37.4: High Image Quality of Ultra‐Low Power Digital Micro‐Shutter Based Display Technology

The Pixtronix DMS™ (Digital Micro Shutter) display technology intrinsically provides exceptional image quality due to its optical architecture and device technology. This technology, based on MEMS micro-shutters formed on active TFT backplanes, has enabled the development of color sequential, time division gray scale, direct-view displays achieving breakthrough performance - including 150% NTSC (CIE 1976 u'v' color space) color gamut, 24-bit color, > 500:1 contrast ratio and 170° viewing angle, all at 1/4 the power consumption of comparable TFT-LCD display modules. In addition to this, these displays present horizontal contrast viewing angle comparable to that of OLEDs providing exceptional color saturation in large angle viewing directions. This paper will briefly describe the Pixtronix DMS™ display technology. It will also describe key display architecture elements of DMS technology responsible for the excellent optical performance. The optical characterization of prototype displays and discussion of the results will be presented. A non-emissive technology like DMS technology is able to provide performance close to that of emissive technologies like OLED at a power much lower than that of an LCD display.