Sharp develops new small and medium LCDs with oxide semiconductor tech

When it comes to your smartphone, the thing that consumes most of the battery power inside the device is the LCD screen. The LCD is also one of the thicker components of the smartphone and has a lot of impact on how thin the device can be made. The brighter the screen is, the better you can see it in the outdoors or other bright locations. With all that said, the thinner and brighter our screens of smartphones and tablets can be, the smaller and easier to read the devices can be as well.

Sharp has announced that it is set to commercialize the world's first small and medium size LCD panels that new a new oxide semiconductor. Sharp plans to start making these screens at its Kameyama Plant 2 sometime this year. These small and medium size panels will find their way into the smartphones and tablets we are using over the next year or so. The new Sharp panels will use InGaZnO material in the thin-film transistor and they will be the first screens on the world to use the material.

The new panels will be very energy efficient leading to longer battery life for the portable devices that use the screen. The energy efficiency is thanks to the downsizing of the transistor and by increasing the light transmittance for each pixel. The screens will be cost competitive according to Sharp and will use 8th generation glass substrates. There is now word at this point, on what devices will use the screens or an exact date when the production of the screens will start. These new thin screens combined with the new SanDisk 19nm chips would make for an impressive smartphone.

[via JCN Network]