A university research team in Lausanne, Switzerland, has finally discovered a use for nanotubes, punting the technology into the race to develop a substitute for conventional cathode ray tubes and liquid crystal displays used for television and computer screens. The carbon cylinders, also known as Buckytubes, variants of Buckyballs or BuckminsterFullerene, are tiny and 5,000m side by side would stretch just a foot; they have been noted for their uses in electrical conductivity, but since their discovery in 1991 a suitable use had not been found. Led by Dutch microphysicist Walt de Heer the Swiss team has developed a system that has managed to elude industrial designers for years by turning an array of vertically-aligned nanotubes into tiny but powerful electron emitters to provide what is claimed to be the first good substitute for the large electronic guns that create a cathode ray tube’s colour picture by firing a beam of electrons at a display screen coated with colour phosphors. A similar approach, using an array of smaller emitters instead of one big gun, is taken by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co in its flat cathode ray tube: that uses 44 cathode filaments with a vast anode plate behind them and a grid filter in front of them (CI No 2,230). Current flat screens are based either on liquid crystals, which have a narrow angle of view, switch too slowly, a difficult to fabricate in large sizes and lack the sharpness and colour resolution of standard television tubes, or on the relatively undeveloped plasma technology, but the likes of Sony Corp, Fujitsu Ltd and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd are finding it difficult to pursuade the business world to foot the research and development bill, with 21 plasma screens currently retailing at about $6,500 each. Fujitsu launched its plasmavision M21 in March 1995 (CI No 2,632), claimed it to be the largest flat-panel AC plasma display screen currently available, and was shortly followed by an offering from Sony, but nine months on, orders are thin on the ground. Nigel Thomas, senior engineer at Matsushita’s Cardiff, South Wales, planning department believes it will be a few years until plasma technology is available at a sensible price, but sees the potential in the wide screen television and cinema vision market as potentially vast. De Heer’s team has entered the market as an unknown quantity and it could still be three to five years before the new technology results in a new generation of television and computer displays.
