Japanese electronics major Sharp Corporation by the end of this year is planning to start the production of small LCD screens using a new semiconductor material looking at growing demand for handheld gadgets.
The company has also announced the development of a new technology, designed for the manufacture of small and medium-sized LCD screens. It means we are talking about displays for smartphones and tablet PCs. With this move, the company seems to shifting gears in order to meet the huge demand in small sized LCD displays.
“It makes sense for Sharp to focus more on smaller panels where the demand-supply balance has been tight,” Shiro Mikoshiba, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc., said by telephone. Increasing competition in large panel market is going to stay owing to sluggish demand for LCD TVs, Bloomberg quoted him saying.
A key feature of the new displays will be the use of semiconductor oxide InGaZnO rather than the more common silicon. Thin film transistors based on this semiconductor have been created by Sharp in collaboration with Semiconductor Energy Laboratory for the first time in the world.
Application of the new material has reduced the size of transistors and increased the light transmission of pixels, i.e., brightness of the screen. To further improve the image quality, Sharp engineers have used a different proprietary – Ultraviolet-induced multi-domain Vertical Alignment (UVA) technology.
According to plans, mass production of these screens will start before the end of this year at company’s plant 2 in Kameyama, which basically is meant for making 40 and 50 inch LCD TV screens .
