True Ohmic No Barrier Contact
True Ohmic No Barrier Contact ­ The Field Emission Device (patent 4,663,559) and Field Emission Devices with Improved Field Surfaces (patent 5,656,883) is the antecedent of all AstroView Patents and introduced True Ohmic No Barrier Contact, which is essential to preserve energy. The device utilizes a cermet with graded concentration of insulative and conductive particles deposited on the truncated point of a conical emitter. The emission surface of the cermet is insensitive to gases that oxidize or poison the emission surface. Such gases and other contaminants emanate from a phosphor when the emission device is used in phosphor display devices. (See attachment Effects of Injecting Contacts showing AstroView injecting contacts) These Field Emission Device patents provide the following benefits:

• Is operated at lower potentials, which reduces power requirements and minimizes heat dissipation requirements, thereby enhancing dependability.
  
• Operates at a lower field potential in order to reduce mechanically and temporally unstable emission sites, which result in current bursts and current deficits at these sites.
  
• Incorporates internal resistors which provide a series resistance to limit noise at affected emission areas, eliminating the need to limit noise by incorporating high-valued resistors, typically in series with the cathode terminal of the emission device, which reduce the potential to the entire emission surface and increasing potentials to produce current sufficient to excite phosphor.

No Barrier True Ohmic Contact permits and requires a third, Gate Terminal to control conduction, avalanche in semiconductors, including polymer semiconductors.

Gated Pixel Elements
Gated Pixel Elements Using Polymer Electroluminescent Materials for Panel Displays (Patent 5,977,718) rely on ohmic contact both for electroluminescent pixel devices and the address and control devices. A gated pixel device with electroluminescent polymer is spun onto a flexible, transparent substrate, reducing fabrication cost when compared to conventional material deposition techniques. A plurality of pixels can be integrally fabricated on a common, flexible substrate resulting in a display panel that can be formed into any desired geometry, creating military applications not possible with conventional rigid flat panel displays.

Gated Pixel elements introduce and set forth a design for integrally fabricated gated triode pixel elements and the associated control circuitry for flat panel displays.

Triode Configuration
Current standard diode display technology or two terminal embodiments for flat display panel pixels has barrier contact at both the injector and the collector terminals of the diode. In a diode configuration, the address and intensity modulation circuitry must be separately manufactured and assembled thereby increasing the cost of the display product. Diode pixel elements have a significant percentage of light emission that is not utilized thereby increasing the power required to obtain a desired level of illumination.

The proprietary AstroView triode is a natural progression from diodes, which occurred in vacuum tubes and in semiconductors, with all the intrinsic improvements and advantages. The gated, triode electroluminescent devices are either of two well known and characterized types: MESFETS (Metal Schottky-gate Field Effect Transistors), and JFETS (Junction Field Effect Transistors). The EL controlling gate may be either a Schottky barrier or a Junction barrier to the EL material. The gate is an individual control element independent of the diode contacts. A triode configuration produces a brighter EL display and allows more efficiency in EL address and logic devices of the display. This allows our displays to have "smart pixels."

Woven Display
Woven Polymer Fiber Video Displays with Improved Efficiency and Economy of Manufacture (Patent 6,229,259) discloses a display woven of dielectric conducting and semi conducting fibers. The display device is fabricated from a warp and woof fabric of gated triode devices including red, green and blue gated EL devices, address devices and controlling logic elements. The woven display pixel density can be superior to that of CRTs and is suitable for military applications for head mounted display, portable, large area high-density television, warfare and tactical commanders displays where LCD are not stable. Triode devices produce red, green and blue EL by gate controlled avalanche processes, more efficient with higher luminous output than the prior art tunneling method. The non-tunneling device source contact, which enables gate control, also blocks hole current for more efficient luminescent carrier recombination. The fabric comprising the pixels and control circuitry is encapsulated in a polymer having advantageous optical interface parameter with the luminescent face of pixels.

AstroView¹s patents bring new interface and device technology to both woven and ink-jet printed electroluminescent displays. Both fiber and ink-jet printed EL materials begin in the same semi liquid solution and can be either drawn into fibers, or ink jet printed in the dimension and thickness desired. Characteristics of woven display screen include the following:

• A full color flexible flat panel display that can be as thin, front to back including encapsulation, of less than one-half inch.
• A display area is limited only by loom size for woven display
• Both methods (Ink-jet and woven) have considerable advantages in combat conditions due to durability and dependability over LCD displays
• Dramatically lower cost method of manufacture
• Display retains operational performance with mechanical flexing
• Dramatic reduction in power consumption