SED: A New Flat-Panel Display Technology

[Gregg Lengling]

One of the newest flat-panel display technologies to appear is SED, or "Surface-Conduction Electron-emitter Display," jointly developed by Canon and Toshiba. An SED display consists of a rear glass plate to which is affixed electron emitters (one per pixel). A front glass plate, coated with phosphors, is located close to the emitters. The space between the two glass plates is evacuated. Emitter electrodes are spaced a few nanometers apart, and tunnel conduction between them causes emission towards the phosphor layer. It may be seen that this technology has similarities to both CRT and plasma displays, and its manufacture exploits, among other things, techniques developed for inkjet printing.


The resulting flat panel display may be made with a diagonal dimension of one meter or longer. It is said to consume about 50 percent of the power of a CRT display of similar size, and about 33 percent of the power consumed by a plasma display of comparable size. Commercial availability is expected in 2005.

[gparris]

IMO, from what I have read about this new technology, it is not so new, afterall, as Toshiba and Canon are using the CRT factories for building these displays, which are could be about 42" and 50" in size to start out with and later, bigger.

This link gives you a good idea what SED is about:
http://www.canon.com/technology/detail/device/sed_display/

Imagine the promise of CRT-type pictures with well-defined blacks and contast in a panel like plasma with reduced power usage.

Estimates are that the cost will be similar to plasma upon USA introduction, but as with all electronic devices, plummet down to compete with the likes of RCA/InFocus' 6-7-inch deep displays (their 61" is dropped from $8999 to $6999) and the larger LCD panels currently available.

This just adds another set of letters for the buying public to remember like LCD, CRT, DLP and LCoS with the added advantage of dropping prices for all of the displays as these compete for our HDTV needs.:cool: