Hitachi sets 10 mm color LCD module for notebooks

Electronic News, Oct 5, 1992

TOKYO--Hitachi Ltd. has brought out its slimmest color thin-film transistor (TFT) nine-inch-class liquid crystal display to date.

The 10-millimeter-thick, 9.4-inch TFT module, scheduled for initial shipments in January, is targeted at the notebook computer market. "We've made this display just the right size for notebook computers. Eight inch-class displays are too small, and 10-inch too bulky," said Zenzo Tajima, manager of the TFT strategic development project at Hitachi's Electron Tube & Devices division.

The display has a resolution of 640 x 480 dots, a dot-pitch of 0.30 millimeters, and due to the use of "special gate arrays," can generate 4,096 colors, according to the company. Previous Hitachi displays of this class generated 512 colors.

The display driver circuits are designed and manufactured by Hitachi and their design contributes to reducing the bulk of the display's frame, according to Hitachi. The display measures 255mm (width) by 180mm (height) by 10mm (thickness).

Hitachi also says it has made significant advancements in boosting the brightness of the image. The company says it uses a new transistor construction to increase the aperture ratio of the LCD from 35% to 50% and also uses two extremely bright cold-cathode fluorescent backlights. Hitachi said it would announce details of the transistor construction at Japan Display '92, which will be held from October 12th in Hiroshima.

"We're targeting this at the high-end notebook market," Mr. Tajima said. Indeed, Hitachi appears to be readying itself to challenge Sharp's dominant position in outside sales of color TFT displays. In alluding to Sharp's enormously popular 8.4-inch display, Mr. Tajima said: "We see an 8.4-inch display as being too small... our display is also thinner than other companies' displays." Sharp is currently the dominant TFT display supplier worldwide.

"We've used almost all of our displays for in-house products until now, but we're beginning to get a lot inquiries from outside, so sales should increase," said Mr. Tajima.

Hitachi will start producing the displays in January 1993 at a rate of about 4,000 units a month and shipments will also begin at this time. "We're aiming at getting yields up to 50%," said Mr. Tajima.