Electronics development of silicon microdisplay for virtual reality applications

We have developed a highly integrated liquid-crystal-on-silicon microdisplay for virtual reality applications. The silicon display panel was designed and fabricated by a custom 0.5 mu m 3-metal CMOS technology. We further utilized field programmable gate array to implement a color sequential technique for driving this display panel. 4 bits per color of the display was demonstrated. The use of FPGA has advantages of fast prototyping and flexible in-circuit reconfiguration for different display applications. This compact microdisplay system can lead to a variety of virtual reality applications.