Novel LCD technology takes drivers on substrate

Sharp's innovative Continuous Grain Silicon (CG-Silicon) technology has been designed into a new line of Viewcam digital camcorders from Sharp Electronics Corp.

Sharp's innovative Continuous Grain Silicon (CG-Silicon) technology has been designed into a new line of Viewcam digital camcorders from Sharp Electronics Corp.

The digital Viewcam product line represents the first mass production consumer electronics device in North America that features Sharp's proprietary CG-Silicon LCD technology, which provides higher resolution and brightness, lower power consumption and greater functionality in next-generation products.

The CG-Silicon technology is featured in Sharp's Viewcam products, specifically models VL-Z1U, VL-Z3U, VL-Z5U and VL-Z7U that are equipped with 2.5in colour CG-Silicon screens.

The benefit of CG-Silicon technology is that it allows electron mobility approximately three times the speed of low-temperature polysilicon, and 600 times that of amorphous silicon.

As a result, LCD driver ICs, controller ICs and power supply ICs can now be built into the same substrate as the LCD, forming a system LCD, which in turn offers greater product design flexibility and ultra low power consumption.

"As the buying public becomes more technologically savvy, there is an increased demand for mobile and handheld devices with higher functionality and a smaller footprint", said Joel Pollack, Vice President of the Display Business Unit at Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas.

"Through the development of this revolutionary new display technology, Sharp can offer North American design engineers a solution to their display needs for next generation products that meet these size and performance demands".

CG-Silicon technology is driving development of a new generation of smaller, thinner and more energy efficient mobile devices.

The first commercially available product that incorporates the System LCD architecture is Sharp's Zaurus SL-C700 PDA.

This was recently released in Japan.

Other applications for CG-Silicon LCDs include other next-generation PDAs, cellular phones, mobile PCs, mobile TVs, and game machines.

As the worldwide leader in LCD technology, Sharp continues to lead the development of new LCD technologies for quality, performance, and form factors.

CG-Silicon is the latest display technology in a long line of LCD technologies including Highly-Reflective TFT and Advanced-TFT display technology.

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