CNTs are Carbon Nanotubes, a new technology that allows flatpanel screens to be constructed from what is essentially an array of thousands of tiny CRTs, each CRT representing a pixel or so.<\/p>\n
A friend (thanks Mike) pointed me towards this company<\/a> which has been experimenting in the area. Click on Demonstrations on the left to see a nifty little animated demo of their current prototype (and be sure to read the caveats as well as to why the quality isn’t wonderful yet).<\/p>\n Why is this stuff of interest? Primarily because the potential exists to make absolutely massive<\/i> screens using this technology. Plasma and LCD screens are limited in size, because they rely on a single sheet of semiconductors to make the whole screen – the technology to seamlessly stitch together multiple panels to make a bigger screen doesn’t exist. <\/p>\n For those screen types, cost increases rapidly as the size gets larger, because it becomes more difficult to get screens with an acceptably high number of working pixels.<\/p>\n With CNTs, this is no longer an issue – you simply manufacture buckets of tiny screens (say 4″ x 5″) and stitch them together to make as big a display as you like. Tiny screens means much higher yield which in turn translates to lower prices. Plus, as a bonus, you get all the benefits of a normal CRT (bright picture, fast refresh, etc.) without the drawbacks of massive weight and depth.<\/p>\n Probably another year or two to go before these hit your local electronics superstore, but it can only be a matter of time.<\/p>\n (On the other hand, whatever happened to bubble memory<\/a>?)<\/p>\n Eddy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CNTs are Carbon Nanotubes, a new technology that allows flatpanel screens to be constructed from what is essentially an array of thousands of tiny CRTs, each CRT representing a pixel or so. A friend (thanks Mike) pointed me towards this company which has been experimenting in the area. Click on Demonstrations on the left to … Continue reading CNTs are coming<\/span>