Prysm releases information on new laser phosphor displays

Jacqueline DiOrio 13 Jan, 2010 at 5:43pm ET Article published in Tech

Move over LCD, there’s new king in town–that is if a California company named Prysm and its Laser Phosphor Display technology can be believed.

Prysm came out of the woodwork yesterday to begin talking about a new display technology which it calls LPD. According to the firm, LPDs can be made into any shape or size and require 75% less power than today’s LCDs. Prysm also claims that LPDs have higher resolutions, zero motion blur, can be viewed from wider angles, and don’t contain lamps that might need replacing down the line.

“We can make it as big and bright as you can imagine,” says Roger Hajjar, Prysm’s co-founder and the primary inventor of the new tech.

Hajjar says that phosphor technology became possible in the early 2000s, and that it actually has more in common with the older cathode ray tube technology than the flat panels used today. While CRTs have electromagnets that sweep an electron beam down a field of electro-sensitive phosphors, LPDs, in contrast, use a scanning mirror that sweeps a LASER beam down a field of photo-sensitive phosphors.

As LASERs are intense and relatively low power, an LPD panel consumes less energy than a comparable LED or LCD. Further, LPD theoretically offers perfect black levels as the display simply avoids activating certain phosphor elements, rather than modulating an always-on backlight.

Prysm intends to manufacture the LPDs itself, and has recently begun displaying them at small, invite-only gatherings.

Comments

13 Jan 2010 ~ 5:51pm BuddyJ I've gotta wonder what the minimum thickness of a screen like this would be. It sounds like it'd be big like a CRT.
13 Jan 2010 ~ 5:58pm GooD Interesting, even if its bigger than todays screen, if its better in term of effeciency / quality of image then i'm all-in.

But lets wait and see :P
13 Jan 2010 ~ 5:59pm Thrax Probably not all that big. LASER diodes are extremely small, as would be the mirrors necessary to manipulate the beam(s).

I'd say maybe 1-1.5" if I had to guess? Yeah, it's bigger than the paper-thin LEDs, but an enormous, maintenance-free, bright display with perfect black levels is worth a little extra depth.

CRTs were big because the electron gun had to be big. Further, the phosphor layer had to exist in a vacuum chamber, whereas with LPD, the phosphor layer simply sits in a sandwich of glass.

I sincerely doubt LPD will ever make it to market in volume (if at all), but the technology is cool.
13 Jan 2010 ~ 6:48pm photodude I wonder what the color depth on an LPD would be??? Will it top the billions of colors on a 30-bit LCD?

I'm on board with LPD for better blacks if there is better color
13 Jan 2010 ~ 7:53pm deepsea Use laser diodes with fiber optics, and you should be able to be as thin as the edge lit LED units