One of the newest flat-panel display technologies to appear is SED, or "Surface-Conduction Electron-emitter Display," jointly developed by Canon and Toshiba. An SED display consists of a rear glass plate to which is affixed electron emitters (one per pixel). A front glass plate, coated with phosphors, is located close to the emitters. The space between the two glass plates is evacuated. Emitter electrodes are spaced a few nanometers apart, and tunnel conduction between them causes emission towards the phosphor layer. It may be seen that this technology has similarities to both CRT and plasma displays, and its manufacture exploits, among other things, techniques developed for inkjet printing.
The resulting flat panel display may be made with a diagonal dimension of one meter or longer. It is said to consume about 50 percent of the power of a CRT display of similar size, and about 33 percent of the power consumed by a plasma display of comparable size. Commercial availability is expected in 2005.
