Motorola produces sample HD display using nanotubes

SAN FRANCISCO – Carbon nanotubes grown on a piece of glass are the secret ingredient in a prototype high-defintion display developed by Motorola that promises to combine the size advantages of LCD technology with the brightness of older display technology, the company announced Monday.

Motorola has produced a five-inch (12.7 cm) prototype display that features carbon nanotubes grown on a piece of glass in Motorola’s labs, said Jim Jaskie, chief scientist for the company’s embedded systems and physical sciences group. Motorola’s nanotubes are one nanometer (one billionth of a meter) wide and about one micron long, he said.

The Schaumburg, Illinois, company first announced its work on this technology two years ago. Its goal was to produce high-quality displays that avoided a method used by other researchers of applying carbon nanotubes with a paste, according to a Motorola press release from July 2003. The paste method produces a number of harmful particulates and does not allow manufacturers to arrange the nanotubes as precisely as does Motorola’s method, Jaskie said.

Nanotubes are an excellent material for delivering high-quality images to displays, according to Jaskie. Current high-definition displays based on CRT (cathode ray tube) technology are enormous, and those built using LCD technology are expensive and can be hard to see in a well-lit room or at an angle, Jaskie said. Also, both techniques are fairly expensive, he said.

Displays built using Motorola’s technique for growing nanotubes could result in 40-inch displays that cost only $400 to manufacture, Jaskie said, citing a study done by industry analysis firm DisplaySearch. DisplaySearch’s offices are closed this week, according to a recording at its Austin, Texas, headquarters, and the company could not be reached to confirm the results of the study.

These displays will also be as thin as LCDs, yet viewable at different angles or in bright rooms, Jaskie said. Motorola’s new prototype can display images at a resolution of 1280 pixels by 720 pixels, the minimum standard for high-definition televisions. The company hopes to develop a display that can produce images of 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels, a more advanced high-definition standard, he said.

Motorola is in discussions with several different display manufacturers interested in its technology, Jaskie said. Although none has yet signed on, the company is optimistic because several aspects of current display manufacturing technology can also be used in making nanotube displays, he said.