Field-emission display

[1] Sony was the major proponent of the FED design and put considerable research and development effort into the system during the 2000s, planning mass production in 2009.

[3] In January 2010, AU Optronics announced that it acquired essential FED assets from Sony and intends to continue development of the technology.

Photolithography is used to lay down a series of rows of switching gates at right angles to the cathode lines, forming an addressable grid.

At the intersection of each row and column a small patch of up to 4,500 emitters[5] is deposited, typically using methods developed from inkjet printers.

This is a highly non-linear process, and small changes in voltage will quickly cause the number of emitted electrons to saturate.

Non-linearity also means that the brightness of the sub-pixel is pulse-width modulated to control the number of electrons being produced,[6] like in plasma displays.

CNT-FED places the carbon nanotube emitters at the bottom center of cavities called gate holes, which are made using electrically insulating material.

A gold film is deposited on top of this material without blocking the gate holes in order to allow electrons from the carbon nanotubes to pass through.

In most cases the liquid crystal matrix itself then filters out additional light in order to change the brightness of the sub-pixels and produce a color gamut.

Sony's 36" FED prototypes have been shown drawing only 14 W when displaying brightly lit scenes, whereas a conventional LCD screen of similar size would normally draw well over 100 W. Avoiding the need for a backlighting system and thin-film transistor active matrix also greatly reduces the complexity of the set as a whole, while also reducing its front-to-back thickness.

This led to a race with two other front-running technologies aiming to replace LCDs in television use, the active-matrix OLED and surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED).

Candescent pushed ahead with development in spite of problems, breaking ground on a new production facility in Silicon Valley in 1998, partnering with Sony.

[18] The plant was never completed, and after spending $600 million on development they filed for Chapter 11 protection in June 2004, and sold all of their assets to Canon that August.

[19] Another attempt to address the erosion issues was made by Advance Nanotech, a subsidiary of SI Diamond Technology of Austin, Texas.

They produced prototypes of smaller FED systems for a number of years and demonstrated them at various trade shows, but like the Candescent efforts, no large-screen production had been forthcoming.

[23] On March 26, 2009 Field Emission Technologies Inc. (FET) announced that it was closing down due to the inability to raise capital.