TOKYO and IRVINE, Calif., Mar. 20, 2007 —Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd. (TMD), and Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., TMD’s sales and marketing arm in the Americas, announced development of new 10.4-inch and 10.6-inch thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) panels for notebook PC applications, each incorporating an LED (light emitting diode) backlighting system to provide low-profile, lightweight, and low-power consumption features. The newly developed products expand TMD’s range of LED-backlit LCD panels for mobile notebook

Compared with a conventional cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlighting system, the LED backlighting has distinct advantages such as reduced thickness, reduced weight, increased brightness, and decreased power consumption. In addition, it is Mercury-Free¹ and RoHS- Compatible² . It also features lower operating voltages, which provides another advantage in design and safety aspects. Moreover, an LED backlighting system contributes to increased durability against impacts and vibration.

Including the two newly developed panels, TMD's lineup of LED-backlit TFT LCD panels now offers screen sizes from 8.9-inch to 13.3-inch and pixel resolutions of XGA, WXGA, and WXGA+. This lineup may contribute to further reduction of weight and thickness in portable notebook PCs for mobile applications, while at the same time extending their battery-driven operation.

In these notebook PC panels, in addition to the adoption of an LED-backlight system, TMD has also adopted thinner glass substrates of 0.3 mm or less, reduced the number of component parts to the minimum requirement and optimized layout design for weight reduction. For example, TMD has succeeded in decreasing the weights to 120g for a 10.4-inch XGA module and to 135g for a 12.1-inch XGA module. These improvements have helped to reduce overall module thickness to only 2.5mm for several of TMD's notebook PC LCD products. In conjunction with the successful reduction of weight and thickness, TMD has also achieved a high brightness of level up to 300 candelas per sq. meter (cd/m² ) in certain products in this family.

TMD foresees strong growth in this area, and these types of LED-backlit panels will exceed 50 percent of TMD's production in late 2007.

TMD will continue to reinforce this product lineup by offering low-profile, lightweight and low-power consumption modules to precisely meet customer needs, and will actively support the enhancement of the usability of mobile notebook PCs.

The RoHS Directive restricts the use of cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) in a wide range of electrical and electronic products as of July 2006, in the European Union. In addition, China , California , and several other U.S. states have passed regulations with similar phase-outs of these substances in certain electrical and electronic products. Initially, LCDs with cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlight systems must contain less than 5mg of mercury per lamp, under one of the exemptions listed in the Annex to the RoHS Directive.⁴ TMD is committed to offering a broad selection of RoHS-Compatible displays, and will continue to develop products intended to meet various global environmental regulations. During a transition period, TMD will supply its original non-RoHS-Compatible modules to existing customers as demand warrants.

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