believeit. Seiko-Epson has come up with a specialty printer that can shoot red, blue and green polymer inks (the base colors necessary for creating every color the human eye can distinguish) from three separate cartridges, then mix with a fourth cartridge that contains a conductive polymer. The printer "prints" small drops of the four inks onto a thin screen, which combined with electrodes will make an LEP display. When you consider the fact that the standard LCD display is only 72 dpi, the potential sharpness of an LEP's 200 dpi will mean a welcome contrast to anyone who uses an LCD-based phone, laptop, palmtop or camcorder viewfinder. Best of all, Seiko-Epson is working on a mammoth printer that will create screens 15 feet across with no seams and without the staggering yield problems that plague LCD technology. If you've ever used a laptop that had a dead pixel or even a damaged area that didn't light up properly, you can appreciate how hard it is to get an LCD screen "right." The larger the screen size, the more bad screens are produced for every usable one. Because LEPs are easier to produce, they may finally spell the end of the huge glass-tubed monitors on our desks, without sacrificing the sharpness and brightness we're accustomed to. Small molecules LEPs aren't the only display game in town. Eastman Kodak Co. is championing a technology it calls "small molecule" or OLED. Motorola has signed up to "go small" with the new OLED technology as early as next year. But even more than LCDs, OLEDs are very complex to produce. They require multiple layers of organic films and can't be printed simply like LEPs. The downside to LEP is that it is almost there, but not quite. Cambridge Display Technologies is perfecting the product's shelf life from thousands of hours to tens of thousands of hours; furthermore, the company has yet to get the LEP to work on any surface other than glass. However, with the shortage for LCDs growing every year, and the boom in small devices that use colorful displays, expect to see LEPs as early as 2001 and in my book, probably a commonplace reality by 2004. As the song goes, you have to admit it's getting better. Alice Hill was the vice president of development and editorial director for CNET. She covers technology every other week for ZDNet News, pondering everything from the wireless Web to Why geeks love motor scooters. She welcomes you comments and e-mails. -wopr