World's thinest LCD

Eugen Onac, a Romanian from Luduş (yes, from our town) is behind the prototype developed by Philips, whose dimensions revolutionize the industry: with a diagonal of 81 inches, the screen is only 8 millimeters thick and have a weight of 5 kilograms.


Employed for almost three years at Philips, Eugen Onac is 33 years and is a graduate of the Faculty of Physics at the University of Bucharest, where has also followed a master program. He then did an internship for several months in Germany at Cottbus, and continued with a PhD in the Netherlands, at the Technical University of Delft. Immediately after the end of 2005, Philips Research Eindhoven has committed to. Eugen remembers the first contact with the cathode tube, in his childhood: "The first TV set that I remember was a black and white one, with lamps".

The record reached by the Dutch company Philips, currently translated by a prototype, was "approved" at the IFA Fair, held in Berlin during September 4-9 2008. The screen is a real delight for users, who will hang on the wall as a commonplace painting. The previous record in terms of thinness was a Sony LCD (9.9 mm), launched at the end of August 2008. Philips preferred to keep the response for Sony's product in secret: "The World (from Philips) was very enthusiastic, and the model has been shown for the first time at internal level for several months now. Only later it was decided to be presented for the public at Berlin".


The difference is made by Philips in the screen lighting. "Normal LCD screens have backlightning, which has a thickness of 20-30 millimeters. We managed to do 20 times thinner, reaching a millimeter. I used a light guide, which is a plastic light conducting. We got 30 LEDs at the bottom of the screen and another 30 in the top. They inject their light into the light guide, which then spreads all over the screen in a uniform layer". The biggest challenge for Onac's team was the point where the light links with light guide, "because the guide is just a millimeter thin, and it is very difficult to do a coupling effectively without losing much light".

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