Plasma displays are the dominant large flat-panel display technology on the market. This success is due to many desirable properties of gas discharges such as very strong nonlinearity, memory function, discharge switching, long lifetime, good brightness and luminous efficiency, low-cost material and simple structure, high resolution and large size, tolerant to harsh environments and temperature extremes, reasonable impedance characteristics, natural color capability, and flat-panel display. These properties made plasma displays one of the earliest technologies to achieve practical matrix address-ability. Plasma displays are generally divided into two major familiesac and dc. The reason for this division is method of current limiting, which will be covered in the presentation. Some recently introduced displays use both ac and dc current limiting and are presented. While all of the commercial success of plasma displays has been in computer and information displays, a large amount of research and development has been performed on image plasma displays. Brief history and recent topics will be presented for techniques to make plasma displays with gray scale and color. It will also cover the impressive efforts to make flat-panel color television using gas discharges. Future of flat-panel displays will be presented about the development of plasma displays in which computer and infomation displays will be connected with full color television systems.

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This tutorial will focus on three direct-multiplexed liquid crystal display types : the widely used twisted nematic (TN) display, the relatively new supertwisted birefringence effect (SBE) and the potentially high-performance surface-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal (SSFLC) display. Topics to be discussed and compared will be electronic addressing techniques, principles of operation, electro-optical performance, materials and manufacture.

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The total worldwide market for all applications, all technology types and all geographic regions will exceed 1 billion units in 1986 valued at slightly over 6 billion dollars. By 1993 unit consumption will exceed 1.7 billion units and the value of shipments will total $11.9 billion. Between 1984 and 1993 the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will be 8%. The CRT will continue to be the dominant display over this time span with growth to 139 million units valued at $6.9 billion in 1993 from 96.5 million units valued at $4.9 billion in 1986. But in terms of compound annual growth rate, the EL display types will enjoy the highest rate with growth to 2.36 million units valued at $755 million in 1993 from only 29,580 units valued at $18.1 million in 1986. This is a CAGR of 74% for units and 63% for value. This will be primarily due to increased availability of the displays as more suppliers enter the market. LED displays (lamps and non-visible LED products are excluded here) will show only a modest growth over the same period due primarily to competition from lower cost VFDs and LCDs. LED units will increase and then decline as the displays become more "intelligent", providing more characters but at a somewhat higher price, thereby resulting in an increase in the value of shipments. The trend toward higher information content will also affect PDPs which will show a modest growth in terms of units but a healthy increase in terms of value. The market for PDPs is forecast to grow to 15 million units valued at $808 million in 1993 from 12 million units valued at $181 million in 1986. Future panels will provide more information and color but at a higher price. The increased use of VFDs in auto dashboards will continue to spark the growth of this technology. The market size will double between 1986 and 1993,reaching $632 million in 1993,representing some 182 million units. The LCD will enjoy significant growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the use of enhanced displays (active matrix, etc.) in color becomes widespread. In addition to traditional markets such as watches and calculators, major usage will be in TV and computers. The market will grow to 1.3 billion units valued at $2.6 billion in 1993 from 778 million units valued at $867 million in 1986. The other display technologies of any consequence are electromagnetic displays, solid ceramic ferroelectric displays, incandescent displays, electrochromics and perhaps, gas-electron phosphor displays. Electrophoretic displays, considered viable up until early 1986,are not being developed by any major commercial firms so it is unlikely that this technology will flourish. Japan will continue to be the largest market region for displays of all types. The 1993 Japanese market will total $3.3 billion with consumption of over 430 million units. The U.S. is expected to be a close second with a $3.28 billion market represented by 112 million units. Europe will be third behind the U.S. in 1993 with a market size of $2.4 billion (96 million units) with the Far East closely following at $2.2 billion. Since most of the low priced watch and calculator displays will continue to made and used in this region, unit production and consumption will lead the world at 1 billion units. In summary, the worldwide market for displays will continue to grow as more sophisticated applications develop and higher information content displays in a variety of technology types and colors become available in larger quantities and at lower prices later in this decade.

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Visual communication services are mainly classified into paper-based communications and display-based communications. These are also called hard-copy type and soft-coyp type communications, respectively. Here, an outline of display applications in the soft-copy type communication services is presented. Nowadays, many kinds of soft-coyp type communication services have been introduced according to transmitted picture type and communication system type. Transmitted picture type implies text, graphics, photo-graphics, and motion pictures. Communication system type means the communications between terminals, and between computer and terminals. The former is called end/end communication and the latter is called center/end communication. Typical end/end communication services include video conference and telewriting, and typical center/end communication service is videotex. Display devices play an important role in the terminal equipment of the soft-copy communication services. However. the display devices have been developed for major markets such as TV receivers, computer terminals and so on. Therefore, the most appropriate display device for each soft-copy communication system has been applied, as follows. Videotex is the service mainly for information inquiry, and includes many kinds of data types such as text, figures, and/or photographics. According to these data types, display terminals of standard resolution, 250x200 dots, or high resolution, 500x400 dots, are selectively used. The text display capability is about 500 and 2000 alphanumeric characters, or 120 and 500 kanji characters , respectively. Though only CRTs are employed as display devices ; smaller size and lower costs for the terminal equipment are strongly expected in the expansion of videotex. However, adoption of new display devices is not so easy, because videotex service needs high display quality in color and resolution. Video conference means the communication conference between remotely located rooms which are equipped with TV camera and TV display. Usually, there are several participants on one end, therefore, special display equipments with very large screen, now, about 40" CRT or over 60" projection type CRT, are employed. In this system, display equipment size becomes very large in not only screen size but also in depth size. Therefore, the large size flat display is well suited to this field. However, display of color and motion pictures, high brightness and contrast, and wide viewing angle are also necessary. Hence, new devices must meet these requirements for the video conference system. Telewriting is the service for transmitting handwritten characters and drawings. Presently. sketch tablet type and black-board type terminals are available, with the CRTs been also used for display equipment. Future sketch tablet type terminal may utilize the same surface for input and output operations, therefore, the new flat type display device is expected to provide this combined function. As for a blackboard type terminal, a new flat display device with large screen is necessary instead of the CRT. The video telephone implies a personal use telephone with picture, and is at the experimental stage, because of expensive cost in transmission line and terminal equipment. Additionally, services transmitting simple pictures via a low bit-rate communication channel are becoming available. In this case, a lower quality picture may be allowed, permitting the adoption of promising new display. These soft-copy type communications are still at the early stage, and will make remarkable progress in future. This progress may depend greatly on the display devices. Though the CRT has still many problems, it may continue to be dominant until the early 90's also in this field. Nevertheless, new display devices will be gradually introduced into some specific services such as telewriting or video telephone services.

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