San Jose, CA, June 22, 2004--The U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) has awarded a research and development contract to Lumileds to develop LED-based illuminators for projection display applications. The $2-million project will be cost-shared equally between the USDC and Lumileds.
Projection display applications, such as rear projection televisions and front projectors used in business settings, traditionally use high-intensity discharge lamps to produce white light, combined with an optical system to add in the require red, green and blue (RGB) components. A more efficient approach is to use LEDs as the illumination source. Lumileds' LEDs are available in red, green and blue with turn-on times less
than one microsecond. While LED luminance has not previously been sufficient for projection display applications, Lumileds leverages high power RGB LEDs as illuminators, which eliminates the need for a color wheel or other color separation optics.
The goal of the USDC-sponsored project with Lumileds is to create a compact LED illuminator for development of a projection system with a longer lifetime and better color rendition. Among the technical issues to be addressed by Lumileds are component design, development and testing, packaging and thermal management, and systems integration and functional testing. Sample illuminators will be provided to USDC member companies for testing purposes at the end of the 18-month-long project.
"LEDs are enabling never before possible lighting applications, and our contract with the USDC provides us with an exciting opportunity to propel this
technology into new applications such as projection displays," said Gerard Harbers, advanced development manager of Lumileds.
According to data provided by market research firm iSuppli Corp. (San Jose, CA), the market for microdisplay-based RPTV market is currently $4.3 billion and is projected to grow 43%, compounded annually.