JULY 17--eMagin Corp. (Hopewell Junction, NY; www.emagin.com) has shipped evaluation kits for its full-color OLED-on-silicon microdisplay product to more than 20 international and domestic customers, with some customers ordering multiple kits for different divisions. eMagin's OLED-on-silicon displays reportedly provide the highest total pixel count and highest-resolution, full-color video OLED displays available. The applications range from game and entertainment systems to industrial and military visualization product systems.
The SVGA+ microdisplay has a compact 0.62-in.-diagonal active screen suitable for creating virtual images similar to the real images of a computer monitor or large TV screen. The display has more than 1.5 million potential color subpixel elements (600 x 3 x 852 pixels). It was dubbed "SVGA Plus" because it has 52 more imaging columns than a standard SVGA display. These added columns make it possible for the SVGA+ display to run either 600 x 800 pixels to interface to the analog output of portable computers or to run 852 x 480 pixels in a 16:9 wide screen entertainment format (for example, DVD players). The OLED microdisplay stores all the color and luminance value information at each of the pixel elements in the display array, eliminating the flicker or color breakup seen by most other high-resolution microdisplay technologies.
The display contains the majority of the electronics required for connection to the RGB port of a PC imbedded in its silicon IC backplane, thereby eliminating many other components required by other display technologies such as D-A converters, ASICs, light sources, multiple optical elements, and other components. This design makes the new class of microdisplay potentially the most-compact, highest-image-quality, and lowest-cost solution for SVGA resolution near-eye applications.
In addition, with no perimeter glue-seal-band requirement, the number of displays per silicon wafer can be higher on OLEDs than on LCDs, helping to reduce the cost to OEMs. eMagin's long-life OLED technology provides more than 10,000 hour life at luminances brighter than the typical notebook computer display, well in excess of the requirement for most near-eye-viewer consumer products. The OLED-on-silicon microdisplay has exhibited superior temperature range characteristics over other near-eye-viewer alternatives and is expected to have lowest power-consumption requirement of any full-color, full-video SVGA resolution range display on the market.
Says Gary Jones, president and CEO, "The strong initial demand for these products indicates the need for high-resolution, low-power imaging systems that present a wide view. While the full qualification cycle by some customers will take some time, this rapid positive response by several customers demonstrates the significant advantages in performance and cost provided by our displays for use in near-eye systems, as well as the superiority of our compact optical system. "
