Sony Takes on LCD Makers With Slim Screen

T O K Y O, Feb. 7, 2001 -- Thin is in for TV and computer screens, and Sony Corp. has an organic electroluminescent (OEL) display little thicker than a credit card that it hopes will beat rival technologies in retiring the bulky TV tube.

The consumer electronics powerhouse today showed off aprototype of a 13-inch (33-cm) active-matrix OEL screen it wantsto be mass producing by 2003, with costs and dimensions to matchthe increasingly ubiquitous liquid crystal display (LCD) panels— but thinner, lighter and with a better picture.

“This display is extremely well-suited for broadbandapplications,” said Suehiro Nakamura, a corporate seniorexecutive vice president at Sony.

For Sony, “broadband applications” means being able topresent moving pictures well, which requires a screen thatresponds quickly enough, for example, to faithfully recreate theflash of a fireworks display.

Sony said its OEL screens offer a faster response than LCDs,and because they are self-luminous, requiring no back-lighting,they are thinner and lighter and allow a wider viewing angle.

The electronics industry holds high hopes for the screens fordigital cameras and mobile phones.

Two Japanese electronics companies have already teamed upwith foreign partners to develop and produce OEL displays: SanyoElectric Co Ltd and Eastman Kodak Co announced in May theyjointly developed a 5.5 inch OEL screen, while NEC Corp and SouthKorea’s Samsung SDI agreed in December on a 500 billion won ($400million) OEL joint venture.

But making them big enough for televisions has posed hightechnological hurdles.

Sony said it developed a technology, called top emissionadaptive current drive, that uses four transistors per pixelinstead of the usual two to overcome the problem of unevenluminance in larger OEL screens.

For Flat Panels, Size Matters

It added the top-emission structure produces brighter lightthan bottom-emission technology, which sends light through athin-film transistor (TFT) structure that can block some of itout. It also uses an all-solid state structure that helps to keepthe screens thin.

Tetsuo Urabe, general manager of Sony’s OEL developmentdepartment, said the company would aim to produce OEL screens tomatch or exceed LCDs in size, price and longevity.

“Basically you can consider this’ll be the same size asLCDs...we’ll get to about 30 inches,” he said.

Rival Sharp Corp has had a 28-inch LCD television on themarket for about a year.

Sharp and five other Japanese electronics makers also joinedhands in a joint venture, announced on Monday, for joint researchin basic technology to produce next-generation LCDs.

The stakes for flat-screen technology are high, especially inJapan where space is at a premium in most homes and offices.

Sony cited estimates that the flat panel display market wouldmore than double to six trillion yen ($52.3 billion) per-yearwithin the next five years.

Sony’s Urabe set a target of a 10,000-hour life for thescreens and expressed confidence that manufacturing processeswould pose no insurmountable problems.

“The processes are similar to TFT [thin-film transistors usedin LCDs],” he said. “In terms of cost and price, ourunderstanding is that we can reasonably expect it’ll be the sameor less compared with LCDs.”

Nakamura added, however, that the company would continue itsresearch and development of other flat-panel technologies,including field emission display (FED) technology, and was notyet ready to choose one over another.

“We want to firm up the basic technology and then make adecision,” he said.