SED - Surface Conduction Electron Emitter Display

Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Displays (SED) are a new, emerging technology co-developed by Canon and Toshiba Corporation.

        The SED technology has been developing since 1987. The flat panel display technology that employs surface conduction electron emitters for every individual display pixel can be referred to as the Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display. Though the technology differs, the basic theory is that the emitted electrons can excite a phosphor coating on the display panel screen to be the bottom line for both the SED display technology and the traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions. The main advantage of SED’s compared with LCD’s and CRT’s is that it can provide with a best mix of both the technologies. The SED can combine the slim form factor of LCD’s with the superior contrast ratios, exceptional response time and give the better picture quality of CRT’s. The SED’s also provides with more brightness , colour performance, viewing angles and also consume very less power. More over, the SED’s do not require a deflection system for the electron beam, which has in turn helped the manufacturer to create a display design, that is only few inches thick but still light enough to be hung from the wall. All the above properties has consequently helped the manufacturer to enlarge the size of the display panel just just by increasing the number of electron emitters relative to the necessary number of pixels required. Canon and Thoshiba are the two major companies working on SED’s. The technology is still developing and we can accept further breakthrough on the research.

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