Flat-Panel Displays

Our window into the Information Age is increasingly an interactive electronic display rather than the printed page. From computer terminals to television, that display is usually a CRT, but recent advances have raised flat panels into contention with the CRT for new applications. New plasma display structures and improvements in electroluminescence, paced by gains in high-voltage ICs, have led to compact computers with these emissive flat panels. ``Supertwist´´ LCDs with greatly enhanced performance are reaching the portable computer market. Pocket TV sets with LCDs addressed by integral thin-film transistors presage the development of full-size color screens: wafer-scale integration in a non-standard semiconductor technology is being developed to challenge the CRT´s monopoly on entertainment displays. The commercial success of all these displays will be strongly influenced by gains in VLSI, packaging and interconnection; conversely new markets for VLSI will be created by emerging flat-panel display capabilities.