In a major milestone toward their plan to fabricate a complete “system on a panel,” Sharp and Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) report they've successfully integrated an 8-bit Z80 microcontroller onto a liquid-crystal-display glass substrate.

The development marks a milestone in the movement of the two companies' jointly developed continuous grain (CG) silicon technology from the research lab to the marketplace.

Most importantly, it could presage highly integrated semiconductors that integrate display components, logic circuitry and memory on a single glass substrate. Sharp says this means the CG silicon technology “represents the first step on the road toward the development of ultra-thin 'sheet' computers and 'sheet' TVs.”

CG silicon maintains atomic-level continuity at the crystal grain boundaries, thereby enabling electrons to travel through the semiconductor approximately 600 times faster than conventional amorphous silicon and approximately three times faster than low-temperature polysilicon.

In October, Sharp began mass production of “system LCDs” made from CG silicon. Sharp says end-user devices using the components should hit the market within a year.

— by Alexander Wolfe, executive editor of WindowsForDevices.com

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.