South Korean tech giant Samsung said Wednesday it has developed the world's largest color filter-less flat panel screen.

The so-called color filter-less liquid crystal display (CFL-LCD) panel measures 32 inches diagonally and operates without a color filter, the company said.

Most existing LCD panels need color filters which generate colors of red, green and blue, while CFL-LCDs are equipped with their own backlights that produce each color, a company official said.

Pre-existing CFL-LCDs are rarely more than 10 inches in size, according to the company.

Samsung's new LCD panel employs a sequential color processing method that rapidly determines color tones based on how long red, green and blue lights are emitted from the LED backlight. Pixels are not spatially arranged throughout the LCD, eliminating the need for a color filter. Conventional LCDs require both a cold cathode fluorescent (CCFL) backlight and a color filter to separate the white light emitted by the backlight into red, green and blue (RGB) sub-pixels.

Seongsik Shin, vice president of the Samsung Electronics LCD R&D Center said, "With the independent development of the color filter-less LCD, Samsung is able to produce the highest quality LCD panels at a lower cost. This further improves our market leadership position for high-definition LCD TVs of 32", 40" and 46" industry-standard screen sizes." He added, "The new technology will reduce the investment cost for new facilities, shorten production process times and increase production yields, boosting Samsung's performance and cost competitiveness in the LCD TV market."

To achieve the "sequential" display, Samsung Electronics' LCD R&D team used a novel RGB-emitting LED backlight. By combining the RGB light emissions from the backlight in precise sequences, the new LCD panel provides color saturation that is 110% of the NTSC standard, while the aperture ratio is an exceptionally high 78% for television with brightness at 500nit.

Moreover, the new display panel consumes only 82 watts, just 60% of the power needed by a conventional 500nit CCFL backlight. In addition, its response time is 5ms or faster, making it ideally suited for multimedia and video applications where accurate color reproduction is required.

Samsung developed its first LED backlight unit (BLU) in 2004 and completed low-power 40" and 46" versions using this BLU the same year. The breakthrough development of a 32" LCD without a color filter reasserts the company's leadership in the LCD industry.

Samsung Electronics said it will introduce the new product at the "FPD International 2005" global display exhibition scheduled to open in Yokohama, Japan, next Wednesday.

The company said it plans to begin mass production of the new flat panel from the latter half of next year.

Specifications

Resolution: 1366X768
Color Saturation: 110% (NTSC)
Contrast: 1000:1
Response Time: 5ms
Power Consumption: 82W
Brightness: 500nits
Aperture Ratio: 78%