The Secretary of State for Defence in Her Britannic Majesty's Government

The Secretary of State for Defence in Her Majesty's Government of the

Adrian L Mears

Cyril Hilsum

John C White

John D Benjamin

John Kirton

A flat panel VDU or TV screen has pixel elements controlled by an array of small single crystal semiconductor bars or chips. Power and information are connected directly or capacitatively to the chips; chip surfaces have pick-up pads. X-Y address lines are provided on a VDU panel substrate, and each chip has bridging links to complete continuity of the Y-line. For data address, data lines are provided on the substrate, and decoding an address recognition circuitry is incorporated in each chip. Chips may be responsive to more than one address, and may be addressed either singly or using a single code address. Each chip may control its neighboring pixels. A single crystal wafer is processed and mounted on a support. Chips are defined by back etching the wafer and separated by stretching the support prior to transfer to a substrate. Self aligned electrodes may be produced using a mask stretched on the surface of the support. Alternatively the electrodes may be produced photolithographically, using shallow angle and overhead illumination. The chips or bars may also be located by means of vacuum chucks.

Flat-panel display and a process for its manufacture

A medical implant for injecting into the vascular system of animals comprises a device less than 500 .mu.m in size carrying signal processing means for providing an output in response to an input signal. The input may be acoustic, electromagnetic, temperature, pH value, or chemical. The output may be acoustic, electromagnetic, or chemical. Large numbers, e.g., 10.sup.8, of the implant devices may be mixed into a saline solution and injected into a blood vessel where they are carried around the vascular system, or the devices may be mixed with a gas and inhaled. The amount of circulation depends on the device size. For the larger device e.g., above 7 .mu.m to around 250 .mu.m, circulation will be short lived. Smaller sized e.g., &lt;3 .mu.m devices will circulate for a considerable time. Anti-bodies may be coated onto the devices to cause them to adhere to target areas such as tumors. In one device a chemical is released when illuminated externally by an acoustic beam. In another device a chemical is released when the pH of surrounding blood changes to a given level. Power to operate the device may be by an integral battery.

Active silicon implant devices

The invention concerns an edge connector for mounting on the edge of flat panel displays, e.g. liquid crystal or electroluminescent display panels, arranged in matrix format. The edge connectors have mounted therein drive electronics, e.g. serial input parallel output shift registers. Two series of conductors are carried by the edge connector body, one series of conductors connect with external control circuits and the other series of conductors connect with addressing electrodes on a display panel. Faulty drive electronics are easily replaced by unclipping the edge connector from the panel and substituting a new edge connector complete with new drive electronics.

Multi-contact electrical edge connector for display panels

A d.c. electroluminescent panel comprises a transparent substrate, a transparent first electrode film, a phosphor layer, and a second electrode film. Application of a voltage across the phosphor layer causes it to emit light. In this invention the phosphor layer is produced in two layers, a first semi-insulating thin layer of activator doped phosphor and a second electrically conducting layer of phosphor.

Electroluminescent phosphor panel

A refreshed electro-optic display comprising a plurality of individually addressed display elements which may be arranged in a matrix form is characterised in that the memory for refreshing is derived from the display elements themselves. Each display element is refreshed by sensing by one or a plurality of sensors the state of a physical property of the element to detect whether or not it has been selected to be operated and by feeding a control signal in an individual feedback loop from the sensor to open an electronic gate, to apply an electrical potential to the element, when sensed to be operated, to keep it in the operated state. The physical property sensed may be the electrical capacitance or resistance of the display elements, the state of light emission or modulation from them or the state of charge storage within them. Preferably a voltage is developed which depends on the state of the property. In that case the sensor can comprise a voltage comparator which compares the sensed voltage with a reference voltage. The display elements may for example be liquid crystal, electroluminescent electrochromic, electrophoretic, or minature plasma elements.

Display systems

An electro-optic display system comprises a plurality of display elements each capable of producing an optical display signal in response to electrical operating energy, a separate channel to each of said display elements, each of said channels incorporating a photosensitive element for the purpose of opening the channel in which that photosensitive element is incorporated for a given period to enable electrical operating energy to be applied during the given period via that channel to an appropriate one of said display elements, a generator of electromagnetic radiation signals arranged to irradiate in response to electrical control signals selected ones of said photosensitive elements and a generator of electrical control signals arranged to feed electrical control signals to said generator of electromagnetic radiation signals. The display elements may be arranged in a straight line which may be one row or column of a matrix array of the elements. The photosensitive elements may be photoconductors or photovoltaic elements and they may be part of a single patch formed as an integrated structure with the display elements on a common substrate. The display elements may for example be electroluminescent elements or liquid crystal elements. The first mentioned generator may be a plurality of semiconductor light-emitting diodes.

Growing community of inventors

Cheltenham, United Kingdom

Adrian L Mears