Short for
Liquid Crystal on
Silicon, it is
micro-display technology related to LCD, where liquid crystal material has a
twisted-nematic structure but is sealed directly to the surface of a silicon
chip. * The electronic drivers controlling the crystals' alignment are etched
into the silicon. Using these, several million pixels can fit in an area as
small as one square inch. The chip is coated with an aluminized layer, which
means that LCoS is highly reflective allowing more light to pass on.
[Adapted
from Digital Home magazine]
There are two classes of LCOS.
- In a single-chip system, light is filtered through a color-wheel
system where the sequence of colors produced is coordinated with the
modulation of light by the liquid crystals, producing subtle color
variations.
- In a three-chip
system LCoS uses a system of prisms to split a single light source into
its red, green and blue components. Video modulations are applied individually
to the three resulting light paths, which are then recombined by another prism
array to create the composite image.
