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Abstract

Electrostatic optical shutter is disclosed in which a resilient electrode in the shape of a membrane made from optically transparent and electrically insulating film is disposed over an optically transparent and electrically insulating substrate and supported by one or several flexible tether beams which are attached to the substrate through the conductive pillars. Both the membrane and the substrate contain a grating with periodically repeated parallel stripes made from electrically conductive and opaque material. The stripes are connected at one or both ends to form continuous electrodes, while the grating structures on the electrodes are shifted from each other by a half a period to block the light transmission through the shutter in the unbiased state. Under electrical bias, the membrane is moved both laterally and normally to the substrate, which results in a spatial alignment of the conductive stripes in both grating structures and formation of the openings in the shutter for the light transmission. A flat panel display having video and color capabilities and comprising two-dimensional matrix of such shutters is disclosed. To implement passive matrix driving architecture, each pixel of the display contains a thin-film diode and a thin-film resistor to eliminate cross talk between the pixels. Both the transmissive and reflective modes of the display operation are proposed. A sequential pulsed illumination with the light emitting diodes of three major colors is used to produce the color in the display. Another approach in making a flat panel display, capable of operating in both transmissive and reflective mode, is disclosed in which two-terminal electrical control of the pixels produces effect of bistability in positioning of the membrane relative to the substrate and thereby provides a memory effect, which allows one to hold the 'on'-state of each pixel for almost the entire frame time and thus increase the display brightness.

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First Claim