As the big companies fight it out in research and development labs across the world a war brews over the horizon. Traditional LCD displays have been around for a long time, relatively speaking and have more than a foothold over plasma at this point. OLED is the new boy who has already made a good impression but at considerable cost. But is OLED the end for LCD? not if some companies can get there ideas out. This war is worth noting on micro projector 5 because of the link between lcd, miniture displays and pico projectors. The majority of multimedia projectors and their smaller fledglings the pico projector’s are primarily driven buy a light source behind a small high resolution lcd display. This provides pixels illuminated on a nearby surface. This standard, long proven technology however is starting to be challenged.

We have seen the release of the first commercial Laser pico projector (the MicroVision ShowWx) within the last few months, as well as work on OLED pico projector’s, could these alternatives secure any ground amongst the relatively new mass market pico projectors using lcd and led drivers? Well laser is already claiming trophys, the combination of red, green and blue (RGB) lasers and a MEM scanner seems to be working for the MicroVision ShowWx, but surely OLED is never bright enough to project, it works well as a display but could it offer a singular projection unit, without the need for a light source?

We can’t see it happening here at Micro-Projector-5 for a few years, but when it does there will be endlessly embedded oled pico’s (as they have potential likely to be much thinner – but probably low projection size’s will be available as a result so perhaps ideal for mobile phones?) What we are noticing though is the development of LCD is in fact not slowing, while OLED and Laser technology for pico projector’s is recieving great press interest, in fact LCD is still being worked on. The progression with LCD is largely in the backlighting, with oled proving itself as an ideal, illuminating pixels independently does enhance the viewing. But now Polar LED a Leeds based company is working on a commercial use of a combination of the two and other complimentary development. This work is all down to Stephen Kelly (University of Hull) who is progressing ideas of improving the luminence of Liquid crystals through Polar LED.

By using liquid crystals that contain “aromatic rings” it is possible to up the luminance, essentially creating a lightsource of the liquid crystals. When electric is passed through the liquid crystal it itself is illuminated, first of all this allowed for the creation of RGB sub pixels which allow a single OLED pixel to be created, similar to large scale led based screens which use thousands of RGB sets of regular LED’s. More interestingly though, applying multiple layers of this modified liquid crystal allows for the creation of a more appropriate material for use as an LCD Backlight. Potentially this could improve the overall quality and efficiency of the LCD!

Of course we don’t know the inner workings of Polar OLED’s work but we shall be watching with great interest as they, as well as many other display and projector manufacturers progress the technology we all use everyday. Images Courtesy of Polar OLED, definitely a company to watch!