Electro-chromic display Panel by Funai Electric
With an ever increasing world wide competition in a TV display Panel market any competitive edge could translate into market dominance in this area. Funai Electric Advance Applied Technology Research Institute Inc. is trying to do just that by unveiling its new display panel which company claims can be made with at the same thickness and flexibility of Newspaper. This is known as electronic paper. Funai developed display technology fundamentally differs from the existing reflective LCD panel technology. The electro-chromic display (ECD) uses “leuco” dye which changes its color by applying electric pressure to it. In ECD the dye is sandwiched between two electrode sheets and there is also a transparent electrode (ITO) that serves as a display surface. 
By taking advantage of electrical nonlinearity between the dye and the electrodes Funai developed a method to drive each pixel separately enabling high speed drive control without any need for TFT which uses thin-film transistor technology to ultimate LCD display. As we all know in TFT technology each tiny transistor in transistor sheet is taking care of each pixel’s change of color which is quite an improvement to its predecessor CRT display in terms of screen color refreshing time. With this new technology and eliminating a need for TFT the display is able to generate color in a time of 0.1ms. This is truly a competitive edge over the existing electronic paper. The new display technology has a contrast ratio of around 8 to 1 with reflectivity of 80% which is a better result compared to reflective quality of LCD panels. Funai’s plan for commercialization of this new type of display is by the end of 2009 which will be with cooperation of its partner companies. The current prototype displays images only in black and white but Funai is planning to introduce multi-color display panel for various applications.
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