UniPixel armed with TMOS to go to war against LCD, OLED, and Plasma technology

[Brimstone]

A new display technology is preparing to engage LCD, OLED, and Plasma technology. Time Multiplexed Optical Shutter (TMOS) has a number of advantages.

The PIXEL advantage:

PIXELS

Traditional displays use three closely spaced dots displaying different intensities of red, green and blue to create one color – somewhat like the dots that comprise a printed image. Because these dots are so close together, the human eye perceives them as a single color. This is called “spatial additive color.â€￾

UniPixel is based on a “temporal additive color.â€￾ Short bursts of red, green and blue light are emitted through the same dot so quickly that the eye also sees them as a single color. But in this case, different durations of red, green and blue create different shades and hues.

Once you understand these differences, you can intuitively understand many UniPixel benefits.


Each dot can display a full range of colors resulting in more vivid, intense images.

Color is smoother and more lifelike.

Manufacturing is simplified.


UniPixel holds – or has applied for – a number of patents that enable temporal color systems to surpass the limitations of spatial color. They include patents on the shutter, materials, lens, construction techniques and software drivers.

The company has completed $12 million in private financing with Tudor Investment Corp. "UniPixel's unique TMOS approach to color display technology is both revolutionary and disruptive," said Rob Broggi, a vice president at Tudor.

Indeed, "While most new display technologies don't offer a clear and substantial added value to potential customers and end users, UniPixel certainly seems to," said Ken Werner, senior analyst at market research firm Insight Media. "The structure would seem to offer much lower cost than LCD."

http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198001203&pgno=1




The future of the technology sounds promising also.

We believe UniPixel will be a revolutionary technology that will create a whole new world of possibilities for product designers and engineers.

FLEXIBLE SCREENS UniPixel screens, like fiber optic cable, can be bendable
The radius of curvature can go up to 20 times the display’s thickness.
This will enable a new generation of:

Immersive entertainment

Home theaters that can be built to wrap around viewers like IMAX screens

3-D capable

Photo-realistic imaging

Immersive mission planning

Battle planners will be able to see the battlefield around them as if they were there. Teams will be able to view images layered over each other on one screen


ELECTRONIC WARFARE UniPixel Displays will be energy efficient and inherently rugged, two key factors in forward deployments where power may be in short supply
They will exhibit low EMR/EMI plus high immunity to electromagnetic pulses
They will be able to use infrared light sources


VARIABLE RESOLUTION One screen will let viewers see the forest and the trees simultaneously. While the master image remains static, they will be able to zoom in on details in certain areas without having the image go soft

ACTIVE SIGNAGE UniPixel Displays will be tiled together easily. Because they will be readable in bright sunlight, they could be used for billboards, highway signs, trade shows and more


ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN UniPixel Displays could appear transparent from the rear. Retailers could use them as windows for people inside and displays for people outside


http://www.unipixel.com/home.htm

 

[Snyder]

Sounds interesting, but my first thought when reading that was: What about switching times? Hopefully fast enough - RBE is looming around the corner...

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Well, they make claims about the shutter speed that allow them to control timing of the opening and closing of the shutter to relatively good timing resolution, and they make it sound as if it's ridiculously fast. Well, it'd pretty much have to be in order to be viable.

The thing that kind of gets me is the idea of using a shutter flipping on and off to control the color of a pixel -- the very first thing that comes to mind for me is flickering. Even though you have to be able to do it minimum 3 times per refresh per pixel and that too, be able to control the timing down to very tiny fractions of 1/3 of a refresh, I still have to remain a little worried without having seen anything first hand. The other stuff about color gamut and contrast and luminous efficiency is all relatively believable. I'm not really in a position to know how believable their manufacturing claims are, but no matter how easy it is to make, it will anyway be the most expensive kid on the market when and if it ever hits.

 

[Brimstone]

From their website.

UniPixel holds – or has applied for – a number of patents that enable temporal color systems to surpass the limitations of spatial color. They include patents on the shutter, materials, lens, construction techniques and software drivers

This technology uses LED lighting no color wheel. The LED's should be very vast.

Cost wise it should be cheaper than LCD technology.

The image is supposed to be extremly uniform.

Uniformity
UniPixel technology eliminates the hot spots often found at the edges of LCD displays or the center of CRTs. Brightness is exceptionally uniform. At 61% efficient the variation on the screen from any pixel should be less than 1db. LCDs vary anywhere from 3db – 5db.

PIXEL RESPONSE TIME
UniPixel responds 10 to 10,000 times faster than other technologies

TMOS combines field-sequential color (FSC) techniques with the principle of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR).1,2 Red, green, and blue light is sequentially edge-injected (at high frequency) into a slab waveguide (glass or polymer). The evanescent field projecting from the waveguide provides the photon pool that is accessed with a simple micro-electro-mechanical-systems- (MEMS-) like structure for image generation. When a pixel is charged, a high-refractive-index membrane is propelled across a 250nm gap to the waveguide surface. Upon contact, light couples from the waveguide into the membrane and propagates to the viewer. Very rapid actuation of the membrane (response time of 650ns) permits pulse width modulation using binary encoding to generate color. The resulting system has fewer layers than an LCD, enjoys the benefits of large feature size, is transparent, and energy-efficient.

http://newsroom.spie.org/x3983.xml?highlight=x531

 

[bloodbob]

Is this gonna rainbow like the DLPs?

