The Pixtronix display technology eliminates the traditional power consumption / performance trade-off, delivering 145%
NTSC color gamut (CIE 1976), 24-bit color, 1,000:1 contrast ratio and 170° view angles, all at one quarter the power
consumption of competing TFT-LCDs.
At the heart of this technology is a MEMS-based Digital Micro Shutter device that enables the low power, high speed
light modulation in the Pixtronix displays. The Digital Micro Shutter is a laterally translating element, which is
supported on a patented dual compliant actuator. Each pixel has one shutter, which is used to show all colors in a Field
Sequential Color, Time Division Multiplexed driving scheme. The pixel has been demonstrated over a density range of
100 PPI to 300 PPI. The Digital Micro Shutter also supports an optical recycling approach through which 60% of the
light from the backlight becomes available to the viewer - compared to less than 8% efficiency in liquid crystal based
displays. This paper highlights some of the design innovations and corresponding display results achieved in the
Pixtronix Digital Micro Shutter technology.
Optical Telecommunications bandwidth, spurred by the growth of the internet, experienced unprecedented growth in the late 1990's. The creation of new enterprises was vast and the expansion of established component, system and services companies was also breathtaking. This period of speculative growth was followed in 2001-2004 by one of the most significant market crashes in history. While $20B of venture capital was invested in optical telecom in the last 10 years, the vast majority of that has been written off in the last 4. Countless start-ups inaugurated with great fanfare at the end of the 20th century were unceremoniously shut down at the start of the 21st century.(1) As in all speculative bubbles innovative technologies were born and were buried. Nonetheless, new capabilities emerge from the chaos and disruption; one such example is the advent of Optical MEMS (MOEMS). Its development was vigorously pursued in both academic and corporate laboratories during the boom and, in the author's view; MOEMS constitutes a powerful and versatile tool set that will be an invaluable residual of the last few years. In Telecommunications, MOEMS have been proven to be the technology of choice for many optical switching and wavelength management applications.(2) Variable Optical Attenuators (VOA), Wavelength Blockers (WB), Dynamic Gain Equalizers (DGE), and most recently Wavelength Selective Switches (WSS) are being used in the numerous recent network deployments. Moreover, agile networks of the future will have MOEMS at every node. This presentation will provide an overview of the history of MOEMS in Telecommunications, discuss their byproducts and project the future of the technology.
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