Sharp to Start Production of Small-Screen 3D LCDs in Fiscal First Half

Sharp will start production of 3.4-inch 3D LCDs in its fiscal first half that started April 1, but it’s unknown whether those displayswill be at the heart of Nintendo’s 3DS handheld game system. Sharp and Nintendo officials have declined to comment on our reports that Sharp will be supplying the displays for the 3DS handheld (CED March 31 p5).

The 3.4-inch LCD can switch between 2D and 3D modes, and images can be viewed without glasses, Sharp said. The display will target digital cameras and cellphones, it said. The display features a parallax barrier system (CED March 25 p1). When built into LCD, the system uses vertical slits to control the path of light reaching the left and right eyes, creating a sense of depth, Sharp said. The 3.4-inch LCD has 480x854 resolution, 500 candelas and 1,000:1 contrast ratio. It will be available in touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions, Sharp said. The first LCDs will be non-touchscreen, the company said.

The display also represents a revival of Sharp’s continuous grain silicon (CGS). Advances in CGS technology have shrunk the wiring width within an LCD panel, enabling more light to pass through increasing brightness in the 3.4-inch display to 500 candelas, double that of conventional LCDs. Sharp has been developing CGS for years. In 2002, it started the first volume production of 2-4-inch CGS panels (CED Oct 22/02 p6) at a plant in Tenri, Japan. The CGS technology was built into Sharp camcorders and Zaurus handheld PCs, the Olympus Stylus digital camera and Toshiba Pocket PC. The Zaurus used a 3.7-inch CGS panel, while the Olympus Stylus had a 1.5-inch display.

CGS enables the creation of LCDs that integrate all driver and operation circuitry on the glass itself. Unlike amorphous silicon and low-temperature polysilicon, CGS has a silicon lattice with continuity at the grain boundaries. By eliminating the need to bond external circuits to a display, CGS allows for smaller and thinner mobile devices.