Shrinking displays, growing resolution

While most of the focus is on bigger and bigger displays, microdisplay manufacturer, Kopin, has gone in the opposite direction, producing the world’s smallest 600 x 480 resolution VGA color-filter LCD. The tiny display, which measures just 0.27-inches diagonally, was made possible by shrinking the color dots down to a mere 2.9 x 8.7 µm - to put that in perspective a strand of human hair is about 100 µm wide, so pretty small is what we’re getting at here.

Although you might not want one as the centerpiece of your home theater, microdisplays are used in a wide variety of consumer and military applications. For example, Kopin believes that the ultra-compact displays made possible by the reduced size color dots will be ideal for the emerging digital single-lens-reflex (DSLR) cameras with high-resolution electronic viewfinders.

The small color dots will allow SVGA (800 x 600) displays in a 0.34” diagonal size, XGA (1024 x 768) displays in a 0.44” diagonal and SXGA (1280 x 1024) displays in a 0.56” diagonal size, providing a clear path towards Kopin’s previously announced goal to create a 2048 x 2048-resolution display in a size smaller than a typical postage stamp. Just as long as they don’t start making them too small to be seen by the naked eye.