Digital micromirror device

The device is used in digital projectors and consists of an array of millions of microscopic mirrors which can be individually tilted many thousand times per second, thereby creating the pixels of the projected images.

The technology goes back to 1973 with Harvey C. Nathanson's (inventor of MEMS c. 1965) use of millions of microscopically small moving mirrors to create a video display of the type now found in digital projectors.

[3] A DMD chip has on its surface several hundred thousand microscopic mirrors arranged in a rectangular array which correspond to the pixels in the image to be displayed.

Because of the small scale, hinge fatigue is not a problem, and tests have shown that even 1 trillion (1012) operations do not cause noticeable damage.

[8] To move the mirrors, the required state is first loaded into an SRAM cell located beneath each pixel, which is also connected to the electrodes.

A related failure was the glue used between 2007 and 2013, under which heat and light degrades and outgasses: this normally causes fogging inside the glass and eventually white/black pixels.

A DMD chip, used in most projectors and some TVs
Diagram of a digital micromirror showing the mirror mounted on the suspended yoke with the torsion spring running bottom left to top right (light grey), with the electrostatic pads of the memory cells below (top left and bottom right)
A broken DMD chip showing the "white dots" appearing on screen as "white pixels".