Slot mask technology

Added: 03/29/2006

Modern CRT displays are developed by different technological processes. New methods for the implementation of the electronic gun have some main directions. For instance, there are such technologies as a slot mask or a shadow mask. These technologies were proposed by the Sony Corporation many years ago, but they are still very efficient. These features are used for the modern professional monitors.

There are different technologies, which are used nowadays to control an electron-beam tube. Electronic solutions are used here and its quality defines the quality of the monitor. Moreover, the quality of the electronic control elements, proposed by different producers, is one of the requirements, defining the difference between monitors of different producers that have the same tube.

There is one popular type of electronic tubes for computer monitors, which is called Aperture Grill. These tubes were developed and produced by the Sony Corporation in 1982. There is a unique technology, used for the tubes with the aperture grill. It contains three beam guns, three cathodes and three modulators, though there is one common focus. This technology allows to control the current of three beams independently. There could be also one trifascicular electronic beam instead of three. Sony calls this technology "a unitized gun", but the implementation depends only on the cathode structure.

Each electronic gun emits the beam that affects the phosphor elements of red, green or blue colors. It is obvious that the beam, supposed for red elements, does not have to affect green or blue phosphor. Developers use a special mask to achieve this effect. The most popular types of these masks are a shadow mask and a slot mask.

The slot mask is a technology, which is developed by the NEC Company. Another name for the slot mask technology is "CromaClear". In practice, this technology is a combination of the shadow mask and the aperture grill technologies. In this case, the phosphor elements are placed in the vertical cells and the mask is made of the vertical lines. In fact, the vertical lines are divided into elliptic cells, which include groups of three phosphor elements of three main colors. The minimal distance between two cells is a slot pitch. The less the slot pitch is, the higher is the quality of the image on the monitor.

The NEC Company actively uses the slot mask for their monitors with elliptic cells. This technology is also used in the Panasonic monitors with the PureFlat (PanaFlat) electronic tube. Actually, the first monitor with a flat tube was Panasonic. LG uses the slot mask for their monitors Flatron with a step 0.24. The series of the flat tubes Infinite Flat Tube (Dyna series) from Samsung are using the shadow mask instead of the slot mask.

The corporation Sony developed its own technology for creating flat tubes - FD Trinitron. These tubes are developed by using the aperture grill with a constant step. One more specific technology is the DiamondTron NF. This technology is not related to the FD Trinitron by Sony. At the same time, the tubes DiamondTron NF are using the aperture grill with a variable step.

The slot mask is one of the most popular technologies, used at the latest models of CRT monitors. The professional models are provided with this feature in order to achieve a high quality of the image. The aperture grill is another way to achieve a better quality of the image processing by the modern CRT professional displays.

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