The Bright Future of PDP
The Large Flat Display industry is rapidly advancing, and enters a new phase. Super-low set prices arc now being offered to the consumer, at a level sometimes below $999, both for 42-inch PDPs and for LCDs.Both technologies now can make any size, and even a specialist can hardly see the difference in the image at first sight. Only in the shop the LCD might look brighter, but at home, movies on a PDP-TV look much better! Movies contain a lot of dark scenes, and the absolute level of the black luminance for the PDP is much better than that for the LCD, especially when viewing from different directions.For high definition, LCD today offers true 1 080 line definition, even on 42-inch. But for moving images the resolution on a High Definition LCD-TV is completely lost. Only PDP has good High Definition for moving HD-images, so LCD have to use 120 Hz frame rate, to remedy this problem. Another solution for LCD is to use a scanning backlight, but that increases the cost and reduces the lifetime of the backlight. Already the cost of the backlight is the biggest bottleneck for LCD to match the cost of the same size PDP-TV.Initially the LCD industry tried to sell 32-inch products in the consumer market. They believed that size would become the popular high-end consumer size. But that market hardly exists. To fully enjoy the XGA-definition you should already use a 50-inch size, and for 1 080-line definition a 60-inch display is needed.So the LCD-industry had to make the move forward to the larger sizes. But the materials cost of a 42-inch LCD however is much higher than the materials cost of a PDP, so the LCD industry had to heavily subsidize the 42-inch, in order to capture a significant part of that market.Both technologies now can make the large sizes needed for high definition. So the LCD-industry is trying to convince the PDP industry to move over, while grabbing a significant part of mat market. But PDP is in the unique position to fight me price war, by continuing to reduce the materials cost faster than that of an LCD-TV. This becomes clearer if we consider the scaling laws of the PDP cost.Most important is that the electronics materials cost of a PDP-module does not change with size. It is only dependant on the number of rows and columns. So, a higher definition PDP-TV requires more drivers. In the past the number of data drivers needed to be doubled again, because dual-scan driving was necessary. Thanks to new-type MgO, like the Crystal Emissive Layer of Pioneer, the response speed is now so fast, that single driving is possible even for 1 080-line PDPs.Typically the data drivers in a PDP only need a pulse voltage of 70 Volt or less. The scan drivers need a higher voltage, but thanks to Silicon On Insulator technology (SOI) this can still be done at a low cost.The data driver cost for addressing is very low, typically $0.01 per column driver. So for a 1 080 line display, with 1 920 × 3 = 5 760 data drivers, me data driver cost is only about $35 higher than for an XGA panel. The extra cost for the 1 080 line scan drivers is another extra $35. The yield of 1 080-line panels will be lower than those of XGA, but only the first 1 or 2 years. So for 50-inch and larger, we can expect in the future a cost penalty of only $70 for 1 080-line PDPTVs over that of a 720p PDP-module.For the panel cost there a few bottlenecks, where it will be difficult to realize further cost reduction without using new materials and/or new processes. Already for more than a year the cost of the PDP glass in high volume is stable at $20 per 42-inch plate. Changes in the composition to reduce the cost, are probably not enough to reduce the cost down further.Therefore the use of soda-lime glass should be seriously re-considered, including the replacement of the expensive ITO conductive layer, by either mesh-type of electrodes, or by tin-oxide. Recently a breakthrough has been obtained in patterning fluor-doped tin-oxide, made by chemical vapor deposition on the soda-lime glass float-line; also a sodium diffusion-blocking layer is incorporated. This new technology enables a cost for the glass that is 2 times lower than that of high strain-point glass, and the same is true for the transparent conductive layer. Finally an additive process is replacing the subtractive silver deposition process, and alternatives for the silver bus electrodes are being developed.For the rib technology in PDP various solutions are being developed to replace the subtractive technologies, like sandblasting and chemical etching, by new processes that do not waste material, and have the same or better accuracy. Replica technologies have been developed, but they do not yet result in cost reduction.The use of a metal shadow mask type of rib structure is an excellent example of a low cost process for rib making. This process, adopted from the CRT-industry, promises to realize even 1 080-line resolution in a 42-inch PDP display, while the cost of the iron mask is very low. By using a metal mask we have very high accuracy and ultra low cost, promising high yield.All of these cost reductions are expected to result in a panel materials cost of about $50 in the year 2010, and about $150 for the electronics for XGA and $200 for 1 080p. This will translate into 42-inch set prices of $500 and $800 respectively for W-XGA and 1 080p in the year 2010, about two times lower than that of the LCD.So today we are at a turning point in the display industry, where PDP is accepting the LCD challenge and is fighting and expected to win.Harm Tolner30 November 2006
Harm Tolner
PDP Consultant, Netherlands
国际会议
上海
英文
17-18
2007-03-12（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）