<title>Diamond-based field emission displays</title>

Abstract

With the advent of portable electronics and HDTV, there has been much activity in the development of flat panel displays. Flat panel displays are a key component and product differentiator for a variety of electronic products including portables, instrumentation, computers, and entertainment. They are frequently the most visible, costly, and difficult to obtain product component. Currently, the high performance flat panel display industry is dominated by Japanese manufacturers of active matrix liquid crystal displays (AM-LCD). In AM-LCDs, a thin-film transistor is fabricated underneath each pixel to control it more efficiently. The performance is thus improved, but at the expense of an increase in display complexity. Micron-size lithography and alignment capabilities similar to those used for integrated circuits are needed over large display areas. As a consequence AM-LCD manufacturing requires a large capital investment for the VLSI-type equipment that is needed and yields have been increasing only at a slow pace, thus keeping the display costs high. In addition, LCDs are a non-emissive display technology requiring a backlight. This entails an inefficient power use and brightness limitations. Only a small percentage of the emitted light actually makes it through the LCD. Due to these problems, even the most aggressive forecasts do not project AM-LCDs larger than about 18".