Article Abstracts | September 2007
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Flat Panel Displays Go Green
As LEDs begin to replace fluorescent backlights, there is a savings in energy and toxic waste.
by Dr. Marko Slusarczuk, Optoelectronics Industry Development Association
The LCD is now the dominant flat panel display and continues to take market share from other technologies. These displays span from small units for handheld devices to large panels for wall-mounted televisions. Although they are not yet available to the consumer, 108-in.-diagonal prototypes are being shown by leading manufacturers.
The LCD is a light valve device that modulates the transmission of light at individual pixels to generate an image. Manufacturers have developed very small, highly efficient cold-cathode fluorescent lamps to serve as backlights. Typically, an LCD has a cold-cathode fluorescent lamp light source at one or more edges of the panel and light pipes to distribute the light uniformly across the back of the panel. The problem is that even if the LCD displays only one pixel, the backlight has to operate at full brightness. A backlight is the largest consumer of power of all the components in a display panel, and it accounts for most of its thickness...
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