SUNNYVALE, CA - Novalux, developer of the Novalux Extended Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (NECSEL) technology, has delivered high-power, green, solid-state lighting prototypes to key consumer electronics partners. The company’s proprietary light sources are designed to increase the performance and reduce the cost of microdisplay-based devices, including home theater front projectors and rear-projection TVs.
“The NECSEL-532-500 is our first packaged green device aimed at the microdisplay segment. It could change the paradigm for panel illumination,” said Greg Niven, vice president of marketing at Novalux. “Our initial NECSEL prototypes show the viability of this technology to increase display performance while reducing the overall cost.” The company is now working to increase laser power and generate blue and red output to provide a solid-state alternative to the UHP lamps that are today’s standard microdisplay illumination sources, he added.
Novalux’s prototype NECSEL device emits over 500 mW at 532 nm from a package smaller than a matchbox. According to the company, the technology is especially significant for microdisplay applications because it addresses many of the shortcomings prevalent to current UHP lamps, including increasing the available color space and providing brighter, speckle-free pictures, resulting in enhanced image quality.
“With the development and production of our green NECSEL, we are now presenting integrators with a superior alternative to UHP lamp technology,” said Jean-Michel Pelaprat, chairman and CEO of Novalux. “We have also validated with these partners the cost structure of the laser in very large quantities.”
According to the market research firm McLaughlin Consulting Group (Menlo Park, CA), fueled by rapidly growing demand for microdisplays in RPTV applications, total global sales of microdisplays will grow from about $1.2 billion in 2003 to at least $4 billion in 2008. And if optimistic assumptions about microdisplay RPTV sales pan out, microdisplay sales could top $6 billion.