 

[MfA]

In theory yes, but the severity depends on how high a refresh rate they can manage.

 

[Brimstone]

In theory yes, but the severity depends on how high a refresh rate they can manage.

They're claiming that because of the speed of LED's and how fast TMOS pixels are generated, they overcome the rainbow effect.

 

[nthd]

A new display technology is preparing to engage LCD, OLED, and Plasma technology. Time Multiplexed Optical Shutter (TMOS) has a number of advantages.

...

The radius of curvature can go up to 20 times the display’s thickness.

The bird has red-eye, and the radius of curvature seems to be inverted - surely "down to" rather than "up to" would be correct?

 

[tritosine5G]

RBE can be defeated with black frame insertion too ( " RGBKKK ") , 3D DLP is free of RBE.

 

[Sxotty]

This seems pretty cool, but until devices are actually around it is hard to say.

 

[tritosine5G]

This seems pretty cool, but until devices are actually around it is hard to say.

TMOS is just like OCB LCD, and
OCB LCD is like, you take the LC layer of 3d shutterglasses (that is thinner hence much faster than usual TN LCD), and put it in front of RGB colored backlight.

TMOS and OCB are close siblings, and both are professional.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PENNUe6wVzM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znXavkke98Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyTIX-g9D_o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMvzmqd9S8U <- 2:00

 

[GZ007]

They could also add other colors without too much effort to the light bar. They could put white led in there for white color. Or real CMYK colors.

 

[tritosine5G]

No need for white LED: they can just add together, trigger the RGB LED's simultaneously for a nice brightness boost (RGB+W). They can also trigger RGB for yellow, & that gives you RGB+W+Y, that's called brilliantcolor™ in DLP land .

Must read about RGB backlight:
http://www.sidchapters.org/texas/TX_Chapter_Data/2009_11_17 SID/OCB FSC-LCD(AOMORI).pdf

 

[Davros]

what the hell is “spatial additive color.�

 

[tritosine5G]

what the hell is “spatial additive color.�

uh oh . & that quote comes from ?

 

[tritosine5G]

Colour generation

Traditional displays use three part pixel, each pixel is created by displaying different intensities of three dots (red, blue and green) so close together that the human eye perceives them as a single colour. This technique takes advantage of the spatial additive colour. However, TMOS technology is based on temporal additive colour, it exploits the temporal resolving power of the human visual system. Red, green and blue light bursts are emitted at sufficiently high velocity that the human eye only perceive a single colours. Different durations of each burst, create different colours.

In TMOS the emitting duration of each burs is the same for the three colors, but the amount of time that each pixel stays open or closed can be only a percentage of the total time controlled by the quantity of the TFT charge (amount of time that the active layer is in contact with the light guide). Therefore, each coloured pixel is generated combining the precise time that each pixel is kept open for each colour burst.
Depending on the combination, a million of colours can be created. For instance:
— To get white the pixel remains open the 100% of the total time for each burst and for black each pixel is closed the entire time.— To produce grey, the pixel should be active half of the total time for each burst ( when the three values of the three components are equal, a grey is produced).— To create red, the pixel must be closed during blue and green burst, the percentage of the red cycle the pixel is open determines the shade of red. General features

• Brightness: 1400 cd/m2 in a 12,1’’ display with 176º viewing angle at 13,2 watts. Even, it can achieve values of 3.430 cd/m2 at 30 watts.
• Night vision: Because the red led is controlled independently, there is no necessity to add any infrared filter to achieve night vision compatibility.
• Resolution: TMOS can achieve ¼ mm dot pitch due to its unicellular pixel structure.
• Viewing angle: Without additional steering optics angles as narrow as 25ºx12º (12,5º left, 12,5º right, 6º up, 6º down) can be achieved.
• Grey levels: 24 bits or 36 bits for special inherent systems. The grey levels for monochromatic infrared are three times the primary colour gray scale for visible operation.
• Dimming range: 34 dB
• Video Capability: 60 frames/second
• Shock and vibration: TMOS has important resistance to mechanical stresses during operation as the applied forces are distributed globally and not locally at the individual pixels. The low mass and the lamination structure of the active layer mitigate the resonances and modes.
• Mean time between failures: The first components it is expected to fail in a TMOS technology is the illumination system. Leds usually have 100,000 hours MTBF under continuous operation; as TMOS uses leds at 1/3 duty cycle, the maximum expected MTBF is 300,000 hours.

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Time-multiplexed_optical_shutter

• Brightness: 1400 cd/m2 in a 12,1’’ display with 176º viewing angle at 13,2 watts. Even, it can achieve values of 3.430 cd/m2 at 30 watts.

that's crazy

 

[doob]

Sounds great, but what about price and dates of avaiable products with such technology?

 

[tritosine5G]

It's about time for either OCB or TMOS to appear.

 

[Grall]

I've shone a ~3k Cd. red LED into my eye. It actually hurts, it's so bright. An entire display that's that bright (or as claimed here, brighter) could light up a whole room singlehandedly.

 

[MfA]

The only likely new display tech. on the horizon is Liquavista (now owned by Samsung). TMOS is dead.