A brighter, cheaper TV

[Gregg Lengling]

By James Kane Daily Herald Business Editor
Posted 7/2/03
Want that digital TV with the plasma tube but can't afford the $3,000 and up price tag?

Motorola Labs believes it has found the key to manufacturing big flat panel displays that produce even higher quality images at lower prices. And it believes they could be available in a couple of years.

Because building factories to produce the displays would cost billions, Motorola is working to interest current Asian and European manufacturers in licensing the technology for use in their existing plants.

"Everybody we've talked to has been excited about this," said Jim Jaskie, chief scientist for the Motorola Labs Physical Electronics Research Laboratory in Tempe, Ariz.

"This" is carbon nanotube technology, an area Motorola has spent more than $200 million investigating over more than a decade.

"The potential is quite interesting," said Bob O'Donnell, director of personal technology for market research firm International Display Corp.

Carbon nanotubes - CNTs - are 2,000 times thinner than human hair.

"The trick they've been able to figure out is accurate placement and control of the tubes," O'Donnell said.

The company faces a number of challenges in getting its technology to market, however.

Flat panel display manufacturers and others are doing their own research in this area. Motorola has to convince them its solution is better and that it will result in high quality, large quantity production at significantly lower cost than plasma displays, O'Donnell said.

Motorola had looked at manufacturing smaller displays using the technology seven or eight years ago but backed out because "it wasn't ready for prime-time," he said.

This time around, it is looking at the 50-inch and larger market. "They're going after the heart of the LCD and plasma markets," O'Donnell said.

Jaskie said Motorola got an earlier start on CNT research than many others.

"We've gotten a good jump on the competition," he said.

Despite Motorola's financial losses in recent years, the company has remained committed to the research Jaskie's group has been doing.

"Motorola sees itself as a company that brings out disruptive technologies," he said, referring to the way carbon nanotubes are different from anything on the market. "I've been delighted by the support we've gotten."

Motorola has developed a process to grow CNTs at low temperatures, which is important because they must bond to materials such as glass or transistors that are heat sensitive.

Motorola also has created a method to precisely place CNTs individually on a surface material. This gives manufacturers the ability to design products on a molecular level.

While this might sound impossible, given the size of CNTs, Jaskie said "it's surprisingly very easy" with the kinds of manufacturing processes now used in making items such as plasma displays. "We don't place them with tweezers or anything."

Now the goal is to make sure the research doesn't sit on a shelf but gets used to turn 1-inch thick large flat panel displays into a mass market item, said Dawn McCraw, Motorola director of marketing for Advanced Technology Businesses.

"There's not something that's really affordable today, and we think it can be," she said.

TV: Motorola needs manufacturer

[StarvingForHDTV]

That sounds interesting.  I'm always happy to hear about new technologies.  I hope they won't have glare problems like plasmas.  Does anyone know if the big LCD's which are out competing with the big plasmas have glare problems?  I know my computer LCD is glare free.

Also curious if anyone knows about the other non-CRT rear projection technologies.  Do they require convergence, geometry, and calibration like CRT's do?  I'm talking about LCOS, DLP, LCD etc. rear projections.

I would like to upgrade in the future, but of course there has to be a good reason to do so.

Starving