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A technology rollercoaster

Liquid crystal on silicon

Nature Photonics volume 1, pages 276–277 (2007)Cite this article

Liquid crystal on silicon brings together silicon and liquid crystals to produce displays with unprecedented resolution and image quality. But have they arrived on the display scene too late?

More than $2 billion has been spent over the past 15 years in trying to develop the technology and infrastructure behind liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCoS) displays. After a fitful start, the technology has finally matured. Liquid-crystal-on-silicon-based televisions are available in shops and today approximately one million LCoS display panels are being shipped around the globe every month. The path, however, has not been easy and the future of the technology is still to be determined.

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Figure 1: Liquid crystal on silicon — in principle, a relatively simple approach to microdisplay technology.
Figure 2: An LCoS chip.

MICRODISPLAY

Figure 3: MicroDisplay's large-screen, two-million-pixel, high-definition, 'Liquid Fidelity' television.

MICRODISPLAY

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  1. Co-founder of MicroDisplay Corporation and Founding Chief Technology Officer for One Laptop Per Child, 1 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA mlj@laptop.org,

    Mary Lou Jepsen

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  1. Mary Lou Jepsen
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Lou Jepsen, M. Liquid crystal on silicon. Nature Photon 1, 276–277 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.63

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