Highly efficient full-color display based on blue LED backlight and electrochromic light-valve coupled with front-emitting phosphors

We report a novel full-color display based on the generation of full-color by blue light approach, so called color-by-blue display. This newly proposed color-by-blue light-valve display combines a blue backlight excitation source, a blue light-valve shutter, and front-emitting phosphor pixels. Careful evaluation shows that the detailed display characteristics as well as excellent cycling durability under a low operation voltage of 3 V easily satisfy the requirements for the current display application. Also, we would like to emphasize that the proposed method shows a conversion efficiency of 20%, surpassing the value (approximate to 5%) seen in the typical liquid crystal displays. Although the switching response reported here is slower than in a commercial display module due to the solution-phase electrochromic nature of the shutter used, a response time close to that of a liquid crystal display is highly feasible, as we suggest. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America